AVG SafeScan
Slashdot pointed out today that AVG is scanning every link on every page you go to to “protect” you against malware. Not cool for webmasters who might have to pay extra for the bandwidth. To turn it off, follow the instructions in the AVG FAQ, which are pointed to on this blog, along with some other nice commentary on AVG Free 8.
Following is AVG’s official response to LinkScanner concerns:
We’d like to thank our web community for bringing these challenges to our attention, as building community trust and protecting all of our users is critical to us. We have modified the Search-Shield component of LinkScanner to only notify users of malicious sites; this modified version will be rolled out on July 9th 2008. As of this date. Search-Shield will no longer scan each search result online for new exploits, which was causing the spikes that webmasters addressed with us. However, it is important to note that AVG still offers full protection against potential exploits through the Active Surf-Shield component of our product, which checks every page for malicious content as it is visited but before it is opened.
Comment by Pat Bitton — July 4, 2008 @ 6:42 pm