Author Topic: How do I stop Avast from ever again reinstalling the Online Security extension?  (Read 6857 times)

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Offline Uh_Clem

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What is WRONG with these people?  Under circumstances which I have not yet tried to narrow down and more than a few times, Avast has decided to reinstall the Online Security extension in Chrome (this is on a Mac with OS X 10.12).  Each time, Chrome tells me that the extension has corrupted my settings and thoughtfully deletes all my other installed extensions and resets a number of my browser settings.  I can remove the Avast extension but the damage has been done.  On the main profile, I can sync my settings with a saved profile but I have four other profiles with distinctly different configurations which cannot be synced and which I now have to reconstruct individually by downloading each of the 15 or so extensions I had with each profile and reconfiguring the settings.  There appears to be no way to prevent this from happening again.  I have found no Avast setting to control this.  If it does happen one more time, I'm deleting Avast and installing Avira.

If anyone knows how to tell Avast to NEVER install another browser extension, please let me know.

Offline Asyn

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W8.1 [x64] - Avast Free AV 23.3.8047.BC [UI.757] - Firefox ESR 102.9 [NS/uBO/PB] - Thunderbird 102.9.1
Avast-Tools: Secure Browser 109.0 - Cleanup 23.1 - SecureLine 5.18 - DriverUpdater 23.1 - CCleaner 6.01
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Offline David2361

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oh, so this is a practice that they've been doing for a long time then. This is happening on Firefox, Chrome and the Edge browser. I remove them, and then like magic they are back. Time to find a different antivirus software that won't do underhanded things like this.

Offline DavidR

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oh, so this is a practice that they've been doing for a long time then. This is happening on Firefox, Chrome and the Edge browser. I remove them, and then like magic they are back. Time to find a different antivirus software that won't do underhanded things like this.

No just that this is a very old topic.

When people first install Avast many simply do a default install, rather than a custom install.  See example in attached image, click to expand (whilst this image capture was for version 20.1 it should be the same).  I currently don't have avast 20.3 installed yet, so I can't provide images.

Firefox and many other browsers in the intervening period have changed the way extensions are installed the user has to allow them or approve one.

So how to get rid if you have it:
Uninstall it from your browser extensions.
Remove the component in Avast - Control Panel > Programs > Avast Antivirus > Change - select Change.

You will now see a screen like the one attached, uncheck the components you don't require.  In this case the Security Browser Extension.  This may be slightly different in avast 20.3, but the operation is the same or very similar.

Windows 10 Home 64bit/ Acer Aspire F15/ Intel Core i5 7200U 2.5GHz, 8GB DDR4 memory, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD/ avast! free 24.3.6108 (build 24.3.8975.762) UI 1.0.801/ Firefox, uBlock Origin, uMatrix/ MailWasher Pro/ Avast! Mobile Security