Slashdot Mirror
AVG Backs Down From Flooding the Internet
Simon Wright writes "As a website that is featured heavily in many Google Australia search results, Whirlpool (Australia's largest technology forum) has been particularly affected by AVG's LinkScanner. We've seen a traffic increase as much as 12 hits per second from these bots. So we've actively and loudly campaigned against this move by AVG, encouraging all users of AVG 8.0 to uninstall the product. The discussion starts here. And AVG's backing down is posted here."
From that URL:"'As promised, I am letting you know that the latest update for AVG Free edition has addressed and rectified the issue that [Whirlpool] have brought to our attention. This update has now been released to users and has also been built into the latest installation package for AVG Free.' — Peter Cameron, Managing Director, AVG Australia."
See: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1007329&p=13#r256
The fix has been independently tested.
Cheers WTW
Simon has state that the server normally deals with 50 queries / second.
So 12 more / second is quite a bit of load.
Cheers WTW
I dunno, I use Avast, it's pretty good and free as well. I like the UI a bit better and it seems to get definition updates pretty frequently. Much less of a resource hog than Norton/McAfee too, although so is AVG.
All your base are belong to Wii.
This is about the same amount of protection as pulling out is a form of birth control.
Are you telling me:
1. You never open links in search results to sites you have never been to?
- If you are running windows using Firefox or IE there have been many cases of 0 day exploits
2. Do you not use any USB storage devices?
- Just this Christmas I purchases a digital photo frame for a family member that had built in storage. low and behold when I went to preload it with photos it was already infected with a virus that was set to use auto play to install.
3. You 100% trust EVERY thing your friends or family send you? Document infections are still somewhat common. I suppose using Open office would get you around macro infections but you also might not be able to open company documents then.
I would also imagine that ANYONE who is on slashdot and manages security also believes in the layered approach. Inbound only filtering from your firewall and using your gut to know what is safe or not is an easy one to work around.. Well unless you are a hermit that never gets any email.
The single web server that powers Whirlpool is typically handling 30 to 40 non-cached template requests per second. We've got over 15 gigabytes worth of user posts online, and receive hundreds of referrals from Google every minute.
Given that it's running on a 4-year-old web server (in tandem with another 4-year-old MySQL box), I think ColdFusion is doing pretty well for itself.
Cheers
Simon Wright
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
How about:
"Program Settings"->Sounds->Settings...
Then scroll to the "Automatic VPS Update" event and pick the "(None)" sound.
You do realize that ClamWin currently does not have an on-access scanner, don't you? That means a zero detection rate unless files are manually scanned. Right now, your 'clueless users' are unprotected.
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
As the owner of Whirlpool, please moderate the parent as uninformed.
While I'm not in a position to provide an unbiased opinion of WebCentral, they do cater to a very important market -- people who need a premium quality service. If my experience with the $0 service they provide Whirlpool is any indication, WebCentral are not just technically excellent, their support system is outstanding and reactive. I can only imagine how much better they treat the customers who pay them.
Just because you only want the bargain service, doesn't mean everyone does.
And the only reason Whirlpool isn't blazing fast, is because we're running with a bunch of WebCentral's spare hardware. We're a community service, not a business.
Cheers
Simon Wright
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso