Well the day has finally come. Avast Free has followed its predecessors and crossed the fine line between provding a free service and trying to take over the Earth and I have now uninstalled it for good. I normally wouldn't bother with going through the process of registering and ranting on a product forum but after the experience I have just had I felt compelled to say something just to vent my frustration.
So I was in the middle of writing a technical paper for a science journal that I had been working on all morning. Avast had been prompting me to upgrade (or buy a premium subscrption) for a few days now and I have been ignoring the messages mainly because I was too busy to take any further action but this turned out to be a big mistake. I went to lunch and came back to find my computer had restarted and was "working on updates". Luckily I had saved my progress beforehand because when I finally got back into Windows I noticed Avast had decided to update or upgrade itself without my knowledge or permission and had completely taken over my internet connection to the point where Dropbox, Thunderbird, Chrome, Skype and just about every other program I use regularly couldn't connect to the Internet because they couldn't establish a secure connection. I noticed Avast had installed something called SafeZone which was locking everything down and preventing me from connecting to my university campus WiFi.
Avast, this is a gross breach of your trust and position and I have uninstalled your product never to return again. As a computer science graduate I have recommended your free antivirus to so many friends and family who trust my recommendation as someone who really knows what they are taling about but you have gone the same way as AVG and Avira and broken the trust of your users by installing unwanted spamware without consent. I'm just glad I saved my work before you forced my computer to restart. Bye.
