The Linkscanner feature in Grisoft’s free anti virus solution, AVG 8, has been way too active for some. Linkscanner is meant to assist users to see whether their results in Google (among others) leads to safe or unsafe websites.

In order to do so the software scans the site before the user actually visits it. It’s done by a component called Search-Shield.

Until recently this feature was only available in the full (paid) version, but after being included in the free version as well several websites experienced a massive increase in traffic.

Smaller websites would be lead to believe that it was a DOS attack (Denial Of Service) as the traffic from AVG’s Search-Shield would exceed normal traffic. In some cases the servers were reported to go down. An in-depth analysis is available at AVG Linkscanner Watch.

The server logs clearly shows the massive increase in traffic is caused by Grisoft. Multiple complaints has been forwarded and a fix is now being “shipped” in order to solve the problem.

With 70 million potential users I’m glad I’m running this site off a powerful server with no bandwidth restrictions to worry about. What about you, have you been noticing any changes in traffic recently?