I’ve just realized Avast A/V is now automatically inserting a prominent notice (“This email has been sent from a virus-free computer protected by Avast”, with the Avast logo and a link to Avast.com) at the beginning of each of my Yahoo Mail messages.
Because it’s added after I click Send, I had no idea it was being added. I just happened to open a message I’d already sent someone, and there it was.
I understand we can disable this feature in Avast’s settings (although again, you have to know it’s happening).
I came here to complain about it, and to say it was presumptuous for Avast to implement it. But considering how many annoying, potentially harmful email viruses are going around now, I think most of my recipients will probably be glad to see it.
Please, though, fix the apparent bug that’s actually causing the notice to appear between the message’s 1st and 2nd paragraphs, e.g.:
[i]Dear Joe,
[BIG AVAST NOTICE]
How are you? I’m writing to tell you… [etc.]
[/i]
That just looks goofy. I can’t imagine it was intentional.
BTW, isn’t it likely that hackers might now insert their own versions of the notice in their bogus messages, leading some recipients to think the message’s links were safe to click? So I wonder if the message may actually end up causing more harm than good. You know more about that than I do, though.
I am not the original poster of this but I wanted to talk about the same subject. I use several different email clients and Avast’s insertion is giving me a problem on Yahoo. It seems that there is a glitch in the placement. If I write a 2 paragraph email, it inserts the Avast box between those two paragraphs. Very confusing for my recipients. Thanks for any advice you can give on this.
I’d also like to chime in and say that I’m infuriated Avast would automatically turn on this option. It seems to me an incredible overstepping of boundaries. While I do like Avast and the service it provides, it should be my choice as to how I broadcast my support. Automatically inserting an e-mail signature (that I, too, was unaware of until I looked at a message I had previously sent) without giving notification that this was going to happen seems irresponsible and disrespectful, especially since it’s not like I’m sending the message from within an Avast app or mail client (this was just through a web browser client).
I sincerely hope Avast reconsiders their decision to have this option turned on by default with no notification to the user.
UPDATE: I can now confirm that Avast’s automatically-inserted email “banner” is actually causing problems with Yahoo Mail (the online version, ymail.com).
For the last several days, I’ve been unable to send mail to certain addresses. As soon as I clicked Send, this Yahoo error message appeared (see screenshot, attached).
The only “link” my messages included was the link to Avast that’s embedded in the Avast banner.
As soon as I updated to the latest Avast version, which allowed me to turn off the banner, the mailing problem vanished. Apparently the link is triggering the alert.
I imagine that many users are having this problem and are baffled, since Avast’s banner isn’t inserted till after they send (or try to send) their messages. It seems like it would be a good idea to remove it and just use the graphic and text, at least for now.
BTW, I think everything else about Avast is excellent, and I’m grateful for it. I thought you’d want to know about this issue though.
avast is not entering anything strange in the mails.
The picture clearly shows Yahoo is having a false positive on the detection and they should fix it.
It’s not clear to me whether you actually work for Avast, or are an enthusiast helping people solve problems (which is great too, of course). I suspect it’s the latter, as it seems unlikely a company like Avast would learn its software had a showstopping problem with a major online service, and respond that the other guys “should fix it.”
It doesn’t really matter why this is happening, it’s happening—and because of Avast’s “stealth” banner approach, most of the users it’s affecting must be clueless that it’s even related to AAV.
I’ve messaged Yahoo about it, but I don’t know how long it’ll take them to respond, or how much of a priority they’ll give it (if any).
I can tell you one thing, though: If one of my company’s products were having an issue on this scale, I wouldn’t wait around hoping the other party would fix “their” problem. It’d be my problem too.
It's not clear to me whether you actually work for Avast, or are an enthusiast helping people solve problems
You can easily see if someone on this webboard is from avast or not.
Look at the text near the avatar.
If it mentions "Avast team" it is someone from avast.
and respond that the other guys "should fix it."
In this case it is a false detection by Yahoo. So yes, Yahoo should fix it. It doesn't mean (and I never said so) that avast should not look into it and try to find a solution (together with Yahoo).
I've messaged Yahoo about it, but I don't know how long it'll take them to respond, or how much of a priority they'll give it (if any).
My experience with Yahoo support.. Response time can be 24 hours - 4 weeks. Since it is holiday time, it can take longer than "usual".
I’m sure (as far as can be ofcourse) that :
avast already contacted Yahoo about it.
avast is already looking into why this is happening and trying to find a solution for it.