Last night, at least for OSX users, the software meant to prevent unwanted apps from being installed without your knowledge did just that.
The unwanted software was Avast’s own “SecureLine VPN” and it added an unknown icon to the OSX menubar. When clicked on it appears to try and trick you into hitting a “connect” button which promises to cost $$$ if clicked.
Many people were confused upon how to uninstall this unwanted spammy software.
SOLUTION: Open the newly installed app “SecureLine” in your applications folder and there will then be an option in the menu to Uninstall. Many users (including myself) were not able to find this option by opening the software just from the menu bar icon.
Next, cross your fingers that Avast won’t spam your computer anymore in the future.
The sheer arrogance of the Avast people in that thread is just staggering.
A mod by the name of tumic wrote:
Quote from: somehacker on Yesterday at 07:30:10 PM
Is sneaking software onto my machine a new business model for you?
This “freemium” business model is used by Avast for more than a decade, so the answer is no,
it’s nothing new.
Quote from: somehacker on Yesterday at 07:30:10 PM
That’s the kind of scummy behavior I expect from craphole download sites, not (supposedly) reputable
software companies. How about you never do that again?
I’m sorry, but as this is an essential part of the company business strategy, it will for sure happen again.
Every time we add a new component to Avast Mac Security (no matter whether paid or not), it will not only
be part of the installation, but also part of the program update. For paid components You will however not
be forced to use them and always have the possibility to uninstall them, if you wish.
I advise them to rethink that business model, or it will bite them just as badly as SourceForge recently got bitten.
I’ve had Avast say a computer is clean while in the middle of some of the worst and most obvious infections I have ever seen. I don’t know how it gets so much credit for being a decent anti-virus. It’s terrible. Malwarebytes saved my ass twice when avast completely failed to detect the problem.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. Using the free version of Avast anti-virus 2015 on Windows; they have frequent spam adverts pop up in the system tray, and you can’t turn them off. It’s pretty much exclusively promotions for their own products, but I have to wonder which one of the nimrods at Avast think that if they’ve spammed me with the same advert 40 times and I’ve ignored it every time, maybe I’ll actually respond on the 41st try…
Not that I begrudge the company trying to make money, but an anti-virus app is NOT the place for adware.
I have loved Avast for nearly a decade now. This past month, they’ve upped they’re annoyance level, and have been installing Secureline on Macs if you don’t uncheck it mid-install, and it’s not obvious to find where to do that. I sent them an email asking them about it and got no response, so I’ve switched to BitDefender on my PCs and Sophos on my Macs. Oh well, Avast, you had a good run.
I’ve been using a Mac for half a decade now, and as far as I remember I’ve never had anything installed to my machine without me knowing.
I find this slightly unnerving considering that I installed Avast with the hopes of preventing something like this from happening, and they outright did it themselves.
Is there any Mac settings I should change to prevent this from ever happening again in the future?
honestly ive just gone with Avast until now. I’ve heard good things about Sophos, but for some reason it has a known issue with some audio software I use (Native Instruments)
I have tried them all for extended periods of time, I am currently using Panda. It has good ratings from the couple sites which test and rank the Antivirus products.
Even if it didn’t directly hurt Avast, Avast isn’t meant to catch malware and malware is nasty enough nowadays that it can easily be as harmful as a virus.
