After upgrading to Firefox 5, following error message may be displayed:

AVG Safe Search is incompatible with Firefox 5.0.

This situation may emerge if you are using an older program version of AVG 2011. To resolve the situation, please update your AVG as described in FAQ 3271.

In case of any issues, please contact us using the Get Help Online option in AVG Help menu. 

More information about contacting AVG Customer Services can be found here: How to contact Customer Services.

If you decide that you do not wish to use the AVG Security Toolbar, you can either skip its installation during the AVG installation process, or disable it manually in AVG settings:

1. Open the AVG program.
2. On the Tools menu select Advanced Settings.
3. Select AVG Security Toolbar on the left.
4. Clear the Enable AVG Security Toolbar checkbox on the right.
5. Click OK to save changes.
6. Restart your browser.

If you want to completely remove already installed AVG Security Toolbar, please see FAQ 3546.

Disabling or uninstalling the AVG Security Toolbar has no negative effect on the level of security provided by LinkScanner component. The only consequence of missing toolbar is the absence of some of the options, and less verbose information about the threats found by the LinkScanner component. The main settings of the LinkScanner component can be still configured in the AVG program.

More information about AVG Security Toolbar is available here.
You can find more information about the AVG LinkScanner component in FAQ 3478.

Note:
AVG Security Toolbar contains also a AVG Secure Search search box, which is an integral part of the toolbar and can not be removed separately.

The LinkScanner component provides protection against websites that are designed to install malware on your computer via the web browser or its plugins. LinkScanner technology supports MS Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, and consists of two features, AVG Search-Shield and AVG Surf-Shield.

AVG Search-Shield contains list of websites (URL addresses) which are known to be dangerous. When searching Google, Yahoo!, Yandex, Bing, Baidu, Ask.com, AOL or Seznam.cz, all results of the search are checked against this list and a verdict icon is displayed (for Yahoo! search results only "exploited website" verdict icons are shown). AVG Search-Shield checks also links on Facebook, Myspace, Slashdot, Digg, Twitter and sponsored links on eBay as well as links received in MS Outlook, MS Outlook Express, Gmail, Yahoo! mail and Hotmail. Also if you type an address directly into your browser, click a link on any website or in your e-mail, it is checked automatically and blocked if necessary.

AVG Surf-Shield scans the contents of the websites you are visiting, regardless of the address. Even if a malicious website is not detected by Search-Shield (e.g. when a new malicious website is created, or when a previously clean website now contains some malware), it will be detected and blocked by AVG Surf-Shield when you try to visit it. As the AVG Surf-Shield scans the HTTP traffic it works regardless of the browser used.

The LinkScanner component can be connected with the AVG Security Toolbar, which is a part of Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Internet browsers. You can read more about AVG Security Toolbar in FAQ 3477.

The AVG Security Toolbar is a tool that works together with the LinkScanner component and checks the search results of supported Internet search engines (Yahoo!, Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, Ask.com, AOL, Seznam.cz).

This tool is available in all editions of AVG 2011. If you choose to install the toolbar during the installation of AVG, it will be added to Microsoft Internet Explorer and/or Mozilla Firefox.

We would like to inform you that if you are using an alternative Internet browser instead of Internet Explorer, (e.g Avant Browser) you may experience unexpected behavior. 

The AVG Security Toolbar can be used to control the LinkScanner functions, to adjust its behavior, and to update AVG when new updates are available. There is also a dynamic surfshield button available displaying the security status of currently viewed webpage

More about AVG Security Toolbar features can be found in FAQ 3620.

To clear the history in AVG Security Toolbar please proceed as follows:

1. Open your Internet browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox).
2. Click the button with recycle bin icon in AVG Security Toolbar.
3. Select the category you want to delete:
   • Delete Complete History
   • Delete Search History
   • Delete Browser History
   • Delete Download History
   • Delete Cookies (What are tracking cookies?)

AVG Internet Security and also to some extent AVG Anti-Virus provide protection against phishing (what is phishing?). The protection is provided on two levels, ensuring that you are informed about a phishing attempt in each of its forms:

• Phishing e-mail
  AVG Internet Security contains an Anti-Spam component, which is designed to recognize spam and fraudulent e-mails. This includes also the detection of phishing e-mails.
• Phishing website
  All commercial AVG editions contain the Online Shield and LinkScanner components. These components check the addresses and contents of websites visited . When you try to visit a malicious website, you are informed about this fact and access to the website is blocked. This detection also includes phishing websites.

If you receive a phishing attempt that is not detected by AVG, please contact AVG Customer Services as described in FAQ 2216. We will analyze the provided information (address and contents of the website, contents of the e-mail, etc.), and add them to AVG detection if necessary.

After upgrading to Internet Explorer 9, a notification about add-ons slowing down your browsing may be displayed. Some AVG add-ons (for example AVG Safe Search or AVG Security Toolbar) may be listed in this dialog.

To stay protected, we recommend that you keep all AVG add-ons active, and disable them only if you experience a significant slowdown while browsing. You can also enable or disable add-ons in the Manage Add-ons dialog at any time later.

For security reasons, we strongly recommend that you do not uninstall any AVG components. AVG Safe Search keeps you protected by scanning Internet search results and letting you know whether the site you are about to visit is potentially dangerous. The AVG Security Toolbar displays the security status of open webpages, allows you to view the current Internet risk level, and provides quick access to your AVG program.

We are currently preparing an AVG program update with security add-ons optimized for Internet Explorer 9. This update will greatly reduce the loading time for the browser, tabs, and websites.

After upgrading to Firefox 4, a notification about  AVG Safe Search and AVG Security Toolbar being incompatible with Firefox 4.0 may be displayed with older program versions of AVG 2011.

If Firefox 4 reports that only AVG Safe Search is incompatible with Firefox 4.0, please proceed according to FAQ 3271 to update your AVG.

In case Firefox 4 reports that either AVG Security Toolbar or both AVG Security Toolbar and AVG Safe Search are incompatible with Firefox 4.0, please perform repair installation of AVG, according to FAQ 3251.

Note: In case you meet this issue with AVG 9.0, kindly upgrade to AVG 2011 to rectify the issue.

There are several possibilities how a clean and legitimate website may become infected:

• Website was exploited by some hacktoolkit which searches for vulnerable websites, and automatically infects them.
• Infection was inserted on the machine that is used to create/upload websites, which means that the author's/administrator's computer is infected.
• An attacker gained direct access to the website administration thanks to a weak or stolen access password.

We recommend to contact the administrator of such website. In case you are the creator of such website, please review its code. If the website seems to be clean, please AVG Customer Services as described in FAQ 3522 and provide us with a link to the website. We will provide you with additional information about the detection.

To uninstall the AVG Security Toolbar please proceed as follows:

1. Download the latest installation file of AVG from the Download section.
2. When you are prompted, please do not open this file directly from the Internet, but click the Save button and choose a location, where the installation file should be stored (we recommend saving the file to the Desktop).
3. Reboot your computer
4. Close all running applications, locate the downloaded AVG installation file (it has a four color square icon and its name starts with AVG_...) and launch it.
5. The installation process recognizes the existence of installed AVG and the Add/Remove Components, Repair installation and Uninstall options are offered.
6. Please close your Internet browser.
7. Choose the Add/Remove components option.
8. Skip the following two steps (Activate your license, Custom options) by pressing the Next button.
9. On the next page uncheck the Improve my Internet protection with the AVG Security Toolbar option.
10. Finish the installation wizard and update AVG.

This way the AVG Security Toolbar will be permanently uninstalled from your computer.

Note: Uninstalling the AVG Security Toolbar has no negative effect on the level of security provided by LinkScanner component. The only consequence of missing toolbar is an absence of some of the options, and less verbose information about the threats found by the LinkScanner component. The main settings of the LinkScanner component can be still configured in the AVG program.

While browsing the web, you may receive a warning from AVG Search-Shield or AVG Surf-Shield. These two features scan the websites you visit or search for, and provide protection against threats on malicious or hacked websites.

In the browser, there is a Total Protection button (the text may read Limited Protection or No Protection based on the active features) which control whether the following features of the LinkScanner component are active:

• AVG Search-Shield - disabling this option will stop the scanning of the search results in Google, Bing, Yandex, Yahoo!, and Baidu, and also the scanning of the Internet addresses (URL's) you enter into the web browser (either manually, or by clicking a link on a website, in an e-mail, etc.).
• AVG Surf-Shield - when you disable this option, the active detection of malicious code within the visited websites will be switched off.

If you are not using the AVG Security Toolbar, you can enable/disable the AVG Search-Shield or AVG Active Surf-Shield this way:

1. Open the AVG program. 
2. Double-click the LinkScanner component. 
3. Select or clear the Enable Search-Shield and Enable Surf-Shield check boxes.
4. Click Save changes.

When using Google, Mozilla Firefox automatically reads the contents of the top-most found website. In case that the first found website contains some malicious code, the threat will be detected by AVG immediately after the search results are displayed, and although the detection is shown on the Google website, it does not belong to the contents of Google search itself.

This behavior occurs only when using Mozilla Firefox, in Internet Explorer are websites tested (and reported, if malicious content is found) only upon their direct visit.

Apart from the original AVG Search Shield verdict icons, there are also VeriSign icons displayed for pages that are part of VeriSign seal program.

VeriSign icon can be displayed next to any link in search engine results page (SERP) or next to sponsored link but only for links in which the target site is part of the VeriSign seal program. In case the target site is secure and is a part of the VeriSign seal program, green Search Shield verdict icon is replaced by VeriSign seal. If the webpage is detected as potentially risky or dangerous, original Search Shield color verdict icons are displayed.

VeriSign seals are supported in the following search engines:

• Altavista
• AOL
• Ask
• Baidu
• Bing
• Earthlink
• Google
• Seznam
• Webhledani
• Yandex
• Yahoo! (only for Yahoo! webpage, not for searches performed through AVG toolbar Yahoo! search)

To learn more about VeriSign please visit VeriSign Information for Consumers.

It is possible that the AVG Search-Shield will not be able to scan some link(s) when using a supported Internet search engine. These links will be then marked with a question mark instead of the normal scan result.

The cause of this is usually a time-out when trying to scan the website. This does not present any major problem, because if you decide to visit the website, it will be scanned again by the Search-Shield and also by AVG Surf-Shield.

If Mozilla Firefox was not present on the computer when you were installing AVG, certain parts connecting AVG Linkscanner and Firefox were not installed. To install them later, please follow these steps:

• Close your Internet browsers;
• Open AVG and on the Tools menu, click Advanced settings;
• In the left navigation tree, select AVG Security Toolbar;
• In the right pane, click the Repair button.

Firefox will now contain all parts needed to protect you against harmful webpages.

We would like to inform you that Mozilla Firefox 2 is no longer supported by AVG. This means that both LinkScanner and AVG Security Toolbar will not work with Firefox 2.

To remain protected by AVG Linkscanner, you need to update you Firefox browser to version 3 or newer (see www.firefox.com for details). AVG Linkscanner and toolbar will then work normally.