Hijacked links at AVG web pages?

[Amethyst]

Is anyone else having this problem with AVG Free? For me, it started with the free forums, where the real page would appear for a few seconds, and then it would go to a page with just a banner, an unsatisfactory WOT rating, and an ad to click on a button for premium support. It doesn't happen all the time, but I don't dare log into the forum over there to even tell them. I was able to notify them at the web site, however. Then while I was scouting around there for the uninstall tool, I clicked on a link to download the latest version of AVG, and again got hijacked to the same sort of page. Both bad pages were by 'support.com'. This is happening with both my laptop and desktop and with both Firefox 3.5.5 and Opera 10. I'm trying to duplicate the issue on the AVG website and I am unable to do so right now.

I scanned both systems yesterday with AVG and they were clean, and I scan them daily with Malwarebytes and another product. Just wondering if anyone else is having this problem.

I'm not having any problems with any other websites or with searches. I checked a hijack this log from my desktop, nothing unusual going on there.

[mountaintree16]

I don't check their sites very often, but I can try and check to see if it happens to me as well. I'm a little hesitant though, I don't want to infect my system

You may have an infection on board and.or they maybe have been hacked or something similar

[Amethyst]

Darn, just went to my 'plan B' online scanner--Kaspersky--and they're down for 'updating and improving'. I'll try ESET. I haven't been able to make Bitdefender's online scanner work in months.

Maybe one of our developers here can add the IP of support.com to their list of malicious IP's???

[Amethyst]

Just ran Eset's online scanner on the desktop PC, and all is well. (That Eset scanner is rather nice. And it only took an hour. )

I wonder if AVG's site has been hacked. I can't find any information about support.com, other than its main site, which WOT has the yellow circle on, so I don't want to go there. Or...I wonder if AVG is hooked up with them to deliver AVG's premium support service. The thing is, that the 'free' support site (the forum) is now difficult to negotiate with this going on. $$$ for someone anyway. It's definitely 'support.com' doing this, trying to solicit money, and whoever is behind it, it's a smarmey tactic, as far as I'm concerned.

[chimpy]

I acessed the AVG page via the link in my tray and it was fine, hxxp://free.avg.com/gb-en/help and then on to the forum hxxp://forums.avg.com/gb-en/avg-free-forum so I not sure what is going on at your end.

[Amethyst]

Chimpy,

From the AVG user interface, I went to the main web page, and then from there to the free forum page, and that took me to:

hxxtp://forums.avg.com/ww-en/avg-free-forum

I see yours differs at the part that I've put in bold (you have 'gb', I have 'ww'. I noticed, too, that when I have the letters 'ca' in that spot, sometimes the redirect doesn't happen. Anyway, I ended up on that page, then it redirected to:

hxxp://www.support.com/banner/avg/forumsbar

But if I use the back arrow on my browser, I end up back on the forums page and it doesn't redirect from there. I just clicked on a link from the main forum page and that looks OK, too, in Firefox.

I've filed a complaint with AVG anyway, so I'll report back on what they say.

[Jacktivity]

Hi Amethyst,

I just went to the AVG Free Forums and at first I couldn't duplicate what you are seeing. That's because I'm using Firefox with the NoScript add on. As soon as I enabled scripting for both the forum and support.com, I got the behavior you're describing by trying to click into the version 9 forum. All I saw was a banner from hxxp://www.support.com/banner/avg/forumsbar offering live support (and of course they take Mastercard, Visa, etc.)

If you click on the banner, it takes you to hxxp://corp.support.com/avg

Support.com is located in Redwood City, Calif. and the Better Business Bureau gives them a an "A" rating. I doubt it's a hack, but certainly agree it's smarmey marketing tactics to say the least. In fact, I'm not able to access the forum once scripting is allowed for support.com. It just keeps going to the banner.

If I enable scripting for the forum only, this behavior does not occur.

[chimpy]

Amethyst I think the gb in the title just refers to the fact I am in the UK (great britain) Least I presume that is what it means.

Thanks Jacktivity for solving the mystery as I also used NS!

[catscomputer]

I use NoScript in FF, so I hadn't seen this happen. I'm glad Jactivity got to the bottom of it and it isn't malicious, but I agree - it is NOT GOOD! It does not do AVG any favours (in my view) to be employing such tactics at all, it's bad enough having this large spyware-like pop-up window that randomly appears each day and crashes what you're doing. This pop up is a reminder to upgrade to AVG 9, and I've confirmed that this is legitimate, even though it doesn't act like it either. I understand they are a business and need to encourage paid users, and they need to inform users that the support for 8.5 is soon to end, but still... there are ways and means eh?

I read your original post earlier Amethyst before you had replies, and I'm so glad to read the replies and see that it is not malicious, as when I read it I was having some problems connecting to a websites on both IE & FF on my PC - problems that as far as I could see from searches no-one else was having, and it persisted for 10hrs. I wondered if I'd "caught something" from AVG free forums, as that was one of the last places I went last night before discovering this problem this morning. I won't bore you (or anyone else reading) with more details unless the problem comes back - in which case you'll see me in PC help, or more likely - HJT.

[Amethyst]

Jacktivity, thanks so much for straightening that out. It's a relief to know that it wasn't malware on my computers causing this. In Opera, it is possible to disable the script on individual sites, so that's something that could be done in this case.

And to everyone--the AVG forum site isn't behaving this way anymore for me now, even in Firefox. Maybe AVG got a few complaints and got it straightened out. I know they got a note from me. It looks like things are back to normal over there now.

[catscomputer]

And to everyone--the AVG forum site isn't behaving this way anymore for me now, even in Firefox.

That's good to hear.