Popup ads from Avast with no X to get rid of them?

I’ve been using Avast free for several years at this point and so far have been pretty happy with it. However, in the last few months or so, I keep getting these popup notifications from the program on my laptop ‘warning’ me that something is ‘unsecured’ but they always turn out to just be ads trying to get me to pay for premium services. I got tired of it so I tried to stop clicking on them, but there’s no ‘X’ to dismiss the popup. Only a ‘resolve’ button which takes me to the ad. Clicking anywhere on the popup takes me to the ad. And it floats on top, so it blocks a solid 1/4 of my entire laptop screen, so I can’t keep doing what I’m doing because I literally can’t see the rest of my screen! It stays in place until I click on it or for something ridiculous like five minutes. How do I turn off this function? Or is there some way we can convince Avast to put an X on the popups so we can close them without having an ad blasted in our faces? Because at this point I’m ready to start researching alternative antivirus options.

If it is the active window, try Alt plus the F4 keys.

I too have the Avast Free program and rarely see these, so I can’t recall if it had changed.