Hello,
I upgraded to Big Sur and Avast is constantly asking me for “Avast Security” Would Like to Add Proxy Configurations”
How do I disable this pop up requesting for these permissions, as I don’t want to give them to Avast.
Hello,
certain shields (Web Shield, Mail Shield, for Pro version also Real Site) need to intercept network traffic to function. This used to be done via Kernel Extensions, which were discontinued on Big Sur and a new mechanism added by Apple is now being used. The popups are triggered for you because you have been using at least one of the shields previously and because the new mechanism requires (as you have done with Kernel Extensions long time ago) you to allow it to continue working.
There are three options for you:
- Allow us to access network by answering yes; all shields will start working normally
- do 1), but afterwards turn off all the above mentioned shields in GUI and afterwards go to System Preferences → Network and delete all records named “Avast Security” to revoke the “Allow” from step 1
- run Terminal app and disable all the affected shields by running the following commands:
sudo /Applications/Avast.app/Contents/Backend/utils/com.avast.cfgctl -f com.avast.proxy.conf -t webshield -v enabled -b false
sudo /Applications/Avast.app/Contents/Backend/utils/com.avast.cfgctl -f com.avast.proxy.conf -t mailshield -v enabled -b false
sudo /Applications/Avast.app/Contents/Backend/utils/com.avast.cfgctl -f com.avast.securedns.conf -t securedns -v enabled -b false
sudo killall com.avast.service
This should prevent further popups as long as you keep all these shields disabled. Unfortunately the way how the GUI is now built does not allow turning off shields when they are in error state; I will ask our GUI team if this could be remedied.
Of course 2) and 3) disable a large part of Avast Antivirus’ functionality and doing so is not recommended by us.
Kind regards,
Ondrej Kolacek