I learned about this at dslreports security forum. I had updated Avast version yesterday and it took forever for some weird reason. I never looked at the GUI after I finally got the new version installed as it was late and I was sleepy. So, I see this thread, a few hours ago, at dslr about a pirate version and I wondered if that was why it took forever to upgrade yesterday. So, I maximize my virtual Vista it is installed on and look and I don't have any pirate stuff (thank goodness) but I did see a new service notice that was in gobbledygook. I posted a screenshot of it at dslr. Now I see the notice is in English. Did you guys see my post and fix it?
You are not the first, nor the last, AV vendor to do stuff like this. I don't care for it but a lot of folks think it is funny. I actually first thought Avast was infected, even though I had just read the thread at dslr on this. But when I opened the virtual machine which has Avast installed, OnlineArmour's HIPS went nuts about a whole slew of Avast processes and even said Avast is a nasty keylogger (it has never said that before!) and then I saw that gobbledygook at the bottom of the ad...I never got a popup but if I had that likely would have (along with Online Armor stuff about Avast being a nasty keylogger) convinced me that the upgrade of Avast I did last night was corrupt or infected.
Best you guys not do stuff like this...but as I said, you are not the first AV vendor to pull something like this.