This week we released a new version of our core PC antivirus product, which we refer to as the Avast Antivirus Nitro Update. The update’s name is Nitro, because it is filled with innovative, new ways to increase speed and increase protection. One of the new ways we are increasing protection is with a cool new proprietary technology called CyberCapture. CyberCapture dramatically raises the bar when it comes to protection against zero-second attacks.
CyberCapture looks at the smallest bits of a file to determine its safety
Let me explain how it works, and take a look at the infographic below which shows the path of an unknown file.
Avast Antivirus Nitro Update is lightweight, delivers improved performance and includes our latest CyberCapture technology with zero-second threat detection against unrecognized files.
If you own a PC, you know you hate it when your antivirus software slows you down, so we developed our latest release to be strong and lightweight, with lower system impact to keep your PC running smoothly and protect you from the never-ending attacks we all experience.
So how do we keep the Nitro Update to Avast so lightweight? One way is we use new technology that utilizes the cloud to identify and analyze threats, which means Avast Antivirus Nitro Update is light enough that it doesn’t eat up your system’s resources. Our security software is smaller in size and designed to improve speed, boot time, download time, and system performance in Windows 10.
Windows 10 PCs run faster with the Avast Antivirus Nitro Update than with Windows Defender
Windows 10 users should install Avast antivirus protection for the highest level of security.
The wrong tool for the job just causes frustration.
Everyone knows that you need the right tool to do a job. When you cut down a tree, you don’t use a butter knife, you use a chainsaw. It you want to win a Formula 1 race, you don’t drive a riding lawnmower.
The same rule applies to your PC’s security.
You can’t go up against today’s online threats with inadequate protection. That’s why Windows 10 users need to install strong antivirus software to run in parallel with Microsoft’s pre-installed antivirus, Defender.
Here’s a plan to keep your mobile phone and PC safe when you’re on the road.
Preparing for a summer trip used to be pretty simple. The biggest challenge was remembering
Avoid having your online accounts hacked like Mark Zuckerberg’s by managing your passwords correctly.
The recent news of celebrity social media accounts, including Mark Zuckerberg’s, being hacked should be seen as an important reminder to how valuable passwords are. Who knows if the cybercriminals that hacked the accounts just tweeted strange things or if they went a step further and read the celebrities’ direct messages or more.
Most people create easy passwords like these and never change them
New Photo Space app fits 7GB worth of photos into 1GB of space
How many times have you seen a message like this?
If you are like the thousands of iPhone users around the world, then you see that message all too frequently. Of course, it always pops up just as you want to take a picture. 😬
People told us that to get more space they resort to uninstalling apps and deleting photos. A few get storage from iCloud, but they complain that they have no control and it gets expensive to pay for more space.
None of those are very good solutions. So we came up with something better.
Avast Photo Space
Photo Space is a free app that takes your high-quality photos and optimizes them to reduce the amount of storage they occupy. That means that you get 7 times more space for your photos and apps.
Guess who hackers disguised themselves as in a recent phishing campaign? That’s right – Avast! A laughable fake Avast alert email is trying to harvest webmail addresses, being sent out via a spam message and leading to several domains where attackers have prepared a simple form to collect victims’ email addresses and passwords.
Received spam in a phishing scheme impersonating Avast
Calling all beta testers!
We’ve got great news for you: Avast Cleanup, our PC-cleaning software, has undergone some big, exciting changes. The latest Avast Cleanup sports a brand-new design, includes exciting new features, and best of all, is now standalone – this means you can use it even without downloading Avast Antivirus products first.
We’ve now released the public beta version of Avast Cleanup and would love to receive your thoughts, opinions and insights on the program to help make it the very best it can be.
Fake Android apps on the Google Play Store use shortcuts to get popular
It doesn’t happen too often thanks to the rigorous checks apps go through, but occassionally a fake app will slip onto the Google Play Store. How does it happen?
Here’s what cheating developers do:
When an Android app developer creates a malicious app and wants it to get attention fast, the easiest way to do it is to make it look like some other app that is already popular, like Waze. The impatient developer names it “Waze Tips” so it looks like customers will learn something useful. Then he puts it onto the Google Play Store and creates fake comments and ratings so it looks legit. After that, he’s set for success.
That’s the logic behind fake Android apps. Not surprisingly, there actually is an app that uses all these methods called “Free Waze Traffic GPS Maps Tip”.
This fake app uses all the tricks to fool users into installing
Two of the biggest soccer, or as the rest of the world calls the sport, football, events –Copa America Centenario and the UEFA Euro Cup have fans across the Americas and Europe hyped. Fans are trying to get as close to the games as possible, either by getting tickets to attend a match or by playing soccer/football themed games. Cybercrooks are also big fans of major events like these andthey, unfortunately, like to take advantage of fans’ enthusiasm.
Beware of online scams
It’s only natural for die-hard fans to get excited when they see tickets on sale for either sold out games or for a cheaper price than the tickets sold on the official Copa America and UEFA sites. Cybercriminals are fully aware of how desired tickets to Copa America and the Euro Cup are and have set up phishing sites and phishing social media and email campaigns to trick people into buying phony tickets.
Numbers from the British Local Government Association published in May show bogus tickets from sold out matches and other summer events have been appearing on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
UEFA, in March, already warned fans of counterfeit tickets and travel packages being sold online and warned fans to refrain from buying tickets from unauthorized sellers.