Be very careful Avast!

[REDACTED]

I am one of the early users of Avast!  I've even traveled to Prague to see where the home office is located.  I've promoted Avast! to my friends for years.  But I'm getting worried:

The reason I loved Avast! besides the obvious in protection was the smallness of the program and the fact that it was unobtrusive. (never seeking attention like the others)  As time goes on however, it's seems that Avast! is getting bigger and more obtrusive.  If this continues, especially if Avast! starts bombarding me with offers  (in effect spam) I will go in search for another smaller program.

I hope the engineers at Avast! realize why we all downloaded it to start with, and remembers to keep the program doing it's great job, and nothing more!

[Eddy]

Well, avast (the application) can stay small but it will not be able to detect the newest harmful things.
You can select what parts of avast you want to use (have installed) or not.

The engineers are still doing a great job, but they are not the ones who decide about the business model the company is using.

[polonus]

Just like Eddy I also adviced to do a custom install and only install that what you really need to have and nothing more or less.
It has been a policy for a long time of software vendors to hand down the full "kaboodle" to prevent initial claims of the software not being complete, and bloatness comes as a result.
Agree with your view that it is not Avast Team and Avast Development at the culprit of this developments, but it seems that the Commerce and Marketing Department calls the shots at the company. This is not an isolated issue as we see it develop all over the digital world, but when taken to extremes it can be a serious drawback and backfire grand time when you forget your user base and only use your end-users as a "product" to an end.

polonus

[schmidthouse]

If interested, Avast 2015: Change, add, or remove individual program components 
   
https://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB96#artTitle

These instructions also can apply to Avast 2016

[polonus]

Hi schmidthouse,

Thanks for that link, can be really helpful for those that want to custom install our favorite AV software.

polonus

[DavidR]

That link appears broken - perhaps the underlining - and the URL tag appears broken, it should be https://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB96#artTitle

[schmidthouse]

That link appears broken - perhaps the underlining - and the URL tag appears broken, it should be https://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB96#artTitle

Thanks David, fix now.
Not sure what happened.

[Rompin Raider]

Well, avast (the application) can stay small but it will not be able to detect the newest harmful things.
You can select what parts of avast you want to use (have installed) or not.

The engineers are still doing a great job, but they are not the ones who decide about the business model the company is using.

Agreed!