Forget the glamor; piracy has a whole boatload of health risks. Pirates get hung out to dry, lead poisoning from being shot, or trash their computers from downloading a cleverly disguised batch of malware.

This is certainly not visible in the movies where the ‘bad guys’ such as Long John Silver or Captain Jack Sparrow seem to be the only ones having a good time.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day was designed to remedy the modern blues, creating a day (today, September 19) when people can talk or dress like a historical pirate in a safer, more modern environment. Just add an ‘Arrrggghhh’, ‘Ahoy’, and an erudite ‘Whar be me rum!?’ to the daily vocabulary.

At AVAST Software, we have an even easier solution. Add Pirate English to your avast! antivirus.

You have two simple options: Pirate audio or the Pirate GUI (with the audio). Read more…

At AVAST, we not only provide you with free protection, we also reward you for registering it! No, no, we’re not crazy. 

You help us immensely by recommending avast! Because of that, we don’t need to advertise, and so we want to reward you even more – e.g., Internet Security licenses, t-shirts, iPods, or a trip to Prague. (see the Winners Section at: http://www.avast.com/community )

And as we informed you several weeks ago, we celebrated our 160,000,000^th registration of avast! Free Antivirus.  The lucky person who won is Fabricia from Brazil. When she received an email to her native Brazil that she had won an all-inclusive trip to Prague for herself and a friend, she was of course skeptical, as junk mail scams with surprising  winner announcements are so common these days. But since she had just registered her avast! Free Antivirus she  was curious and asked her brother for his opinion. After a few phone calls and finding the announcement as well on avast.com, she knew it was legitimate.

Best of all, selecting the friend to accompany her was easy, as Fabricia had recently become engaged! So Fabricia’s trip to Prague – from being our 160 millionth user registration – will now also be her honeymoon.

We at AVAST are proud to be a part of it.

New Zealand’s state MetService website was hijacked by malware (apparently a fake antivirus) during a particularly high time for traffic, according to a stuff.co.nz news article. The article has prompted more than 100 comments in the first day, mostly from understandably upset site visitors who may have picked up the malware on their computers.

Here, however, I just want to show you one comment, as it’s nice to see this sort of feedback in the real world. It’s no secret that we typically offer our free version in tests against our competitors’ paid-for versions, but even the results from independent testing facilities don’t feel as rewarding as  feedback like this from our user community:

Fortunately for those MetService users who were not using avast!, they can install it now and run the avast! boot-time scan — and that should do the trick.

We are happy to announce that our Facebook fan page for avast! antivirus has reached a whopping 300,000 fans!

avast! antivirus's facebook community increase - Aug2010 to Aug2011

Read more…

This week we released program update version 6.0.1203 for avast! antivirus. Among several great improvements, two new languages were added:

• Serbian
• Thai

This means that avast! antivirus is now available in 38 official languages, listed here in alphabetical order:

• Arabic
• Belarusian
• Bulgarian
• Catalan
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Estonian Read more…

What do you do when the “avast! virus database has been updated” message comes from your computer in the morning?

Aubrey Anthony, head of customer service at a California internet service provider, used to just imitate the message – but then she got an inspiration: “I told my boyfriend … what do you think about me being the voice for AVAST Software?”

The two came up with a quick answer. “We both decided it would be so cool and he told me to go for it,” remembered Aubrey. So she sent AVAST Software the following message:
The reason I am emailing is that it is my dream to be the next “avast! virus database has been updated” voice. It would be so awesome!

“I sent the email to AVAST not expecting to hear back,” stated Aubrey. But, she did get a message back – Read more…

You’ve been asking for it… so here it is: As of the latest update to our avast! 6.0 series (earlier this week), avast! WebRep is now available in the Google Chrome browser.

Screenshot of WebRep results, for the searched term "warez"

avast! WebRep is based on information received from the global avast! user community related to the content and security of visited websites. Read more…

On 11 April 2011, virus definition update 110411-1 contained an error that resulted in a high number of ‘false positives’ – that is, clean websites or files being flagged as ‘infected’.

Our virus lab staff discovered the problem quickly, took precautions to stop more users from getting the wrong update and, about 45 minutes after the initial update, released a fix (update 110411-2).

About 4% of our user base was affected.

Although false positives are a fact of life, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused to our community. If you were one who was affected by the bad update, after updating with a current virus definition file (as of this writing, update 110412-0), you should next:

1. Open the avast! program
2. Select “Maintenance”
3. Select “Virus Chest”
4. Sort by time moved to Chest
5. Select files you wish to restore
6. Right-click and select “Restore”

After the file restoral, copies of the files will remain in the Virus Chest.

We hope these steps will alleviate any confusion, but should anyone need further support, please visit avast.com/support.

avast! WebRep combines antivirus software with website ratings from millions of users in the global avast! community – providing users of avast! 6.0 with a community-sourced guide to the safety and/or content of websites. avast! users can thus know – before clicking a link – what to expect in terms of product or service quality, customer service levels, or website safety and reliability. Ratings results are “traffic-light” simple:  green = GO… orange = CAUTION… red = STOP!

But we’ve talked about that before. This time, let’s take a look at the website categories… Read more…