In the past week, numerous Firefox users reported problems when accessing various websites. After a short time it turned out that the virus protection from Avira was to blame. The company is now distributing updates that fix the problem.
According to a thread in the Camp Firefox forum, the first reports of problems when accessing the Rheinmetall website, for example, came on Tuesday last week. However, Firefox users also reported other glitches, such as blocked scripts on websites, non-working logins and the like.
Firefox problems caused by Avira antivirus
It quickly became clear that those affected were using Avira virus protection. Disabling the antivirus solved the problem instantly.
When asked by heise online, a company spokeswoman replied that “a function that checks network traffic for malicious content [..] in addition [führte]that certain websites were temporarily not displayed correctly”. According to internal information, around half a percent of Avira users were affected. “The Mozilla developers informed Avira about the problem on Thursday, April 27th,” she continued A fix was quickly developed and distributed for the weekend.
Those affected do not have to do anything. The Avira spokeswoman added: “The update will be carried out automatically as part of the normal update cycle, which takes place several times a day. Currently, 99.63% of users have received the update”. In addition, the manufacturer is working on improving the test procedures in order to better identify such problems before publication.
According to the company website, the Avira virus protection is used on 100 million computers. According to the above statement, around half a million users were affected by the problem.
Avira customers should now be able to surf the web normally again with Firefox. If that still doesn’t work, it’s worth checking whether the antivirus software is up to date.
The former German antivirus manufacturer Avira was sold to international investors a few years ago. After Investcorp initially took over the company in 2020, it was resold a few months later to NortonLifeLock – formerly Symantec, currently Gen Digital or Gen for short.
(dmk)
