Has Avast Free Outlived Its Usefulness?

Things like this are one of the main reasons I got rid of Avast. The protection is still excellent but the scareware/nag screens just got to be too much for me. AVG was even more persistent. The new Avast One Essential is worse, you can not turn off any unwanted features, they are all on or you don't get to use the AV. The only thing you can turn off is the new firewall and even then Avast will nag you and throw a warning on the tray icon that your system is not fully protected and you need to turn their firewall back on. I expect things will stay like this and may get even worse once Norton gets their full influence on Avast. I switched back to Windows Security enhanced with the free ConfigureDefender tool. It is doing fine, and I will stick with it. I have learned my lesson with third party AV's.

Jimmy

baumgrenze said:

Not so very many years ago, Avast Free was actively promoted by members of this forum family as the best in class.

In the last month or two Avast Free has begun opening persistent screens pushing extra services, your machine is running slow, etc more aggressively. There is no X with which to close the window and it persists 'on top.'

If I use Task Manager to close the offending window it is not clear if Avast is doing anything.

Thanks
baumgrenze

This was composed on a soon to be retired Win7/Pro X 64 machine. MS is still updating it regularly. I tried to update this machine to Win 10, had 10 and 7 running on separate SSD's and once I got 10 running but wanted to get some work done before making the shift complete I discovered that 10 left behind 'default quick launch features' that caused 7 massive file loss on a spinning data disk. Instead of completing the shift to 10, I spent months recovering files and understanding what MS had done to me.
I looked for a Windows Version Number but only saw 'here's how to update your computer.'

Avast had some bad publicity last year for sharing users data. May want to check to see if that was corrected.
(excerpts)


Though data collection is a fact of life these days, many consumers were surprised to discover that Avast—maker of antivirus software designed to protect computers from security threats—has been sharing personal info collected from their devices with a subsidiary that sells trend analytics to Google, Home Depot, Microsoft, and Pepsi.

According to articles published Monday by Motherboard and PCMag, Avast’s antivirus software appears to track users' clicks and movements across the web, collecting data on things like Google searches and visits to LinkedIn pages, YouTube videos, and pornography websites.

After being “de-identified,” meaning information like name and email address is removed, the data reportedly is repackaged and sold by the subsidiary Jumpshot.

Is It Time to Stop Using Avast Antivirus Software? - Consumer Reports