Talk:Avira

How it stacks up

I think this article deserves a section on how Avira products stack up against other popular Antivirus products (Ex. Norton & McAfee)... Or is there a seperate article for this? I havn't found it yet, but I think this is key information that should be present, if people are looking up antivirus products in an encyclopedia, they are most likely wondering which one they should dowload or purchase. Personally, I prefer AntiVir personal edition over Norton Internet Security Suite, but I have my own biases against norton, so I can't really talk. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.28.14.129 (talk) 14:03, 27 November 2006 (GMT)

Well, for Norton's stuff, you'd have to pay for it. For one of Avira's stuff -doing the same thing as Nortan's AV does-, it's free of charge. That's my "personal bias". 88.105.85.109 (talk) 17:02, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

It's pretty much neck and neck with Avira v. Norton. Norton is obviously paid for .. and offers more comprehensive protection. Norton is also faster than Avira, in basically all aspects. As for detection, the latest av-comparative has Norton at 99% and Avira at 99.3%. As for rootkit detection and removal, Norton was the only product, according to av-test.org, to recieve "++" in both rootkit detection and removal.

Removal of prod

I removed the prod because I disagree with the deletion of this article.

The user that added the prod stated that the article "gives no indication of satisfying, WP:V, WP:RS or WP:SOFTWARE".

While the article does not give any sources I think they shouldn't be that hard to add since most (if not all) that is in the article should be available at Aviras own site (www.avira.com), perhaps not the most unbiased of sources but good enough imo. And as for notability, fgi, "Results 1 - 10 of about 1,760,000 for avira".

Sure it is far from perfect but it does not deserve deletion.

I'll see if I'll have the time to add some sources and perhaps improve the article a bit. Kattfisk 19:50, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

A good external source that may help this article satisfy some of the mentioned standards

http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/comparatives.html

I've seen this page referenced on several occasions. It's the most respected one I know of on the topic (though there may be others, as well). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.110.227.60 (talk • contribs) 19:27, 19 April 2007 (GMT).

Article expansion

This article sucks compared to the articles on avast! and AVG Free. They're all free, why does this one suck so much?

For the same reason that you did nothing to improve it. Ham Pastrami 14:54, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Image Nomination

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:AVIRA_AV_window.png

Is this okay?

Shin-chan01 (talk) 17:27, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Get a more recent update and we can make that work ;) Actually, in all seriousness, it's fine but a bit large, I can fix that tho :) ♥ Fredil 20:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

How to read AV-comparatives

Note to editors: the "comparative" test that they perform includes only actual virus samples. The "Retrospective" test includes testing for false positives. Keep this in mind when updating the "Detection ability" section. The software will ordinarily score higher on the comparative tests because its problem with false positives isn't measured in that test. I am editing the current wording to reflect this. Ham Pastrami 02:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Very Short article

Avira is a major antivirus company. And it is not free in all cases. I have subscribed to it and i find it better than Mcafee. However, wikipedia's article about Mcafee seems way more detailed and attention oriented, whereas this article is too short. This gives an impression that the authors want to send the message that Mcafee is superior and Avira is inferior. This points to bias. All antivirus software articles should be of equal length and content. In most tests done, Avira outscored Mcafee or performed very good. Any antivirus expert would say that it is competitive to other programs. For example, the mcafee article not only even tells how much revenue mcafee makes but the picture of its corporate headquarters is also shown. When comparing the 2 articles, there seems to be way too much bias for Avira. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xyz9902003 (talk • contribs) 09:56, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Since McAfee is a larger corporation and its products are more widely used, it is only natural that Wikipedia's article on McAfee would be more detailed than the article on Avira. If you feel there are details that are left out of this article, consider helping expand it. Stephenchou0722 (talk) 22:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Avira is editing this page

This needs to be called out, though it's pretty clear that someone from Avira has been watching this page and has been inserting POV at every opportunity, against WP:COI. Please be on the lookout for bias in the article. Ham Pastrami (talk) 11:29, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Just removed some bias. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.164.92.140 (talk) 20:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Rescue disk and nagware

I was the one who originally tagged this article as reading as an advert (see archives). Glad to see that the language has been made more factual. However, the rescue disk is not a premium product, but is available to everyone on the planet, Avira customer or not. I think that's a notable fact about the company, and therefore worthy of inclusion, but properly not classed with the premium products.

However, the free version is still nagware, as is indicated a few sentences later about the advertisement opening up. I had added that term before, but someone reverted it to freeware. Fair is fair. Let's report the available knowledge about the company and its products, then users can reach their own conclusions and decisions.

Personal observation: If you want to do a full scan of your machine, it's much faster with the rescue disk, since your full OS (Windows, Mac, etc.) isn't running, nor are any other programs -- firewall or the many other apps you probably have running in normal mode. Not strictly relevant to the article, but having been a critic, thought I'd share that.

To Avira: If anyone connected with your company has been making edits, please see our Conflict of Interest guidelines. Disclose your connection to the company, suggest your changes on this Talk page, and let disinterested editors reach a consensus on how the article should read. (Disclosure: I use the free version, like it, and don't mind the nag screen, as it's a very small price to pay for a good product. But it is still nagware, not truly freeware. And I will attempt to make any edits that I make be without bias either pro or con.) Regards, Unimaginative Username (talk) 04:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Repeated reverts of "nagware"

I have several times replaced the term "freeware" with "nagware", based on the text itself: "Avira AntiVir Personal is freeware, but for personal use only.... It also performs Internet updates (daily by default) in which it opens a window, with an advertisement suggesting that the user purchase Avira AntiVir Premium...." which is the very definition of nagware.

This article keeps oscillating from a blatant advertisement, apparently by COI editors, to near-deletion. As you can see from the above, I've tried to be fair and present the positives (the free rescue disk for anyone), but the "nagware" keeps being reverted to "freeware". Please state here why the pop-up ad screen at each update does not qualify this product as nagware, or else leave the "nagware" descriptor in the article. If this is not possible, it may have to go to admins or dispute resolution, etc., which is a waste of time. There's nothing inherently evil about nagware per se; users have a choice of buying the sw or of accepting the ad screen in exchange for free use. There is no reason to take offense at what is readily evident to anyone by installing the free version. I've tried to be non-POV; can you? Thank you, Unimaginative Username (talk) 09:43, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

You can disable the popup by removing execute permission to all subjects on file property (avnotify.exe). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.180.138.66 (talk) 03:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it's more like Adware. Avira mentions in the license agreement for the free version that the ad space may be rented to others. I remember having seen such ads.

However, my idea of Adware is a product which displays ads in a way which cannot be trivially dismissed. For example, a software which permanently displays ads, like so many sites in the internet. Or TV, where the movie/show goes on only after the ads.

About the same goes for the Nagware concept: a windows which is displayed once a day and can be immediately dismissed doesn't nag me much. As far as I can tell, most Nagware is far more unpleasant in the way it nags than Avira. It might therefore be a bit questionable to throw Avira into the same "nagware bucket" as the average Nagware.

And there's also the option of calling the product Scareware. While it doesn't pester the user with fake alerts, some ads suggest that the paid versions might do a better job than the free version.

The option to upgrade to "better versions" with more features may also place the product in the category "Crippeled Shareware".

Ah, so many possible choices! I suggest that the article should refer to the "free/nag/share/scare version" as the "Freeware Edition", as it's officially named, plus a sentence or two describing the "advertizing feature" (and perhaps staing that the wording "Freeware Edition" is just a name, not an objective charateriztaion). As it appears to be hard to tag the software as whatever kind of ware we might think of, the article should allow the reader to reach an own opinion.

Give Examples of Bias?

I saw the message on the page, saying that the article was written rather like an advertisement. After reading it, this doesn't seem to be the case anymore. If you believe I am wrong, can you give me some examples (quotes form the article) of where you see bias? PlantRunner (talk) 03:28, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Have a look at the review-section. All the comments praise the software. Though I agree that it is a good software its weakspots should be mentioned as well.--Up the floor (talk) 14:48, 30 July 2011 (UTC)Up the floor

Imposter

If AntiVir is a genuine product, then there is an imposter about also called AntiVir which itself is a virus. There are various articles on the internet about this, although some of them are by antivirus firms who obviously might have an interest in selling their own products. However, this article seems more balanced: http://www.pc1news.com/news/1516/updated-antivir-solution-pro.html Perhaps someone could clarify - my PC has certainly picked up this thing, and it wants to open every time I start my PC, and I just want rid of it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.50.177.101 (talk) 09:18, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

MERGED Avira Security Software with Avira

First article I've ever merged, hope I didn't mess anything up. If I did, please let me know. PlantRunner (talk) 18:04, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

File:New Avira logo.png Nominated for speedy Deletion

An image used in this article, File:New Avira logo.png, has been nominated for speedy deletion at Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Copyright violations What should I do? Don't panic; deletions can take a little longer at Commons than they do on Wikipedia. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion (although please review Commons guidelines before doing so). The best way to contest this form of deletion is by posting on the image talk page. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. If the image has already been deleted you may want to try Commons Undeletion Request This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 00:35, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

page now out-of-date

The information of this page is largely out-of-date. Avira has dropped the name Antivir and calls the editions Avira Free Antivirus and Avira Antivirus Premium 2012. See http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus. Like its competitors Avira keeps adding more features to its free offering and that needs to be updated, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.56.197.231 (talk) 19:22, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I updated some parts of the information mentioned in the article. JuventiniFan (talk) 08:31, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Virus?

I just installed the latest update and re-instated the toolbar, which I had disabled because had no use for that feature and I remove unnecessary toolbars. I promptly started receiving pop-up windows to install CIDGlobalLight from Global Light, which I found to be a Caller ID for the Interent. Damn thing has no use for me. This popped up at least 3 times every time I went to a new webpage and froze up EVERYTHING else until I clicked on it. Some morons just can't one 'No' for an answer, they have to bug you until someone freaks out.

CONFIRMED as being associated with Avira; it disappeared when when I uninstalled the toolbar. (I wonder how long it will be before this message gets deleted by the Avira watchdogs.) CFLeon (talk) 07:45, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I tried to give Avira a second chance after getting some advice from some professional software people that I know. Damn crap keeps downloading automatic updates several times a day and gives you NO choice when, and then nags you constantly to reboot your system, but when you reboot, it automatically does ANOTHER update, then continues to bug you. It seems to be alright as an antivirus program, but it's not worth the damn trouble. I'm tired of jumping through their hoops so I deleted it and there will be NO third chance. CFLeon (talk) 11:11, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Avira Antivirus icon change (except its corporate logo)

Its antivirus icon change into shield logo (I will upload one of it, once it is available). — Preceding unsigned comment added by BeemoZaslavskiMalvar (talk • contribs) 07:36, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Avira GUI makes more Avast-like interface now

I noticed after updated my Avira Antivirus, the user interface is now resembling Avast Antivirus now. Hope someone can upload this and put on the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BeemoZaslavskiMalvar (talk • contribs) 02:53, 30 August 2017 (UTC)