Slashdot Mirror
AVG Fakes User Agent, Floods the Internet
Slimy anti-virus provider AVG is spamming the internet with deceptive traffic pretending to be Internet Explorer. Essentially, users of the software automatically pre-crawl search results, which is bad, but they do so with an intentionally generic user agent. This is flooding websites with meaningless traffic (on Slashdot, we're seeing them as like 6% of our page traffic now). Best of all, they change their UA to avoid being filtered by websites who are seeing massive increases in bandwidth from worthless robots.
Why don't you tell us how you really feel about AVG?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
if you want the definition of Slimey see Symantec/Mcafee/MicrosoftOneCare
while this doesnt excuse their behaviour, trying to protect people (a lot of them for free) is not Slimey but insulting them on the front page of Slashdot is
patheticPerhaps, someone could elaborate on how they are slimey. This appears to be an attempt to protect people.
Ok, think of the /. effect. Now take that on almost any website who's servers aren't as strong. This is basically a huge DDoS attack on many websites by AVG that has a reason behind it. But it is still a DDoS attack.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
no your not a lawyer, but i'm pretty sure your not smart enough to be one either.
you didn't give them permission to access your publicly available site?
really?
are you sure?
because you know, if you make something publicly available on the public internet, I'm pretty sure by definition, you've therefore given them permission to access it.
Just like everyone else "in the public".
Did you give Google permission?
how about every other search/index site?
as to the "extra bandwidth" since it is by definition, caused by your websites being found via search providers, maybe you should be sending the bill for linking to them and thus causing the "extra bandwidth" to Google/Yahoo/MS and see how far that gets you.
How exactly do the websites getting slammed with this bullshit traffic "not even install this part of the program" and "if you don't like it don't use it"?
Did you miss this part: (on Slashdot, we're seeing them as like 6% of our page traffic now)
So how does Slashdot "just not use" the AVG product and recover that 6% of their page traffic again?
The complaint is that they are "spamming the internet with deceptive traffic". That's a server/hosting complaint, not a user complaint about some user who can't figure out how to disable that feature.
Kudos on getting a "4 Insightful" for a ridiculously inapplicable and nonsensical response though!
Because it is a browser that people use... The same thing could be said on why should we have to support Konqueror, or the Mozilla Suite, or Seamonkey, why not even block Safari just because we can. Basically, IE6 is a browser, it is even a popular browser. And saying we should block it is like saying we should block Firefox 1.5 and earlier and hey! Firefox 3 is out now, lets block Firefox 2!
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Prefetching your search results doesn't protect you from viruses any more than just checking the pages you try to load at the time of loading.
What it does, is basically scanning the entire internet, weighted toward the pages its users search for, and I assume reporting back to AVG which websites have malware or suspected malware on them.
The problem with this theory is that malware sites can move around quickly, so learning that domain xzclqqkxzz.com tried to upload a virus to someone's computer 48 hours ago is not especially valuable information.
That's in addition to AV software being essentially impossible to keep up-to-date anyway, you can look up studies but most AV software lets a lot of malware through.
And the increased traffic annoys webmasters because the prefetches are (attempted to be) disguised as actual page fetches, and they come from all over the internet, so we think they're real clicks from real users but they're not. Plus, for some sites the increased load/bandwidth may be a problem.
Hooray! Look at all the OH SHIT my server's on fire!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Dumb is what they were BEFORE they were told about the problem. Slimy is what they are now that they are refusing to rectify the situation and behave.
I think they deserve everything they will inevitably get as a result of this.
Enjoy Y2K? Roll-on Year 2037!
Are users not supposed to protect themselves in the interests of the website?
This isn't being done to protect users. The pages could be scanned just as easily on actual load. This is being done to prevent the users from having to suffer a small delay on loading the page by preloading it (and every other possibly link on the page since the software doesn't know what link you're going to click).
You're just putting spin on the issue because this is affecting your cost/income ratio.
You're very anti-average Joe. Most of us aren't Amazon. Most of us, in fact, make precisely zero income from our websites. And we don't have the kind of financial resources to deal with this kind of distributed attack on our bandwidth. Amazon, Yahoo, and such won't have any problem dealing with this sort of thing, but if it becomes popular, it'll force the rest of us off the web.
Since the problem of malware sites is not going to go away and since AVG is effective more antivirus software will start using these techniques. Unless you have something better to suggest?
Yes, make the user wait the extra second if the user wants to scan a page.
Frankly, as an end user, I don't give a damn about your costs and stats. I don't care about it for amazon, ebay, myspace, or paypal. I do care that if I follow a link to an unsavory site that I am protected.
If that's true, then you won't mind waiting the extra second to load a page instead of having the browser drag down the bandwidth of every site in your search ahead of time for you.
Here is another question. Do you want a userbase that is populated by malware infected computers? Is that preferable to figuring out a way to work with AVG new technique?
That's a false dilemma. Is it preferable to force everyone other than the big guys off the web so that users don't have to wait an extra second on loading a page?
Dont throw your users under the train. They have a right to their security and peace of mind.
Don't throw the majority of web page publishers under a train, just so you can save a second by preloading a page.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
No, its the equivalent of taking a flamethrower to all your neighbor's houses because you think there might be a wasp flying around.
I'll tell you why they did it. It's because at the current time some of their other interfaces have not been upgraded and are not compatible with IE7. You may not even use them, but if someone sees IE 7 on your desktop, they want it on theirs and so on and so forth. It's not that anyone in their right mind wants to keep IE 6 around, but it is likely that is what is currently supported according to their corporate image. It also has to do with preserving standards and how the techs support your PC and the efficiency of how it is supported. Bleeding edge doesn't happen in corporate environments, hell leading edge doesn't even happen most of the time. Its slow and steady movements forward. If you jumped on the bandwagon for every new upgrade your network would be a mess and would show no signs of a standard. Software is tested in corporations, with everything else that already exists inside the shop. They even have a position dedicated to just that task. They are commonly called desktop engineers. They typically spend a good part of their workday developing and testing products to integrate into the desktop standard image. This is because something as simple as a non supported browser can cause a user all sorts of issues and then cost hours of time (read: money) for the tech to diagnose it. This is why you pay for an IT department, there are many headaches the user never sees and it is because we work it out first.
Why, what does that do?
Do you want it to pound Google's servers, bump up grisoft's search rank, or anything else I am not seing?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.