I’m just so disgusted I feel like other people ought to know about this. I am at my late grandfather’s house clearing his stuff and one job to do is get on the computer and do that stuff - make sure anything important is dealt with.
The first thing I notice is that this computer - not a terrible spec - is so slow. Task manager reveals AVG is hogging all the resources whilst doing precisely nothing. Some processes can’t be turned off, some can’t be removed from startup. AVG has forced itself into slowing this computer down.
Then going through emails to cancel things. There were emails from AVG literally saying “we’ve noticed your computer is very slow, you can subscribe to AVG Tuneup for £45 GBP a year and we will optimise your computers performance”. I’m reading this as - you can subscribe and we will slightly reduce the amount that our shitware hogs your CPU.
He is subscribed to AVG Security. AVG tune up. AVG VPN (doubt he ever used a VPN in his life). AVG driver update… Wait? What? Driver update? You have to pay extra for driver updates? Who even does that??? What is a subscription for if even updating drivers has to be paid for extra?
So he’s been running AVG Secure browser which consumes literally all the resources it can find. Then I open chrome and edge to try and use those, and both redirect me to pages by AVG which say using them isn’t safe and you need to switch to AVG Secure Browser or be exposed to threats etc etc.
I’m just really pissed off. He was an old bloke not completely computer literate who wanted to be able to watch some sport and read military history. They’ve completely taken advantage and signed him up to £120 GBP (almost $150 USD) of unnecessary shite that serves only to slow you down so it can demand you buy even more things. If somebody came to the door and ripped him off for £120, we’d call the police. But these cunts do it with their brand name splashed across the front, and it’s fair game.
If you believe that you or someone you know has been a victim of elder financial fraud or abuse, visit Financial abuse: what is it? | Age UK for further information and steps you can take to report it.
Seems like a cool hobby for a millionair/billionnaire to put them and companies like them to trial.
What else to do with all that money, Buy yet another Mercedes? Boring!
AVG is a shady company. They were caught stealing and selling user information. Not everybody knows this and people keep buying AVG. No surprise they are scamming customers with fake useless subscriptions.
This is good to know. They are really good at confusing people with their emails, even though you already have a subscription. My elderly parent had 9 subscriptions with AVG because he was sent emails stating his coverage will be expiring and to click to purchase a new subscription. Unbelievable they do this. He didn’t know what he was doing. I went in and unsubscribed to them all, and will re-think a better solution for him.
I’ve had some bad experiences with avg myself. One time their software glitched out and started bogging my whole laptop down, I had to do a complete reinstall just to be able to run my games again.
I use avast but I have a high end rig so I don’t see literally any difference in performance. But I can definitely see the merit in using something better. I just like there browser. It has less ip and web filters then google, bing, and the like.
I have bit defender myself (although I have some complaints on bit defender, it’s certainly better than this AVG shite).
Im more just ranting at the ethics that mean somebody thinks it’s OK to sell people software deliberately throttles computer performance and then charge more money for “tune up” software to reverse those effects… And then says they are the antivirus company! They are the fucking virus!
I don’t know how it works over there but over here AVG is the shit… Literally catches everything with my firewall. I don’t pay for a subscription for the free antivirus which also catches everything I have the extension in my browser. Also have the VPN just now trying the anti-track works pretty good although sometimes it takes A minute or two for it to figure out the DNS for Tubi TV. Other than that it’s caught probably 150 things that got by bit defender Without so much as a thought also, use Malwarebytes for the last 15 years or so before it was even available on shelves, or with subscriptions mine for life if you gather all the log files and get some evidence, I’m sure you could present a case. If there truly is scamming going on, but do you know his history of web browsing he could’ve been doing something that he thought was legitimate, and got into a fishing campaign, or who knows what nowadays they have malware as a service they have hacking as a service. They have a literally anything you could think of as a service. sorry to hear about the bad experience with AVG So far in the last 1015 years I have not had but maybe one issue with it blocking access to some thing that all I had to do it was go in and change a couple things around so that it wouldn’t block it. Also, I love how it prompts you for access all the time if you want it to it will tell you exactly what application wants to access the Internet if the certificate is valid and a whole lot more right on the part where you select allow or block, and then you can even go so far as permanently or forever I think, and then temporarily or just a one time pass… but yeah, that is no good if they are taking advantage of the elderly because they don’t know what they are doing, or are not sure about some thing and think that they need crazy protection.