Review: Avast Internet Security

I've been using Avast anti- virus and internet security for a few years now. I've had some issues off and on with it but, since it's really giving me a hard time now, I thought I'd write a review in hopes Avast's powers- that- be might stumble onto to this while checking on what the world is saying about their program and hopefully take heed. It's been very difficult for me to try to contact them directly.

I've used at least four anti- virus programs over the years. Norton, McCafee, Zonealarms and now Avast. All of those programs have let viruses on my computer, thus none are perfect. I started using Avast at the recommendation of one of the guys at Cornerstone Computers in Henderson Center. He suggested Avast was a lot "less noisy" than ZoneAlarms which I'd been using. He was right in that regards.

I'd constantly get one alarm or another with Zonealarms about something going on inside my computer. Problem was, I didn't know what those alarms even meant. Avast used to work in the background without getting itself a lot of attention, until relatively recently.

A year or two ago after one of their upgrades, a window started popping up telling me my computer was running slower than it should and they could fix it for me. After ignoring it for a while, I bit and selected the fix it option. Then a window pops up saying I'd have to pay something like $39 per year to use that program. To me, that's akin to adware and I didn't appreciate them adding that to the program. How rude! It didn't stop with that one time, either, I got pop ups for that time and again until I found a way to deactivate it.

I also started getting a lot of what I felt were false positive virus warnings on web sites, including some I went to regularly. For a while I saw an option in the alert box where you could report a suspected false positive, but it seems they've removed that now. Even when I did report it, I never got any feedback from Avast saying the threat was real, or not. 

The most recent annoyance was their web shield giving an alert with numerous sites I'm familiar with telling me they're blocking the site because of an "invalid certificate". To their credit, they usually don't actually block the site. They just keep alerting you to the certificate problem, whatever that means.

A week or two ago it got even better when it told me it was blocking lewrockwell.com- a site I visit at least five days a week- because of an invalid certificate. What got me about this was they actually blocked the site. I simply can't view it, although I can easily enough using my tablet.

I finally went to the Avast web site and tried to get some tech support without success. They do have a forum where you can search for similar problems but I couldn't find this particular problem listed. I did find a few similar issues, one which recommended turning off their Web Shield. I did that, but it still won't let me visit my site, so I'm stuck.

Anyway, Avast seems as good as any other anti- virus and they do offer a free firewall. Don't expect to be totally secure, though, and you'll get alerts whether there's a threat, or not.