Changed SIM card, First Friend got new PIN, but phone won't accept PIN! Siren!!

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I moved to a new phone company, so got a new SIM card.
The phone keeps shouting "This phone has been lost or stolen".
The phone asked something like "send recovery PIN to First Friend?"  I said yes.  My friend received a text with a new PIN (6 digits beginning with the number zero).  I have her phone in front of me - I saw the PIN, and quadruple-checked it.  When I enter the PIN on my phone, it just keeps shouting "This phone has been lost or stolen".
Some forum threads talk about disabling avast, but I can't do that since I can't get past the locked screen.
I tried entering the new PIN (the one sent to my friend) in my online avast account, and it seemed to save the change, except that it only shows 5 dots even though i'm entering 6 digits --- and it has no effect on my phone, which keeps shouting "This phone has been lost or stolen".
I know the recovery PIN is only valid for half an hour -- I was trying to enter it three minutes after sending it.   
Where and how do I enter the 6 digit recovery PIN?
Is there any workaround solution to this?
Thank you

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I can't see what time my friend's message arrived, so maybe my friend for some reason today is receiving texts an hour or two after they get sent (is that possible?), in which case the one that appears to have been received recently could have been actually sent while i was running to a date in the briight sun and couldn't see whether i had sent it or not.
That does not, however, answer this:
In my online avast account settings => anti-theft => basic => avast pin, I entered a 5 digit pin of my own choosing, and clicked save and got a response on the screen like "device settings have been updated".   I then re-inserted the battery on my phone, turned it on again, and after a minute or so the alarm started again.  I entered the 5 digit pin I had just created, but still the phone just keeps on shouting "This phone has been lost or stolen".  Can I over-ride that?  Can I turn it off / disable it in my online account settings?  I can't find any place to do it.  Can someone in Avast admin do it for me?  Can I contact anyone who actually works for Avast and has powers like this?
Thanks.

[Asyn]

-> http://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB135#artTitle (Changing a SIM card)