Hey Grisoft: I love AVG but I hate popups!

[app103]

AVG is a great product. And Grisoft has done a wonderful service by offering a free version for all these years.

But...

They have recently resorted to WinFixer-like marketing tactics. Evey other day, when AVG updates itself, my browser opens to an ad for AVG.

The first time it happened it scared the crap outta me because I didn't touch anything that should have opened my browser. I waited, holding my breath, to see what evil thing was going to load, to give me some clue as to what had infected my pc so I could remove it. I was quite surprised to see an ad for AVG.

It's not like AVG hasn't opened a window with an ad for their full product before, just this time they decided to use the browser to do it. They used to use their own application to popup the ads.

Now before you decide to flame me for bashing a great product from a company that has been kind enough to give away a free version, consider this:

On a newer, faster machine...this is just an annoyance. You can just close the window...no harm done.

That being said, there is another issue that isn't just a mere user annoyance...

I have always liked how light AVG was and how well it ran on older low end machines without causing stability problems...liked it enough to publicly endorse it.

I am going to have to revise my endorsement for AVG for older slower PC's, due to the fact that many of them can't handle having more than 1 or 2 browser windows open at a time.

If AVG is going to open browser windows this frequently, this will cause problems on those PC's when their owners already have browser windows open.

I can't endorse a product that has a known issue that has a high potential to make your machine unstable every other day when it's updating. I can't endorse a product that has a high chance of causing your machine to lock up in the middle of you doing something important, leading you to lose whatever you were working on.

[Lashiec]

Funny, I opened AVG because I haven't updated it in ages (as you may know, I have it configured to work like an additional on-demand scanner), and I wanted to see this popup for myself. So the program starts to grab updates as I instruct it to do, and I come on up this one:

Priority update
This update contains the following components:
     AVG Free Banner (version 487)
Total size is 51771 bytes

LOL. That may be the component creating the popups, which, of course, wasn't included before with AVG. Oh, well, I was thinking in uninstalling AVG anyway, with AntiVir and avast! I think I'm covered on the virus side.

It seems to add another new "feature" in the dialogs, a link to the Professional Version site. Now I recall seeing that message on Tuesday in the computers at college.

[Ralf Maximus]

The first time it happened it scared the crap outta me because I didn't touch anything that should have opened my browser.

You know, this is a really bad idea, and not just for the reasons you cite.

As soon as some clever trojan author duplicates the AVG browser page and pops it up from somewhere on the 'net, some poor AVG user is going to click on what they think is a legitimate link from AVG.  Instantly, they'll become infected with the disease-of-the-day.  All thanks to AVG desensitizing its users to seeing ads from them within a browser.

Shame on AVG for not thinking this through.

[hamradio]

Glad I decided not to go with them now.

[icekin]

I don't seem to have it and I just updated my database.

[nudone]

i use the free edition of AVG and i've not had any popups appear. i have it set to auto update daily but not to display any messages that it is updating - as i found that annoying - maybe that prevents any other popups appearing???????

[app103]

I have mine set the same way. Maybe you haven't been hit with this yet.

[nudone]

could be.

i'll report back if it does appear.

[Lashiec]

This is weird, it seems to work randomly (mmm, crosslink ).

I mean, apart from those links, other people in that thread say they don't get a popup

[edbro]

I just got one on my laptop.  Not very effective as this would in no way make me want to purchase. I'll probably switch to Avast.

[app103]

The popups seem to have stopped on my machine and my daughter had the old style ones on hers (not using the browser, with an option not to be bothered again).

We have the same settings, I installed and configured hers for her.

In the past, AVG has always done some advertising towards the end of the year. I expect this. But what I wasn't expecting was for them to use my browser to do it. They have never done that before.

I don't understand the randomness of this and why some people are getting one type and an option to turn them off, and others get a browser window and no way to make it stop other than uninstalling AVG, and still others get nothing bothering them at all.

[Dex]

I agree.

I have paid AVG on one machine and the free version on a less used laptop. AVG opens a browser window to http://www.grisoft.c...-pup-05-app-freecnv/ when I click update. While I'm a big fan of AVG, this practise is not something I'd expect from them.

Show me a banner within the AVG update dialogue by all means but don't open my browser and take me to a website. That's what I'd expect malware and hijacks to do!

Dex

[bobj]

Having talked to some of their marketing guys, my understanding is that AVG's approach is to only prompt free users to upgrade once per quarter.  If you're seeing popups more than that, something is definitely wrong.  That was a couple months ago though.  If it's working as intended, I think one popup every 3 months is pretty reasonable for a free product that does require a non-trivial amount of everyday maintenance on their part.

[J-Mac]

Having talked to some of their marketing guys, my understanding is that AVG's approach is to only prompt free users to upgrade once per quarter.  If you're seeing popups more than that, something is definitely wrong.  That was a couple months ago though.  If it's working as intended, I think one popup every 3 months is pretty reasonable for a free product that does require a non-trivial amount of everyday maintenance on their part.

-bobj (October 14, 2008, 04:29 PM)

I couldn’t disagree more. It is Grisoft that decided to offer a free version, not pressure from users. And it is already a limited feature edition, as are most free versions of a normally pay-for software.

I don’t believe that there were such complaints - at least not here at DonationCoder.com that I have seen - when the ads were only shown in the application interface itself, or in popups that "stay home", meaning not open your browser. But opening a browser page unsolicited is not a valid "program limitation" for even a free version. Do they make this clear when the free version is downloaded? Didn't think so!

No, this is not acceptable behavior at all. It is, in plain words, a browser hijack. And if any other company did this even once, let alone on a regularly scheduled basis, you - or at least most reasonable persons - would consider it to be the behavior of malware.

If this is a requirement of their so-called "free" version, then it is not a free version at all, for the user is indeed giving up something of value.

Bad move.

Jim

[app103]

This was in the previous version of AVG. So far there doesn't seem to be any of this funny business going on with the latest version. Hopefully they learned their lesson and won't do this again.