I noticed in a previous version that Avast was contacting Google servers (google-analytics.com) every time I clicked on an item in the Avast user interface. This should have been clearly disclosed.
I blocked the access to Google servers.
Does Avast still contact Google servers by default?
Avast uses Google Analytics to see how a user uses avast. This is done to help
the developers improve how avast functions. Avast is extremely careful on how
they handle this information keeping it in anonymous form.
Sidenote: I would not be surprised if most software vendors do analytics in one form or another.
[begin sarcasm] And we all know how open Google is, how they don’t store data they are not supposed to collect, and how they don’t share it with anyone. [end sarcasm]