AVG responds to malware allegations, claims to be only getting in early

September 9, 2011 | By Surur

CTO of AVG, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, denies tricking, tracking users.

AVG have posted a lengthy response to the complaints and allegations which have arisen after the release of their AVG Mobilation virus-scanning app.

The product has been accused of being at best ineffectual and at worst spyware, stealing information and tracking users without their permission or knowledge.

CTO of AVG, Yuval Ben-Itzhak claimed they were just responding early to potential threats, just as they did on Android, where their product is currently discovering hundreds of thousands of viruses.

(as) …Android grew in popularity so would the threats against the platform.

Today our security software scans 594,892,025 SMS’s a month, finding 783,963 of them as bad/spam, we also scan over 157 million App packages a month and find 225,034 are infected with malware.

AVG believes that the Windows Phone 7 OS will continue to increase in popularity and, as it does, it will become a high value target for thieves and hackers.

Regarding the ineffectualness of the product he claimed as a new product there was always room to grow, and criticism is natural.

Lastly, responding to the most egregious accusation of tracking users and stealing their data, he claimed “All of the data we collect is used solely to offer users an exceptional security service with state-of-the-art GPS tracking”.

Of note however is that the product does not seem to offer any tracking service to the end user at all, especially in its description, and one wonders how users are meant to access this data.

Overall the response appears to be as weak as the software, and we would be surprised to see this product return to Marketplace anytime soon.

Read his full post here.

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged avg, scam, windows phone 7

http://davepermen.net davepermen

the reason why i don’t trust any antivirus company: they have to make sure people fear the danger to stay alive. they don’t care about actual virus fighting. they just want people fear viruses.

antivirus on wp7 is absolutely not needed, and not really possible even. as apps can’t access other apps or your data, so can’t the antivirus app. the reason why there can’t really be viruses much on the platform is the same why this program can’t really save you from them.

and it’s the reason why i use MSE for antivirus protection on windows, and not something from an antivirus company. microsoft couldn’t care less if there wouldn’t be a need for MSE anymore. they don’t life from that product.

Anonymous

I agree with you Dave. For a long time I’ve always thought the Antivirus companies were secretly in cohorts with the virus writing community – looking at this debacle with AVG increases my conspiracy theories of this even more.

They are delusional if they think because there are credible threats on the Android platform there must be threats on the WP7 platform, too. But even beyond this, as you’ve adequately pointed out, the architecture of the platform doesn’t even allow viruses to thrive – so what the heck in the world they were fishing for?

Like you say, all they wanted is to give the buying public the “perception” that viruses can potential exists – once they win that perception war – they’ve won the battle.

J A

This is why I really only trust and use Microsoft Security Essentials. And I believe if anyone should deliver anti-malware for WP in the future it should be Microsoft because they are the ones who truly know and can access the internals of WP and know how to not bug down the system with realtime scans as MS Security Essentials has continued prove.

Anonymous

avg and norton are viruses.
Anonymous

avg and norton are viruses.

http://twitter.com/Johannespreekt Johannespreekt

Bullshit, it’s just spyware! Their only reason being on WP is for data and knowledge of users it’s a big scam! If you look to the architecture of WP a virus has no chance of harming a WP! MS should throw them of their systems for this scam!

And it makes you think what they do on your normal computers, what information they gather and send back to them! Because you can’t convice me this is the first time a companie makes such a scam! I wouldn’t trust them anymore, they showed their real cards and they aren’t pritty!
J A

“We will not sell your data to anyone.We do not share or otherwise disclose your data to anyone without your permission.We do not mine your data for patterns.We do not use your data to target ads.We do not access your location data without your permission.”
Seriously? I don’t care what they will not do with my data AFTER they harvest it, they just should not be getting my data in the first place at all. I thought these guys were wupposed to deliver anti-malware but what are they doing with harvesting data at all? How do these two very different things come together under one app? If they want to harvest data then why not create an app suitably named for that instead of hiding that feature in what is supposed to be an anti-malware and in essence creating a full-blown malware?Well, news is that iPhone is also popular. Why not go deliver your anti-malware…er….malware there first.
J A

“We will not sell your data to anyone.We do not share or otherwise disclose your data to anyone without your permission.We do not mine your data for patterns.We do not use your data to target ads.We do not access your location data without your permission.”
Seriously? I don’t care what they will not do with my data AFTER they harvest it, they just should not be getting my data in the first place at all. I thought these guys were wupposed to deliver anti-malware but what are they doing with harvesting data at all? How do these two very different things come together under one app? If they want to harvest data then why not create an app suitably named for that instead of hiding that feature in what is supposed to be an anti-malware and in essence creating a full-blown malware?Well, news is that iPhone is also popular. Why not go deliver your anti-malware…er….malware there first.
Anonymous

I like that software. I even gave them my credit card numbers an bank accounts when they asked me. I mean, what can go wrong? When they asked, they said they promise not to use my credit cards for anything without my knowledge.
Anonymous

it’s a solution for a non existent problem.
Jose Gomez

I don’t understand this.
One of my apps (Where Is Shaking) uses location services, and the first time I try to publish, was rejected because you NEED to add options in your app to disable/enable location services for your app. Also you need a Privacy Statement explaining to the users how the location services is used in your app.
How they passed the certification process?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715591433 Barry Allott

AVG FAIL… they have simply said, WP7 has no viruses or any spyware of any kind…. but if you look at android then you need it…… morons… Microsoft should BAN AVG, WP7 is not Android, Microsoft screens apps and the way in which the apps run means they cannot infect the os.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Milad-Bazzaz/100000479683479 Milad Bazzaz

there is an old rule in statistics…

whenever someone collects data, he does it for a reason. I don’t care what AVG does with the data but fact is they do something with it…something thats not related to viruses on WP7 because those do not exist.
http://twitter.com/sbrondel Scott Brondel

I posted the following to the AVG page, let’s see if the moderation lets it through and if they respond:

Speaking as a WP7 hobbyist developer, there are many parts of this app that just don’t make sense. Let’s start with an obvious one – there’s no concept of a “service” on WP7. So, unless you are implementing a browser control inside your app, and you’re encouraging everyone to “Surf Safe! Don’t use the native IE, do your surfing from inside our app and be protected!”, then how exactly would your “Safe Web Surfing” function be of any benefit? Has MS helped provide you with some low-level mechanisms to actually let you escape the Silverlight sandbox? If you had, then I’d expect the product to be able to scan the isolated storage of apps already on the device, instead of just being able to go through the already “publically” accessible Pictures and Music libraries. I’m not saying that there could never be a vector for harm through pics and music (I remember an .mp3 one that resulted in a security patch for XP shortly after its release), it’s just that based on all publically known information about WP7 internals, I’m guessing that most of the community backlash you’re receiving is because the product has some of the characteristics of snake-oil when applied to this environment. Something similar to if I announced, for an extreme example, a safe ActiveX control blocker for the text Lynx web browser