AVG scans every page when you access it anyway. Since it's downloading the page to scan it, you're "visiting" the page in both instances -- so you'd be, potentially*, more of a risk for infection their way.
* if they download the file, parse the page (i.e. download all the integrated stuff and scan them too, parse the javascript, etc), it'd be possible that a virus the scanner isn't set to detect could be downloaded and run. But if they just scan the things (no parsing other than searching for things), risk would be minimal overall I'd think.
I wrote a blog article about this back in March, and it's just now getting known? I had a horrible time trying to convince people to stop using it because they thought they needed it, and didn't care as they didn't have to pay for bandwidth.
Back before I wrote the article, I installed the new version of the program, searched for something and 5-20 minutes later it returned the scan results (not joking either -- I reported it to them. Had many, many e-mails back and forth). Wondered what the program really did, so I searched for just my website that has real-time user info displayed to me. Saw it actually downloaded and accessed the page (wasting my bandwidth on the server, processor, etc) so I disabled it. AVG gave me a red exclamation mark -- so I complained to them again, and again, about once a month.
Latest release allows you to disable the link scanner and tell the program to ignore any warnings from it.
I still wish they and all the others would remove it though. The entire thing is redundant or pointless. AVG's scans the website even if you don't visit it - then again once you do (just imagine a search engine indexing a FBI sting site, and you go searching for info about the sting, and get the sting site as a result). Other programs look up in a database if it's safe or not. It's all just a waste of resources all the way around.
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AVG scans every page when you access it anyway. Since it's downloading the page to scan it, you're "visiting" the page in both instances -- so you'd be, potentially*, more of a risk for infection their way.
* if they download the file, parse the page (i.e. download all the integrated stuff and scan them too, parse the javascript, etc), it'd be possible that a virus the scanner isn't set to detect could be downloaded and run. But if they just scan the things (no parsing other than searching for things), risk would be minimal overall I'd think.
I wrote a blog article about this back in March, and it's just now getting known? I had a horrible time trying to convince people to stop using it because they thought they needed it, and didn't care as they didn't have to pay for bandwidth. Back before I wrote the article, I installed the new version of the program, searched for something and 5-20 minutes later it returned the scan results (not joking either -- I reported it to them. Had many, many e-mails back and forth). Wondered what the program really did, so I searched for just my website that has real-time user info displayed to me. Saw it actually downloaded and accessed the page (wasting my bandwidth on the server, processor, etc) so I disabled it. AVG gave me a red exclamation mark -- so I complained to them again, and again, about once a month. Latest release allows you to disable the link scanner and tell the program to ignore any warnings from it. I still wish they and all the others would remove it though. The entire thing is redundant or pointless. AVG's scans the website even if you don't visit it - then again once you do (just imagine a search engine indexing a FBI sting site, and you go searching for info about the sting, and get the sting site as a result). Other programs look up in a database if it's safe or not. It's all just a waste of resources all the way around.