7 July 2008, 12:03

AVG plans to make scanner component more manageable

AVG Technologies, formerly known as Grisoft, is planning, in a forthcoming update to its anti-virus software, to deactivate the safe searching component that marks hazardous websites in search results. In doing so the vendor is reacting to massive criticism from network administrators that its LinkScanner uses too much bandwidth when analysing websites. LinkScanner pre-scans sites found by search engines such as Google – indeed it scans all the results on a given results page. It doesn't matter whether the user actually visits the page, the web traffic is generated anyway.

Network administrators have reported that following the installation of AVG 8 on user PCs, traffic for some websites has increased by up to 80 per cent. Not only does this lead to increased costs, it also messes up web server operators' statistics, since LinkScanner makes out that it's Internet Explorer, making it hard to recognise. According to US media reports, at Slashdot, for example, LinkScanner has led to a six per cent increase in page requests.

The new version of LinkScanner, to be released on 9th July, will only search for hazardous content when users click on a link on a search results page.