What about an official response? Forced updating of software can cause more than a hack scare, it updated software that rely on a specific version installed, in turn affecting the whole system.
I just watched it update opera, which it installed itself. I have Opera GX and yesterday I found Opera installed. I uninstalled Opera yesterday to find it installed again. I go to the software updater, click check for updates and then see it updating Opera. Definitely doing what people are saying. I have been using Avast for 20 years and have never had something like this happen.
EDIT: I’m on the free version.
You might want to try what I did in a later post:
And again Avast updated Audacity without my consent…
I talked to the support on Facebook and even sent them the link to our posts here…this should be fixed within 2-3 days!?!
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Would have been great if it had been discovered during Alpha or Beta testing and avoided all of the hassle.
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The 8 programs in my list that say “Need Updating” still haven’t updated yet. So either I got super lucky and this isn’t affecting me, Those 8 programs (four of which are Microsoft related) can’t be auto updated, or there’s something else going on with my system/installation preventing auto updates.
It blows my mind that it wasn’t.
As I said earlier, I discovered in Beta and posted in the old Forum. But others didn’t take it seriously and gave excuses for Avast to do so. I replied that if nothing done in beta, it will go to Stable release. I said it may be a mistake or intentional. If intentional, it is not ethical for free users to pay to stop automatic software updates. A day later, the old Forum and my post disappeared.
Your message must have disappeared because it was posted during the transition to the new community, and this lapse of time was planned and announced (the transition does not take place in real time on the webmaster’s side).
Having said that, you’re right, avast doesn’t seem to be reacting to what’s bothering free users.
It’s been 10 days since this subject was posted and 8 days since “NON” reported it, but no official response.
If the problem persists with the latest beta version, maybe we should (re)report it there too.
OK this issue also happens on Avast One Essentials (= free), it updated my VirtualBox while its VMs are running, of course ending up with broken installation… 
Hopefully you’ll finally be heard, because it’s true that the consequences of a bug like this (hopefully it is only that) can be pretty serious.
Although I’m a premium user, I’ve deactivated automatic updates and this is taken into account, I wouldn’t want something like free user expérience to happen to me (I know from experience that it can do damage).
Beyond that, I find “Software Updater” useful: it gives a global overview of application updates, and it’s a pity for free users that they don’t have this information because they’ve unchecked the “cleanup” module as explained above.
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My sentiments entirely, hell I don’t even allow the Avast Program to update automatically.
Because of this hassle - I culled the Cleanup module to get rid of this Software Updater issue.
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This is nuts. Had mystery software updates over the past few weeks. I was using Avast One and I couldn’t even find the software updater tool in the program. But this thread and the Avast One webpage gives me confidence that Avast was responsible. Solved the problem by uninstalling Avast
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If Avast One’s interface is similar to Avast Antivirus then it is contained within the CleanUp module as I mentioned in the post above yours.
So uninstall was perhaps a bit OTT.
I’m so glad I run Avast bare bones, and have installed it with a similar configuration on family machines I manage. File shield, web shield, mail shield. And that’s it. No other crap. It now saves me a lot of headaches. Keep it simple is popular a mantra for a reason.
I also don’t think completely uninstalling Avast is over the top. If the software simply can’t be trusted to respect users’ choices, maybe it’s for the best.
The lack of proper response from Avast also doesn’t fill me with confidence that this is seen as an urgent problem in need of a quick fix. That’s maybe even worse than the problem itself.
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I decided to reinstall and have another rummage for the Updater tool, and did eventually find it under the Explore>Performance tab (needed to be expanded). So while I do concede the tool is not necessarily buried, it certainly isn’t easy to find. Now that I was able to find it I discovered I was unable to disable the tool with the free version of Avast, so I uninstalled
I agree with Rundvleeskroket’s comments about trust and respect. From my point of view, we install AV software to prevent unknown/unwanted/dangerous changes to our PC… not to enable the AV to make those changes
Thanks for the confirmation on the location for the Updater tool within Avast One.
Hopefully this will help others.
Has anybody installed 24.11 and if so does this problem with cleanup still persist?
Bumping this for the same question. I still haven’t updated to 24.11 primarily because of this.
There is a new beta of 24.12 out today. Are there any adventurous forum members that have taken the plunge and can report whether this issue and the icarus.exe issie might have been addressed?