AVG scanner blasts internet with fake traffic

[James Firth]

Peter Fairbrother wrote:
> Two things puzzle me about this, first what security benefit does it
> have? Presumably the links are checked again after they are clicked, or
> the pages from the unlinked links are stored and then shown - but if the
> pages were checked before they were displayed, as is usual, they would
> undergo the same checking - there is no need to check unclicked links.
> 

I can't speak for AVG, but in many companies these days the "product" is now
owned by a team of marketing professionals whose job it is to define how the
product works, features as seen by the customer etc.

This team is less technically focused, which works well in some cases
because products get defined from the perspective of the less technically
minded.

But it also fails spectacularly in many cases because you have a product
manager banging his or her fist wanting a particular feature, not really
understanding the technical obstacles and forcing it through nevertheless.

The problem I've seen within AV companies is that their product is pretty
much unnoticed by the customer unless things go wrong, which means its hard
to get brand loyalty and customers don't really notice when their
subscription runs out and they don't care when renewing to chose the same or
re-install a cheaper alternative.

What I'm guessing has happened here is that a product team has defined that
the product must show the status of links (dodgy or safe) on the page as it
is rendered, before the user clicks on any link, thereby giving the user a
feature that has a look & feel unique to that product.

I'm not going to enter into the debate whether this would be useful, rather
I just wanted to give an insight into how features that may not make sense
from a technical p.o.v. 

James Firth