With the latest update, the free Avast antivirus has started inserting its own promotional signature in your emails. The following text is added:
This email has been sent from a virus-free computer protected by www.avast.com. If you are not happy with such behavior, here is what you have to do.
Avast Free Antivirus is a software I personally recommend to many friends. A lot of people use it because it is relatively light on resource usage, is free and offers decent protection. But Avast is known for things like promotional pop-ups in the system tray and various annoying features like software updater. Thankfully, everything can be tweaked, disabled and some things can just be ignored.
A friend contacted me saying that Avast had started hijacking his email after the update with an added line advertising itself. Here is how you can disable it.
- Right-click the Avast Free Antivirus tray icon.
- In the context menu, pick the command "Open Avast user interface".
- In top right corner, click the gear icon to open its settings.
- In the General section, untick the option "Enable Avast email signature":
Click OK and you are done. In the comments, tell us what you think about such behavior from Avast antivirus and which is your favorite antivirus software.
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This is basically malware behavior – hijacking email signatures for advertising. Even if it can be disabled, it’s on by default. Very bad decision by Avast. It seems that they are doing their best to turn people away from what was the best free antivirus program.
Personally, I’m still on Avast v9.0 (2014), because by the time I tried 2015, it had ad pop-ups that appear from time to time from system tray and can’t be turned off. I haven’t tried 2016, but from what you mentioned above, it seems that it still has those.
Yep you are right.
Such ads are still there.
You think these: A week ago we’ve stopped *number* of virus attack in *country*. Upgrade your security level and save off 75% ?
This email has been sent from a virus-free computer protected by Avast. so avast is now malware. just uninstall it and use another free av. let avast know that their actions are absurd. wonder who the idiot was who conceived that brilliant plan?
Thanks for your help! I did these things and it’s still there, whatever I do with it. It’s so annoying that I have these signatures in my businness mails, I have to remove the software.
Hmm, interesting. This should remove signature from new emails only. Existing emails will remain with signatures.
There are three advantages of disabling Avast 2016 signature Advertising in your emails:
First, it curbs Ransomware as they can penetrate into your system via emails.
Second, Emails are easily vulnerable. So, it is lightweight tool that should be part of everybody’s system.
Third, You will enjoy peace-of-mind as there will be no Pop-Ups to distract you.
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