Rant: sudden appearance of Avast sponsored ads, totally unwanted and infuriating

[sevinch]

In recent days I have suddenly had these pop-up ads or notifications appearing on my Avast secure browser in the bottom right corner. They are utterly remorseless: when I try to close them they come straight back, or redirect me to totally inappropriate games or soft porn web pages. I have tried everything and I CANNOT GET RID OF THEM!!

Get this: I am a 70 year old happily married Englishman that just happens to be in an Arab country - and AVAST sends me notifications adevertising an Arab dating site, written in Arabic. What the fuck?!?? I mean really, what the fuck?

I have been happy with the secure browser until now: I chose this browser because it was supposed to protect me from this garbage. But what do I get? I get spammed by Avast, like 20 times an hour.

Avast, you are totally out of control with your advertising. I am going to uninstall your crap toot sweet. And if I have problems uninstalling you - I shall simply toss this hard drive into the Nile river, along with all the other garbage.

Salaam Aleikum

[bob3160]

In recent days I have suddenly had these pop-up ads or notifications appearing on my Avast secure browser in the bottom right corner. They are utterly remorseless: when I try to close them they come straight back, or redirect me to totally inappropriate games or soft porn web pages. I have tried everything and I CANNOT GET RID OF THEM!!

Get this: I am a 70 year old happily married Englishman that just happens to be in an Arab country - and AVAST sends me notifications adevertising an Arab dating site, written in Arabic. What the fuck?!?? I mean really, what the fuck?

I have been happy with the secure browser until now: I chose this browser because it was supposed to protect me from this garbage. But what do I get? I get spammed by Avast, like 20 times an hour.

Avast, you are totally out of control with your advertising. I am going to uninstall your crap toot sweet. And if I have problems uninstalling you - I shall simply toss this hard drive into the Nile river, along with all the other garbage.

Salaam Aleikum

Sounds like you need some help from a Malware removal expert. Follow the directions here:
https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=194892.msg1357324#msg1357324

[sevinch]

Sounds like you need some help from a Malware removal expert. Follow the directions here:
https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=194892.msg1357324#msg1357324

Thank you for the suggestion. My understanding was that this unwanted ad was sponsored by Avast itself, or was somehow bundled into the Secure Browser: after all under the ad are the words "Avast Secure Browser - install notify-service.com"

Nevertheless I did the MalwareBytes thing, and was given a clean bill of health; I also downloaded and ran Hitman, and was told no threats were detected. Same result with Windows Defender.

Are you telling me that this "notify-service" is not installed by Avast itself?

[BWhit]

Hi sevinch,

The advertisements that you describe are not coming from Avast. It sounds like you have inadvertently allowed notifications from an advertisement service. The advertisements show Secure Browser on the notifications because the adverts are using the Secure Browser app to generate the notifications. Please compare the attached example to what you are seeing.

To disable these, please open Secure Browser and go to secure://settings/content/notifications > click the 3 dots icons icon to the right of any service you do not want to see advertisements from > click "Block"