Hi. New to this forum but have been using avast for many years now.
I had been getting complaints about the price shopping bar and at first thought our systems got a nasty malware infection. I surprised to learn it was a part of the avast browser add-in...remember the one that was less invasive and mostly just sat at the top bar as a little icon until you decided to click on it...
I found the OP post interesting because it was an issue that I feel is valid and wouldn't have thought about. Although, I feel that issue to be a valid SECONDARY concern.
I felt the need to sign up and post to this thread because I wanted to talk more about what I feel should be the PRIMARY concern. For years we trusted avast and that trust built up over time. Even with some of their big goofs: like the recent fix they seem to have done that now prevents the avast web/email shields from blocking outgoing mail ports in MS Outlook, or the one that really caused a big headache here...remember a few years ago when the avast program found a few MS files and dlls to be dangerous so it would quarantine or delete them, but we ended up realizing that they were legitimate files needed to make Windows Update work...to this day I think they never actually fixed that...but I digress...
Shame on you avast! What you did was sneaky. I'm a person that generally reads terms/conditions, etc. to try to sift out the junk...even though most people just click accept. Avast, you were NEVER authorized to add the intrusive price shopping feature...which is flawed btw. (We were looking at 4TB WD hard drives and recommendations were given for a 50% cheaper site...turns out they were for 3 TB drives...) This price feature was put on apparently through some automatic program and/or definitions update. Therefore, it was never presented to anyone to properly review, let alone understand what the revision now did...
Adding even more salt to the wound is the apparent lack of disabling the feature forever, let alone an option to completely remove (so far as I presently can tell...)
Avast, it takes a long time to build up a reputable trustworthy relationship, ESPECIALLY when you are in the business of stopping spam, viruses, trojans, malware, and anything under the heading of intrusive, system security compromising, and unsolicited.
You Avast, have just forever tarnished your reputation and have become the very thing that people wanting your program have sought to put an end to...
While I look for an alternative, (maybe I'll give AVG another try), I must say that computer and more specifically internet speed have greatly increased and improved after removing your program.
Thank you for the time and "protection" that you've given us during the good years.
~Patrick