On very rare occasions, Avast — the makers of both Avast- and AVG-branded anti-virus software — will send users a very alarming message that suggests that a particular wiki is "dangerous", "a threat", "infected" or guilty of phishing. Their software will then prevent you from accessing that wiki. Though there are many graphical variants of this message, it will look something like this:
After extensive testing of this situation — in which we've used other, similar apps to investigate Avast's claims — we have always found that this message is a false positive. In other words, there is no cause for genuine concern.
Avast and AVG work by using a massive list of sites that they send from their data warehouse to your copy of their software. And they're aggressively conservative with this blacklist. Very rarely, one of our wikis will falsely trip Avast's alarms, producing a scary warning like the one above.
The biggest problem for you isn't really what the warning says, so much as the fact that it prevents you from accessing your favourite wiki!
Luckily, it's easily dealt with. You can:
- Report the issue yourself (it takes about 30 seconds)
- Send a report to us and let us deal with Avast
In either case, the best reports to Avast include a screenshot of the Avast/AVG message you received.
Screenshots of the message give Avast the clarity they need to swiftly resolve the situation. However, if you can't provide a screenshot, you can still file a report with a URL of the page you were trying to view.