Guess I was right 
Avast now has advertisement even in the paid versions… Now you see why I said that I do not want software to auto-connect to the internet - the producers of the software may silently do something nasty in the background…
I truly wish the company Avast (cheers on the new name) provided an option for the antivirus to not autoconnect to the internet - so that it may regain the trust that it may be losing now… Just a simple checkbox in the options… Please?
As far as I know, avast is one of the most serious, trusted and reliable security companies all over and this sound to me like extreme paranoia, so maybe your best option would be to change to another program that meets your requirements.
How are you determining that avast! tries to connect to the internet? Is it merely accessing Windows internal network subsystem or making an actual outbound connection attempt? If it is an attempt what is the hostname it is trying to connect to? That may shed some light on the connection.
I doubt you’ll see the refund if you make a purchase - that’s why a trial is available.
No, you weren’t.
As quoted, it seems that you did installed the Network Shield?
If you did, it looks reasonable to me that avastsvc.exe connect to the Internet, because it has to monitor your network.
On my VM, when I choose to not install Webshield, Mailshield, IMshield, P2PShield and Network Shield, there is no avastsvc.exe connections at all.
dabeniao, I suppose you do this for testing purposes.
To protection, I see a huge degradation on avast capabilities if you stay only with the file shield.
You’re right. Actually I do this just trying to reproduce the situation that b184953 encountered.
On my working machine, I had avast! Free fully installed and activated.