Blocking Avast Pop-ups

[Rick]

I rhave un Avast Premium Security for Mac for several years.  Avast has recently started posting pop-ups advising of identified threats and their successful blocking.  These pop-ups are very annoying, but I cannot find a switch to turn them off.  Can someone tell me how to do this?

[jakub.bednar]

Hello Rick,

there is currently no such setting in the application. Can I ask you from what component do you receive these pop-ups?

1. Ransomware Shield issues a popup when an untrusted process tries to make modifications to your protected folders. We need to inform you about this as you have to decide whether to allow/block the access. We can't remove this popup.

2. File Shield issues a popup when an infected file enters your system. We have to notify the user as it is usually connected with the application that tried to open/save the file to issue an Access denied error for the file. Without the popup you would have no idea why the error occurred. We also don't believe that users regularly work with malicious files for this popup to be issued very often and become annoying. As a last resort, you can add some folders/files to File Shield exceptions in Preferences.

3. Web Shield issues a popup when a malicious content is blocked. If it is the main page, we also replace the page content. But it might be related to some portions of the page. You could end up with partially loaded web pages without any idea what is wrong. If this is happening to you and you receive a lot of Web Shield popups, I would be personally seriously concerned about the pages and servers I visit and reconsider. As a last resort, you can add some domains to Web Shield exceptions in Preferences.

4. Mail Shield issues a popup when a malicious attachment is attached to the email. I can image this to be annoying as Mail clients tend to try and re-download the email and you can get a popup any time you open your mailbox. I could see an option to silence these pop-ups useful. Another option is to remove the offending email from the server so it will not be re-downloaded.

Can you please provide us with the information about which one of these cases apply to you and possibly in what context/activity you receive these popups? Would a different type of notification (e.g. one that appears in the corner of the screen and does not take focus) be acceptable?

Thank you for your inputs,

Jakub

[sayer1]

Hello Rick,

there is currently no such setting in the application. Can I ask you from what component do you receive these pop-ups?

1. Ransomware Shield issues a popup when an untrusted process tries to make modifications to your protected folders. We need to inform you about this as you have to decide whether to allow/block the access. We can't remove this popup.

2. File Shield issues a popup when an infected file enters your system. We have to notify the user as it is usually connected with the application that tried to open/save the file to issue an Access denied error for the file. Without the popup you would have no idea why the error occurred. We also don't believe that users regularly work with malicious files for this popup to be issued very often and become annoying. As a last resort, you can add some folders/files to File Shield exceptions in Preferences.

3. Web Shield issues a popup when a malicious content is blocked. If it is the main page, we also replace the page content. But it might be related to some portions of the page. You could end up with partially loaded web pages without any idea what is wrong. If this is happening to you and you receive a lot of Web Shield popups, I would be personally seriously concerned about the pages and servers I visit and reconsider. As a last resort, you can add some domains to Web Shield exceptions in Preferences.

4. Mail Shield issues a popup when a malicious attachment is attached to the email. I can image this to be annoying as Mail clients tend to try and re-download the email and you can get a popup any time you open your mailbox. I could see an option to silence these pop-ups useful. Another option is to remove the offending email from the server so it will not be re-downloaded.

Can you please provide us with the information about which one of these cases apply to you and possibly in what context/activity you receive these popups? Would a different type of notification (e.g. one that appears in the corner of the screen and does not take focus) be acceptable?

Thank you for your inputs,

Jakub

Yo Jakub,

I'm having the same issue with this terribly designed UI. I've been using avast since 2014 and there's always been a silent mode or way of disabling notifications. Although I've never really had to seek out those settings because avast wasn't spamming core web shield garbage in my face every 10 seconds (YOU CAN'T MINIMIZE OR DRAG THE MESSAGES OFF THE SCREEN). Regardless, the option to turn off notifications has apparently always been available until now? While scouring the settings I also learned avast has been tracking and I'm sure selling all of my data the entire time. That's conveniently turned on by default. Kick rocks, uninstalled.

[ondrej.kolacek]

Hello,

if there are frequent popups from Web Shield, it is because a browser is trying to access a malicious website all the time. This may be triggered by some of the displayed web pages, one of the browser plugins, or it can happen when the user is typing into the URL bar on the top (browsers are trying to be smart and are preloading previously accessed web pages during this). This can usually be fixed by clearing browsing caches and history.

Saying this, we are now in process of implementing an option to silence these popups for a specific web page while keeping blocking it, as the current state is not ideal.

Kind regards,
Ondrej Kolacek

[ds.nh]

I'm having the same problem with Avast Email Shield alerts.  I frequently have 20 - 40 modal pop-ups to click through.  They seem to be all unique emails, no repeats.  These mail messages are generally being diverted to a spam folder and I like that Avast catches them as well but I don't need to be forced to stop and acknowledge them.  A log to review would be a fine option.

[ondrej.kolacek]

I'm having the same problem with Avast Email Shield alerts.  I frequently have 20 - 40 modal pop-ups to click through.  They seem to be all unique emails, no repeats.  These mail messages are generally being diverted to a spam folder and I like that Avast catches them as well but I don't need to be forced to stop and acknowledge them.  A log to review would be a fine option.

Hello,
thanks for reporting this problem; it must be very annoying. We have created a task for this and plan to implement some kind of fix as soon as possible; what you have described is roughly how we envisage it should eventually be handled, however maybe there will probably be a limited interim fix in the meantime.
Kind regards,
Ondrej Kolacek