AVG | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Mon, 31 Oct 2016 11:32:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png AVG | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 Avast AVG sale finalised, 97 per cent of shares acquired https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/security-software/jon-martindale/avast-avg-sale-finalised-97-per-cent-of-shares-acquired/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/security-software/jon-martindale/avast-avg-sale-finalised-97-per-cent-of-shares-acquired/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2016 11:32:23 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=310260 Following the announcement in July that anti-virus firm, Avast, was buying up industry rival AVG, months of back and forth negotiations, trade agreements and share talks have taken place, but finally the money is being paid and the stocks transferred. In the early hours of this morning, 97 per cent of AVG was tendered to …

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Following the announcement in July that anti-virus firm, Avast, was buying up industry rival AVG, months of back and forth negotiations, trade agreements and share talks have taken place, but finally the money is being paid and the stocks transferred. In the early hours of this morning, 97 per cent of AVG was tendered to Avast, with the final three per cent set to be acquired in short order.

Avast's purchase of AVG anti virus brings an end to an era of competition between both firms in the free anti-viral space. It also turns Avast into the world's largest anti-viral provider, with more than 400 million customers worldwide. The sale wasn't cheap, at $1.3 billion, but should hold a lot of value for the new owners.

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And now we can finally stamp the acquisition as near completed, with 97 per cent of shares now formally offered to Avast, which it accepted in return for the hefty payment. We're told that there are three per cent of shares still outstanding, which a price still has to be negotiated for. However with such a stake in the company, Avast now has full control over AVG's future, making the acquisition all but complete.

Avast hopes that by bringing together the experts from both companies, it will be able to offer better protection for its user base. With a near doubling of installed devices too, it will have a much larger network of potential threat detectors out there to help it better react to infections and future malware attacks.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: It will be interesting to see what brand Avast offers in the future. Will it combine the two? Eliminate AVG altogether or continue the two separate entities, but with the same package underneath?

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Avast buys up AVG, could dominate free anti-virus market https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/security-software/jon-martindale/avast-buys-up-avg-could-dominate-free-anti-virus-market/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/security-software/jon-martindale/avast-buys-up-avg-could-dominate-free-anti-virus-market/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2016 11:06:28 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=298730 Of the free anti-virus and anti-malware programs out there, Avast and AVG are two of the most popular. Now though whichever one you opt for, Avast will benefit, as it's purchased its rival anti-virus firm for a total of $1.3 billion. It now hopes to offer “more advanced,” services to customers and break out into …

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Of the free anti-virus and anti-malware programs out there, Avast and AVG are two of the most popular. Now though whichever one you opt for, Avast will benefit, as it's purchased its rival anti-virus firm for a total of $1.3 billion. It now hopes to offer “more advanced,” services to customers and break out into Internet of Things anti-viral protections.

The purchase will be mostly in cash, we're told, but there will be some debt re-financing through third party lenders to make it possible. Although no staff reductions have been announced, as TechCrunch points out, there's likely to be some streamlining as there will be duplicate positions at both companies in some areas.

“We are in a rapidly changing industry, and this acquisition gives us the breadth and technological depth to be the security provider of choice for our current and future customers,” said Vince Steckler, chief executive officer of Avast Software.

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The install base shared between the two companies tops out at over 400 million, so Avast will certainly gain a lot from acquiring the company – even if just in the form of a new customer base. However perhaps of more importance is access to more data, which can in turn make it more capable of combating infectious malware, regardless of the devices it targets.

The Internet of Things will be a major focus for the new entity though. As devices become more connected than ever, new security holes will be found – smart toys are already causing problems – and Avast wants to be the company to find them.

However this doesn't mean that the AVG brand will be swallowed up by Avast, or vice versa. The new entity will use a combination of both brands, letting them maintain their own customer bases and products – at least for the time being.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: I've used either AVG or Avast for the bast past of a decade at this point, often switching between the two if a new feature I like (or don't like) appears. What about you guys?

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Faux BBC and CNN news emails contain malware https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/security-software/jon-martindale/faux-bbc-and-cnn-news-emails-contain-malware/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/security-software/jon-martindale/faux-bbc-and-cnn-news-emails-contain-malware/#respond Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=129361 If you've been getting lookalike news emails from CNN or the BBC in the past few days, you could have been hit by a malware attack and it may well be worth doing a few safe mode scans with popular anti-malware software, if an AVG report on the Blackhole exploit kit is to be believed. …

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If you've been getting lookalike news emails from CNN or the BBC in the past few days, you could have been hit by a malware attack and it may well be worth doing a few safe mode scans with popular anti-malware software, if an AVG report on the Blackhole exploit kit is to be believed.

However the emails should be reasonably easy to spot if you cross referenced them with the actual news sites, since they contain such news stories as “new pope sued for sex abuse.”

The threat was spotted by AVG Web Threats researchers, who said that they had: “found spam from scammers using the Blackhole exploit kit that use the issue of sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church as bait.” They then explained that if a user was to click on the link in the fake story, they would be taken immediately to a page that downloads the exploit kit. It's thought that Java is being used to infect the user's PC.

Blackhole
Pictured: Something way worse than an exploit kit

“The researchers discovered another message that the same malicious individual or group is using in their spam campaign. It reports another user saw a BBC News report on the Cyprus debt deposit tax and thought you should see it,” read the AVG statement (via V3).

KitGuru Says: Of course the easiest way to avoid security problems like this, is to never click on any link in an email – always find the content by searching for it through your preferred engine, or simply go to the site in question and navigate straight to it.

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