How To Stop AVG’s Linkscanner From Eating Your Bandwidth & CPU
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AVG’s version 8 of their software has a new “feature” called Linkscanner. It sounds like a nice idea on paper but in reality it’s been a nightmare for webmasters because it’s requesting the pages that get listed in search engine results in order to scan them and warn the user in the event of a page loaded with malware. Thing is, up until a recent software update, it was doing this for every link that appeared on a search engine result page.
Their recent changes have apparently cut down on the problem, but linkscanner is still more trouble than it’s worth. The best thing to do is get rid of it and use sensible judgment in your search engine habits.
To disable it in Firefox go to Tools, click Add-ons, then find the AVG Safe Search add-on. Of course, even with it disabled, it’s still running in the background using cpu cycles. The best solution is to remove it completely.
The way to do this is to re-run the installer program and when it starts up select the “Add or remove components” option and pay attention to the dialogs that follow. When you see the one that tells you what components will be installed, UN-Check Search Shield. It’s also a good idea to UN-check any toolbars that the installer offers to put in.
Once search shield is removed from AVG, you can go back into Firefox’s Add-ons and uninstall the AVG Safe Search add-on to get it out of your browser completely.
This procedure will also work with a fresh install, just pay attention to the dialogs and be sure to UN-check the parts of it that you don’t want, such as “Search Shield” or any toolbars.
I personally also don’t bother with the email scanner. The reason is that the email gets written to disk as it’s received and the “resident shield” already scans all files that are opened, written to, or read. Scanning the email as it comes in is a redundant waste of cpu cycles.
I haven’t used an email scanner in years and have never had one problem because of it and dispite all the scare tactics used to promote things like Linkscanner, it’s not necessary. All you need is to learn and use safe, sensible habits. The first and most important of which is LOOK at a link before you click on it… does it really point to what it looks like it is?
Technorati Tags: cpu, anti virus, how to, safe search, search shield, bandwidth, malware, anti malware, firefox, avg
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