Hello all.
I don't understand...Why remove it?? If people don't like it they could just disable it. I think the whole "We removed it to focus on other stuff" line is BS. For a major AV company to remove an important feature like that seems a little odd.
I have many client's that relied on that tool and now that it is gone their inbox is flooded with spam because the add-in is gone and it disables Outlooks spam filter. As bad as it is, it still catching somethings. And it's a huge cop out to say that mail servers block spam for its users. If that was the case they would not have made the feature and continued to update it in the first place.
Me and a few buddies are going to install the offline version that still has the spam filter to and attempt to find anything of relevance, then try to manually install/add the vpx to the latest version.
Between the spam blocker being gone and the horrendous way that Avast is manipulating beginner and novice PC users by giving them a "free version" of the cleenup program and then charging $30 to $50 for the equivalent of a free version of CCleaner, their practices have been losing a lot of favor in the IT community. User's get messages like "your computer is at risk" from the Avast program itself designed to dupe them into spending another $50 for a VPN. If your card is on file with from buying an AV license from them just clicking install will add it to your license and they won't stop charging you unless you contact them to stop. And if your card is on file and it is time to renew, the $30-$40 license jumps to $80. that's around $150 a year for 1 license+cleenup+vpn. I can't count the number of times I have had to call them on behalf of a client because they either have a VPN, system cleaning program, have both, or don't need either. How are they any different than the spam messages they refuse to block now? If anyone has seen the Nugenix or Noom scams to get your credit card number you can see nary a difference.
Sorry for the rant. I just don't like how they went from a trust worthy provider to an unscrupulous greed machine.