New AVG is messing with traffic stats

[Ms Naughty]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06...affic_numbers/

Six months ago, AVG acquired Exploit Prevention Labs and its Linkscanner, a tool that automatically scans search engine results before you click on them. If you search Google, for instance, and ten results turn up, it visits all ten links to ensure they're malware free.

Then, in late April, AVG rolled Linkscanner into its anti-virus engine, which has about 70 million active users worldwide. The company estimates that 20 million machines have upgraded to the tool's new incarnation, AVG version 8, and this has already cooked up enough ghost clicks to skew traffic not only on The Reg but any number of other sites as well.

The new AVG is something of a pain in terms of the system resources it uses too. My poor old PC has become decidedly creaky since I upgraded. I've turned off the linkscanner and also the thing where it constantly scans whatever file you may happen to be using.