I was having this same issue on slashdot and it was driving me nuts so I worked up a fix. If you are on Firefox (others?) you can use the following code to make a bookmarklet that will remove the icon but retain the hover behavior:

<a href="javascript:(function(){els=document.getElementsByTagName('span');for(var e=0;e<els.length;e++){if((els[e].className=='wrc13 wrc_injected')){els[e].className='wrc_injected';}}})();">avastno</a>

I made a link in my bookmarks toolbar though I’m sure there’s a way to write it so it runs for all sites if you want that behavior.

-S