NEW Avast Version 20.5 (July 2020)

[Captain Awesome]

Hi all. Please welcome Avast 20.5.

We've packed it with a lot of new stuff:

• Introducing Remote Access Shield - Enjoy even stronger protection against hackers. This new feature lets you choose who can remotely access your computer and lets you block the rest. (Premium Security users only)
• Ransomware Shield is now free - We’re now offering this feature to Avast Free Antivirus users to maximize their ransomware protection
• Easier USB drive protection - We’ll now ask you to scan USB drives when you plug them into your computer. (You can also turn this off in your notification settings)
• Improved taskbar icon - There’s no need to keep your antivirus open during scans. You can now see your scan progress from the Avast taskbar icon
• Better botnet protection - Web Shield is even better about stopping malware from connecting to malicious servers

Things to note:

• We are no longer releasing new versions of Internet Security and Pro. Every Pro/IS user updated to 20.5 version will end up on Premium Security to enjoy the full feature-set of paid version.
• Teaser for our dedicated forum users: We've added support for scanning Google QUIC protocol in Webshield, though it's enabled only for some users at the moment. We plan to full scale it in the upcoming version.

...and from about 110 other smaller or larger tasks, we pick here the fixes of:

• corner cases when Firewall was consuming too much CPU in correlation with VPS requests
• Cleanup install detection upon switching to x64 version (Congrats to Cleanup team and sorry when the app was being offered to you even if you had it already)
• bugs in protecting passwords stored in Firefox and Chrome that were installed after Avast AV
• some RescueDisk failures when being created on USB
• UI glitches for enabling/disabling shield in Protection section

How to install:

1. Update from your existing Avast version via Settings -> Update -> Update program
2. Or you can download and install files:

Online installers (recommended):

• Free: https://bits.avcdn.net/insttype_FREE
• Premium Security (formerly Premier): https://bits.avcdn.net/insttype_APR

Offline installers:

• Free: http://files.avast.com/iavs9x/avast_free_antivirus_setup_offline.exe
• Premium Security (formerly Premier): http://files.avast.com/iavs9x/avast_premier_antivirus_setup_offline.exe

We hope you enjoy the new version!

 

[RoboMan]

Nice updates! Avast Free now offers full ransomware protection... that's worth a try!

 

[Captain Awesome]

Nice updates! Avast Free now offers full ransomware protection... that's worth a try!

Yeah...

 

[imuade]

The issue of Avast spying on your web traffic belongs only to the Free version or also to the Premium one? And it's related with the web protection module only?

 

[vaccineboy]

If i already enable hardened mode, will ransomware shield make any difference?

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Avast Free Antivirus gets ‘Ransomware Shield’ to Protect Your Files from Ransomware:

Avast provides more granular control over Ransomware Shield functionality.

When you click on the Gear icon on the Ransomware Shield page, you’ll be allowed to select preferred protection mode and type of files to guard in the protected folders.

“Smart Mode” allows commonly used apps such as Microsoft Word on Windows to modify or delete files in Protected folders.

“Strict Mode” requires your permission for “anything that tries to change or delete files in Protected folders”.

You’ll be allowed to select various file types –Archive, audio, Database, Disk, Document, Picture, and video files – to lock in the protected folders.

Avast Free Antivirus gets 'Ransomware Shield' to Protect Your Files from Ransomware

Avast has added ‘Ransomware Shield’ to Avast Free Antivirus 20.5 (Windows) to increase the ransomware protection. Before, Ransomware Sheild is only available in Avast Antivirus Pro and Avast Internet Security products. Yesterday, Avast Software has released version 20.5 for Avast Free Antivirus...

techdows.com

 

[XLR8R]

The issue of Avast spying on your web traffic belongs only to the Free version or also to the Premium one? And it's related with the web protection module only?

The government probe into Avast is not over yet, so they will not be trying any funny stuff and hence, I would not worry.

The program does have a "GDPR mode" somewhere in it's code, but I think a lot of programs do that - including Kaspersky.

 

[vaccineboy]

Avast Free Antivirus gets ‘Ransomware Shield’ to Protect Your Files from Ransomware:

Avast Free Antivirus gets 'Ransomware Shield' to Protect Your Files from Ransomware

Avast has added ‘Ransomware Shield’ to Avast Free Antivirus 20.5 (Windows) to increase the ransomware protection. Before, Ransomware Sheild is only available in Avast Antivirus Pro and Avast Internet Security products. Yesterday, Avast Software has released version 20.5 for Avast Free Antivirus...

techdows.com

Thanks. I just tried it. But not much value to me since i have all my files on cloud and ransom shield doesn't protect network folders. So i removed it.

 

[XLR8R]

I have installed latest version of avast premium security. But there are few things I do not like about it.
1. When it offers to scan USB drives, clicking the scan button will take user to main screen in UI. It does not open the scan progress. One has to dig into scan history to locate the scan results.
2. Similar issue is with the explorer scan. When explorer scan finishes scanning then clicking on show results button in the popup will open main UI instead of scan results. The users has to dig into protection > Virus Scans > Scan history to see the results and to perform actions on detected threats.
IMHO this is strange behavior. It may be a bug IDK.

Looks like a bug, I do not see this behaviour in AVG.

 

[Ink]

Does the Free AV protect the 'Clipboard Manager' in Windows 10?

 

[XLR8R]

@XLR8R yeah! You are right. The problem do not exist in AVG. AVG is working perfectly fine may be due to different UI elements.

Avast has probably the worst QA among any AV vendor in existence today. There are bugs, bugs and more bugs in every release. Sometimes there will be AVG specific bugs, sometimes there will be Avast specific bugs.
Sometimes AVG will think it's Avast and vice versa (don't laugh, it's true).

I still do not understand why AVG and Avast are being developed as two separate products. They go to the lengths of actually renaming and re-signing all the DLLs and drivers to use the AVG/Avast name. What do they gain by this? If their QA resources are stretched, the best way to handle this is to have one common product with one common featureset and simply deliver one as a UI rebrand of the other, possibly with some new licensing components (like what Ashampoo does with Emisosft).

 

[RejZoR]

The issue of Avast spying on your web traffic belongs only to the Free version or also to the Premium one? And it's related with the web protection module only?

It's not really a problem in either if you just uncheck everything under Privacy settings except "CommunityIQ" feature which is required for a functioning cloud protection.

 

[Ink]

Ransomware Shield is now free - We’re now offering this feature to Avast Free Antivirus users to maximize their ransomware protection

I explored the product in a VM, in the Menu > Settings ... > Allow and Blocked Apps.

How does that work?