AVG antivirus and Chrome

J

johnwhelan

Well-known member
Apparently in their wisdom AVG disabled part of Chrome's security features by forcing a plug-in into chrome that the user had no control.

"people's internet history and other personal data could be seen by others if they knew where to look online. Furthermore, he said, the code could potentially let hackers spy on people's email and other online activities."

Apparently AVG have released two updates to resolve the issue, the first one was unsuccessful.

Cheerio John
 
Hi John and everybody

johnwhelan said:
Apparently in their wisdom AVG disabled part of Chrome's security features by forcing a plug-in into chrome that the user had no control.

"people's internet history and other personal data could be seen by others if they knew where to look online. Furthermore, he said, the code could potentially let hackers spy on people's email and other online activities."

Apparently AVG have released two updates to resolve the issue, the first one was unsuccessful.

Cheerio John
Click to expand...

Hi John and everybody.
john, are you referring to Google Chrome OS or Google android operating on Chrome browser. Thesedays I use Google OS very frequently and no security whatsoever is required by that system. It is recomened that security is installed for Google android but not many people seem to follow that recommendation (LOL). With just the Chrome browser running on Widows, then full security should most definitely be installed I would believe, no questions asked.

Bill
 
John,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I know some people that are still using AVG and I will notify them of this issue.

Bill,

I wouldn't say Chrome OS is perfect and flaw free. Google sponsored a hacker contest to find vulnerabilities with three very big flaws found. The participants that found the flaws were awarded large sums of money, and the security holes patched.
 
wholbr said:
Hi John and everybody



Hi John and everybody.
john, are you referring to Google Chrome OS or Google android operating on Chrome browser. Thesedays I use Google OS very frequently and no security whatsoever is required by that system. It is recomened that security is installed for Google android but not many people seem to follow that recommendation (LOL). With just the Chrome browser running on Widows, then full security should most definitely be installed I would believe, no questions asked.

Bill
Click to expand...


http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35198435

Cheerio John
 
Hi everybody.
The information in the link obviously refers to users of Google Android as it is a download from the play store rather than being a Google Chrome extension from the web store which is a completely different animal.

The reason I asked the question I did at #2 of this thread, was as I stated that I use Google OS on a daily basis in my home office. I am now semi retired so I do not attend the company’s main office regularly and was therefore very interested in the security implications for that on the Google OS system I use.

However, there seems to be no need for alarm and I am sure they would have alerted me from the office if there was any security problem as they have eight Google desktop OS systems in operation down there these days. As stated I always respect what you post on this forum John so it made me “prick up my ears” to something they may not have been aware of at the office.

Rumours are that Google have been looking at integrating the two systems (OS and android) for some time, but that would without doubt upset their rapidly growing business community users of of the OS system who do not wish to see that system integrated with anything. Keep it straight and simple seems to be the demand and one I very much agree with.

I use three systems these days, Windows for Trainz 10 and DTG train simulator, Google android for my gaming tablet and Google OS for my work and everything else. Without doubt in my humble opinion Google OS far outstrips the other two in terms of speed with its 10 second bootup to full operation, followed by straightforward user compatibility and not having to concern yourself with updates and security.

As John Citroen advised Google regularly pay the world’s best hackers to try and break into the system and only once have those people being able to breach the system over a great number of tries. Anyway thanks for the heads up John, keep any information such as that coming.

Bill
 
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I think you are right on that one Bill. I use AVG and Chrome and I have had no updates or warning messages at all. It is all just ticking along as per. It probably is android that it was aimed at.

Doug
 
From my understanding of that article,it's those who installed the Web Tuneup component which I believe may be standalone that may have been affected.

Shane
 
Hi everybody.
I have had a chance to speak to our office manager at my company and have a look on the Play Store this morning, and this problem is definitely affecting Google Android phones and tablets. That stated, it seems unclear if the problem is affecting the PC version of AVG WebtuneUp.

However, the Google OS operating system has not been affected and could not be affected by the “Avg Botch up” as with that system no downloads are undertaken whatsoever and the app has to be downloaded for problem to manifest itself on a system.

The above stated, this is undoubtedly a very serious breach of security especially when you consider that many millions of people all over the world use their Android phones for everyday banking and other task that they would wish to remain very secure. Avg antivirus came pre-installed on my wife's phone when she bought it 18 months ago as part of the “bloat-ware” which always comes with phones these days. The application cannot be removed but can be disabled which she has done.

Google where right to show publicly the anger they did at Avg and I would hope they will take steps to ensure that none of the phone manufacturers pre-install any Avg applications on Android phones in the future.

Bill

 
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This reminds me a lot of the older McAfee fiasco a few years ago which prevented thousands of computers from booting up. The mess was made worse due to corporations using McAfee as this brought many users offline as people were left with unbootable computers. The antivirus company eventually came out with a manual patch which had to be applied to each and every affected computer.

I'm glad I was lucky and missed this mess as it occurred just before I worked at Oracle which uses McAfee.

https://www.infopackets.com/news/5650/mcafee-update-crashes-hundreds-thousands-xp-pcs

John
 
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