all the settings say I shouldn’t be getting notifications but they keep popping up, and they are getting beyond annoying. I don’t know if there is some hidden off switch but I’ve checked every tab and turned off everything that seemed like a sound or a notification.
Managing popup notifications in Avast Antivirus
https://support.avast.com/en-ww/article/Antivirus-popup-notifications
Literally did all of that, and I’m STILL getting pop ups
Have you rebooted ??? A screenshot would help. Thanks
for the moment, it seems restarting worked, thank you
Changes don’t go into effect till you restart the system. 
Popups seem to have got more frequent and annoying in the last couple of days. Avast Free 18.6.3983.371 so can’t disable them.
This evening I spent a few minutes looking at a photo album on a random site. A few minutes later there was an Avast popup telling me I could view those photos uninterrupted (it referred directly to the name of the photo album) if I were presumably to upgrade. Surely that is bordering on privacy intrusion - and since I have not installed the web shield how on earth did it work out I was looking at them?
A screenshot would be helpful.