WHY DOES AVAST (including Anti-Theft) require access to all your text messages?!

Just got a Galaxy s4 smartphone, and am looking for a good security/anti-theft app. Avast, and its anti-theft module, get good reviews. But when I went to install I saw that this app wants permission to access to all my text messages. What’s going on here? Why would I want to give any app permission to see all my text messages – I like my privacy? Am I misunderstanding something here? Thanks.

Read here: http://support.avast.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=1252