The Harm of Pop-Up Advertising

system · 2015-05-04T18:03:36.000Z

Recently I updated my copy of Avast Free. Much to my dismay in the few days thereafter I noticed an abundance of pop-up ads spewing forth from my system tray, Avast being the culprit. Now the ads in and of themselves are quite innocuous, but I quickly realized something; if you were to install an application and shortly thereafter you start seeing ads straight from your desktop, wouldn’t you be suspicious as to the nature of said application?

As much as anti-virus and spyware applications are critical and necessary for maintaining a healthy computer environment, how much more so are healthy usage habits? Clearing temp files, fragmenting hard drives and running regular security scans are all great habits for maintaining said health. Most of these tasks are automated so you never really need to think about it. Avoiding suspicious websites, downloads, and applications is another great habit. The problem here is that such a task is one which must be a habit of the user; protective software measures only go so far.

So herein lies the harm; having a trustworthy application advertising direct to your desktop requires you to suspend a healthy suspicion of certain application behavior.

As such, I have been forced to stop using Avast until such time as advertising is removed, or I can afford to purchase a license.

DavidR · 2015-05-04T18:09:52.000Z

The popups aren’t advertising in the conventional sense, they aren’t throwing up totally unrelated adverts, but promotions of the other avast product range or general information on security related issues.

These popups could be blocked by using the silent gaming mode. That however, could have a downside in that you don’t see any avast interactive windows, such as Hardened Mode (Aggressive) interactive window. You would have to have enabled this as it is off by default.

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