Built-in ads are annoying, use unnecessary I/O, and punish subscribers

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

The subject says it all. I’ve decided I don’t want AntiTrack, Driver Updater, Cleanup, SecureLine, etc. So WHY oh god why does this freaking thing bug me about those unless I run Silent mode all the time? It’s annoying! Maybe this is acceptable for the free product, but as a subscriber, I expect to be allowed to opt out of all other products.

On top of that, I’m pretty sure AV is being used to passively scan for “issues” that advertise Cleanup and other products. I mean, how could it possibly know that I have XX GB of wasted space? So you’re wasting my resources on a scan I most definitely don’t want??? And I KNOW you’re doing it wrong anyway because the criteria for what AV thinks is “wasted” is certainly not in line with my own criteria.

Please, make it stop. Allow me to opt out of these other products and at least then stop scanning for or collecting metrics for them.

Thank you.

2

Hello.

Have you disabled the relevant privacy settings?

I have disabled all the privacy settings except CommunityHQ and don’t receive any prompts or adverts.

3

I guess I should have inferred that ‘Offers’ meant ‘opt-in’, even if it’s under ‘Privacy’, which isn’t completely accurate. That seems to have worked for now. It’s a shame it’s not explicit though, and it’s worded squirrelly; that is, it’s not at all clear that I won’t be advertised to in the future merely because I didn’t opt-in to share usage data, etc.

The suggestion about allowing subscribers to explicitly opt-out of these ads stands.

Thanks for the tip though!

4

Personally I believe these popups/ads (because that is what they are) should be disabled by default in the paid versions.

5

I agree.

A paid user shouldn’t have to go through and remove the check-marks.

6

How long have we been preaching that tune?

7

Too long but it is falling on deaf ears, pi55ing off paid users isn’t a good idea. Us Avast Free-loaders have to put up with it, but paid users shouldn’t have to go digging in what is a very unintuitive UI to even see if there an option to kill these intrusive and at times misleading, scary ads.