Author Topic: Avast 7 without the cloud?  (Read 13667 times)

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Offline Lisandro

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #15 on: March 04, 2012, 08:09:28 PM »
My phone is my internet connection for my laptop.
The cloud features won't take that much bandwidth, on contrary. But, of course, you can remain (less protected) only with the virus definitions updates.
We (users) already asked a lot of times - and the development team is thinking on it - about this situation and if we're lucky, we'll see this feature in the firewall (allow all except, allow none except).
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Hermite15

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #16 on: March 04, 2012, 08:23:19 PM »
and since the OP is using his phone as a private hotspot, he must use the phone too sometimes and he must be aware of the amount of info collected on both Android and iOS by most apps ... but hey, let's read the EULAs first ;D

 My advice, use a sniffer and once you got proof that some very specific data is being collected without your consent, that there's obviously a privacy breach, then talk ... that's somehow more interesting than talking about "data" ... yeah, what data ??? ...

 Now what stops you from stopping Cloud services, and what stops you from not registering an Avast account ??? you want to use the cloud ? then agree to send data ... if you then would rather send some data and not send some other data, then say what ... !!! as long as it's relevant... you're worried about your 3G/4G quota, then don't use the cloud ... it's that easy. Other than this this thread is just a duplicate of similar topics found in tens of forums everyday, it's not going anywhere.

Pindakaas

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #17 on: March 04, 2012, 09:10:37 PM »
Personal information gets gathered too
When? With the antivirus product? No, all information is anonymous.

you cant avoid that , but why share it with so many people , that really is not needed , that is only to make more money , money above privacy.
False in avast! case. Is this only FUD?

If you talk in Avast in general , what about your IP adress , or email , all the information you type into Easypass , all the information u store in the Avast Backup , all the websites u search and all the info u put into search engines with WepRep , what happens with that , you dont call that personal ?

And no im not spreading FUD , i didnt even know what that was , im just a 22 year old man worrying about privacy , not a corporate hotshot.

If money wasnt over privacy , why include google chrome in the install wrapper ?
Or spread info to unneccesary third parties.


And btw , i am ''watched'' now ....i cannot tell whats on my mind , whats worrying me ?

If you have nothing to hide , then you should not worry what i say , right ?
« Last Edit: March 04, 2012, 09:13:00 PM by Pindakaas »

Offline Lisandro

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #18 on: March 04, 2012, 09:20:39 PM »
If you talk in Avast in general , what about your IP adress
Could avast abuse of your IP address? How? It is never even public...

or email
All the info that avast servers hold are protected. The protection and the access is controlled by rigid rules like any other serious company.

all the information you type into Easypass , all the information u store in the Avast Backup
Mostly in this cases a military security level of AES is used.

all the websites u search and all the info u put into search engines with WepRep , what happens with that , you dont call that personal ?
No personal information or personal browsing habits is used or collected by avast!

And no im not spreading FUD , i didnt even know what that was , im just a 22 year old man worrying about privacy , not a corporate hotshot.
The tone of your posts is showing you're posting what you don't know. You're not asking, you're just spreading fear and misinformation.
You're not here to receive help, but just to bash.

Or spread info to unneccesary third parties.
No personal information is disclosed to any third party.

And btw , i am ''watched'' now ....i cannot tell whats on my mind , whats worrying me ?
Your posts are being watched due to your attitude.
The forum atmosphere is generally cool, friendship and cooperation, help and also fun.

If you have nothing to hide , then you should not worry what i say , right ?
Nobody is worry... Except for your personal attitude and posts.
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nord

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #19 on: March 05, 2012, 01:17:41 AM »
My phone is my internet connection for my laptop.
The cloud features won't take that much bandwidth, on contrary. But, of course, you can remain (less protected) only with the virus definitions updates.
We (users) already asked a lot of times - and the development team is thinking on it - about this situation and if we're lucky, we'll see this feature in the firewall (allow all except, allow none except).

Tech,

How much bandwidth difference between Avast 6 and Avast 7 with cloud? I don't know about your cell provider, but mine is first cousin to a leech. (Don't have DSL, Cable or Satellite or a landline for that matter.)

Also, is the Avast 7 engine better than Avast 6, at least enough to kill off those, ah, interesting magazine reviews of Avast of late? That is if I were to only use the virus definition (and manual updates to engine) method.

TKs.




HighWalker

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #20 on: March 05, 2012, 04:10:16 AM »
I'm actually amazed how people wern't/arnt aware how much thier privacy has been invaded for years, but i guess better late then never.
No privacy is invaded at all. What are you talking about?

That was a generalized statement as to how information is being collected by most companies over the past years, in that most are not aware it has been going on at such a large magnitude, anonymous or not it still is info from a specific origin and was generated by a specific individual.



Offline RejZoR

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #21 on: March 05, 2012, 06:20:10 AM »
You ppl are sort of a bit funny. You shout about privacy, yet you clearly don't understand what a statistical info is or what anonymous means.
It means that avast! is indeed collecting certain data (like every antivirus on market these days!), but if you'd want to look it up you'd just get back a statistical data. A statistical data is the kind of data that is useful to avast! Software to combat future malware, but it doesn't really tell them much about the users from which it was collected.

For example, if i visit some infected webpage and avast! detects something. It will collect the URL on which the malware was detected (it's understandable that they want to know where the malware came from). Yes, the URL you visited was logged. Why do you care? It was infected anyway. avast! team doesn't care either. You could go to it intentionally or unintentionally through some kind of redirection, no one really knows or cares. All they care is origin of the malware so they can check the domain and include it into Network Shield if it's found to be all malicious.
It will also submit the sample to avast! if it's found suspicious. Again, it's not sending everything to them, it's sending just stuff that gets flagged as suspicious. And avast! has never been known to generate hundreds of such warnings so any worry of excessive sending of "everything" to them is out of question. Yes, it will also log the file path, where the malware was detected on the disk. If it was on your desktop, yes, user profile will be logged since it's within the file path. It's the way how Windows work and they can't do anything about it. I haven't been to their lab but from all i care it could censor the usernames on the system level. So if they get a data feed back to their systems from a detection on location C:\Users\RejZoR\Desktop\somemalware.exe it could just as well automatically convert the data into C:\Users\USERPROFILE\Desktop\somemalware.exe. They probably aren't doing it but it's a possibility i guess. With millions of such file paths obtained daily, i seriously doubt anyone has time to look at some silly path names that contain usernames which by itself are just random meaningless strings in the end. I mean what good is it to them if they see your name is i don't know, "John Sullivan" or "John Doe". It's just a name. You make worse privacy breach if you open a public phonebook and just fly through it...
Yes, they also collect the country in which the detection was made.

But on the other hand, every company has to follow good business practices and ethics which always include rigorous privacy policies. avast! wouldn't be used by millions if it wasn't trusted enough don't you think? And they had to work hard for 3 decades to create that trust. Do you think they'll throw all that away just because of some privacy nonsense? I find it very unlikely.

As for all the data collected which we call a statistical data. You can see it here:
http://www.avast.com/facts
http://www.avast.com/maps
http://www.avast.com/communityiq

This is what's called "statistical data". It's an useful data but does it tell it came from me or you? No, it doesn't.
It's like random ppl asking you various things on the street for the surveys. Is that a serious breach in privacy as well? By the end of the day, they won't even remember how your face looked like and they certainly won't remember your name or what you said after 200 surveyed people. And you expect avast! to conduct some evil conspiracy data collection where they get millions of lines of data for various malware samples daily? They just can't.
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nord

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #22 on: March 05, 2012, 07:23:13 AM »
A couple of points: The following is from Avast's EULA for version 7.

"The collected information may be transferred to third parties or to other countries that may have less protective data protection laws than the country or region in which you are situated. "

AND

"The information collected by the Software is generally not correlated with any other personal information related to you that AVAST may be processing..."

I wonder why Avast would include this last statement if the information collated is completely anonymous and only aggregated.


« Last Edit: March 05, 2012, 07:25:13 AM by nord »

AdrianH

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #23 on: March 05, 2012, 09:11:12 AM »
A couple of points: The following is from Avast's EULA for version 7.

"The collected information may be transferred to third parties or to other countries that may have less protective data protection laws than the country or region in which you are situated. "

AND

"The information collected by the Software is generally not correlated with any other personal information related to you that AVAST may be processing..."

I wonder why Avast would include this last statement if the information collated is completely anonymous and only aggregated.


It is just a statement on data use and is in many countries (and certainly all of the EU) required by law.

The avast eula is much the same as that used by most other software companies. Look at the EULA for your OS or any other software from one of the bigger producers.

Seriously, if you are this paranoid you need to disconnect from the internet permanently.

AdrianH

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #24 on: March 05, 2012, 09:16:17 AM »
If money wasnt over privacy , why include google chrome in the install wrapper ?


You are using a FREE product and just like 1000's of other free products you get other items bundled in the download.  The costs of producing the software have to come from somewhere, the answer is to BUY the Pro version where there is no bundling of extras.

Offline RejZoR

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #25 on: March 05, 2012, 11:48:06 AM »
I've made a short explanation of the most critical points in EULA on Wilders:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=319578

I hope this will calm some of you here and explain why they have to mention certain things inside EULA.
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akama1

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #26 on: March 05, 2012, 01:08:57 PM »
why on earth would avast want to invade our privacy??? remote assistance is basically similar to teamviewer just that more secure and easier.... the remote assistance connection is encrypted.... the info of files being sent to cloud or via virus chest its only bytes of data of it probably md5 hash codes... how could that do possibly anything related to privacy?

Offline RejZoR

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #27 on: March 05, 2012, 01:13:59 PM »
Actually the files sent via Virus Chest are in fact whole files. Because they need the entire file for proper analysis. Only few bytes or just MD5 hash doesn't really help them much.
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akama1

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #28 on: March 05, 2012, 03:21:45 PM »
Actually the files sent via Virus Chest are in fact whole files. Because they need the entire file for proper analysis. Only few bytes or just MD5 hash doesn't really help them much.
thats pretty intense but if we downloaded a 40mb rogue.... and know its malicious... if we upload it to virus chest it will take pretty long to be uploaded :/

Offline Lisandro

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Re: Avast 7 without the cloud?
« Reply #29 on: March 05, 2012, 03:26:09 PM »
but if we downloaded a 40mb rogue.... and know its malicious... if we upload it to virus chest it will take pretty long to be uploaded :/
Maybe, in this case, an edited link to it is enough (hxxp:// ...).
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