Avira posting ads to paid customers

[berryracer]

Originally Posted by 3x0gR13N

Avira Premium has a toolbar bundled? Mind you, this thread is about paid version of Avira, not free, so you might be a tad of topic here.

Yes you're right, but regardless if it was free or not. an antivirus prompting you to install a crappy toolbar (which in my opinion is a virus on its own) is just wrong

And the ads are uncontrollable chaos now

Avira Antivir was the best Free Antivir at some time, now its the best spamming app

[Kerodo]

Originally Posted by berryracer

Yes you're right, but regardless if it was free or not. an antivirus prompting you to install a crappy toolbar (which in my opinion is a virus on its own) is just wrong

And the ads are uncontrollable chaos now

Avira Antivir was the best Free Antivir at some time, now its the best spamming app

Which is truly sad... and why I don't use it any more....

[nord1]

Originally Posted by Osaban

I have a premium version and 2 free versions. So far on the premium I have not received anything at all, I wasn't even aware of this 'My communication settings', and when I checked them, they were all 'on'. With the free versions I get occasionally a nag screen asking if I want to upgrade.

I believe the people who were affected should complain, but for God sake it could be a bug, a little bit of patience and courtesy could go a long way.

Osaban,

I too use Avira 12 (free) and the recent spate of popup ads has become more annoying because of their sheer volume. The one big popup ad (almost full window) that shows up whenever an update is completed is annoying, but I consider that the price of free software, plus it most definitely lets me know that the update was successfully completed.

As for the other popups, if you are willing to google for a solution, you will find ways to change things in the control panel and those particular ads will be banished from your computer. That was the step I took when the volume of popups got too much for me to put up with.

To my mind, Avira is good software with a poorly designed marketing campaign. <shrug>

[Osaban]

Originally Posted by nord1

Osaban,

I too use Avira 12 (free) and the recent ...
To my mind, Avira is good software with a poorly designed marketing campaign. <shrug>

I agree with every point of your post, I believe nobody likes to see ads anywhere, but the reality is that money must be coming in from somewhere.

As I mentioned I have two machines with the Avira free version (which I installed instead of another paying company which didn't convince me in the long run).

When I turn on any of these machines there is an update with a nag screen and a popup, that's it, for 2-3 hours (that's the average time I keep a computer on) I don't see any other message from Avira. As it is, it doesn't disturb me that much, but I can understand that some people might find it annoying.

We are in the midst of the most serious economic crisis since 1929 (Europe being the hardest hit currently) when people lose their jobs in droves, paying for an AV company's subscription becomes the very last thing you want to spend your money on. Avira must have lost a lot premium users for this reason (probably MSE might be responsible as well), therefore the aggressive advertisements on the free version.

Originally Posted by Osaban

Avira must have lost a lot premium users for this reason (probably MSE might be responsible as well), therefore the aggressive advertisements on the free version.

I wouldn't buy a premium version because of intrusive ads in the free version, I would rather use or buy another AV

[nord1]

Originally Posted by Osaban

I agree with every point of your post, I believe nobody likes to see ads anywhere, but the reality is that money must be coming in from somewhere.

As I mentioned I have two machines with the Avira free version (which I installed instead of another paying company which didn't convince me in the long run).

When I turn on any of these machines there is an update with a nag screen and a popup, that's it, for 2-3 hours (that's the average time I keep a computer on) I don't see any other message from Avira. As it is, it doesn't disturb me that much, but I can understand that some people might find it annoying.

We are in the midst of the most serious economic crisis since 1929 (Europe being the hardest hit currently) when people lose their jobs in droves, paying for an AV company's subscription becomes the very last thing you want to spend your money on. Avira must have lost a lot premium users for this reason (probably MSE might be responsible as well), therefore the aggressive advertisements on the free version.

I don't follow the ins and outs of the anti-virus companies. I paid for Norton for years, then Trend Micro.... this economic collapse hit me quite hard, so I have become a convert to free software (for now). I figure you're right, they all are between a rock and a hard place.... BUT I did not like the excessive popups, so all thanks to Google I was able to remove some of that with a little sweat. I saw more popups as when I am on this computer, I have it on for many hours. Never bothered to calculate just how many, nor how often, but enough to make me look hard for a solution, otherwise I would not have bothered with it. It was the popups while I was working on stuff that irritated me as they were interrupting my workflow.

I agree that Europe has been hit hard, we in America too, with less (although you might think that not true) of a safety net here in many ways. Europe's first exports to America were its religious zealots and unfortunately they have done yeoman duty here. (I say that as a good Christian, but with the firm belief that church and state should be separate... render unto Caesar... etc.)

But I digress. <VBG>

[TheWindBringeth]

Is anyone looking into how the toolbar is being handled? For example, is ANY toolbar related software being executed even before one agrees to its installation and if so is that software doing anything objectionable like pulling code from or transmitting information to the toolbar manufacturer's webserver?

Is anyone looking into how the ads are being handled? For example, where are the ads being pulled from (Avira? Ad-network? Advertiser's site?) and is there any revealing information being passed in the GET or POST?

[maddawgz]

yeah but seriously competitions?? plz..update pop up is fine. Not sure why they following others i used to think Antivir had a mind of it's own , why i liked them, some are so intrusive i be watching something and it covers the whole screen Arghhhhhhhhh

[Cudni]

So, no more ads in paid Avira product?

[kefob]

Just some quick info that I got from Avira, as we sell their products...
The toolbar has been taken out of the installer on the free version for a long time. If you are still getting that, try downloading the installer from Avira.com, and you will not see that option. I have checked this and it is accurate.
The "ads" in the paid version was a slide up in the bottom right corner that wasn't trying to sell you anything. Avira is just trying to get people to follow their Facebook page, so they are doing a competition. The ad that popped up was just for you to go to their Facebook page and entering to win a free Apple or Android device (they are giving away quite a few). There is an easy way to turn them off by clicking the gear in the upper right corner of the slide up.
The free version will probably always have ads, and there is a reason for this. Avira is one of the few private AV companies, where their focus is on the R&D to make their products better. They have been constantly ranked at the top for years because they spend all of their revenue on R&D and not on advertising like Norton or ESET. As a result, they use the only free advertising they have, which is a pop up in their free version. From my guess, they probably convert a couple of hundred people a day from that ad, so would you turn it off?

[SeeTheTruth]

Kefob, either the information you received is simply wrong or you are trying to fool the people here! I've downloaded Avira Free Antivirus just 5 minutes ago and used 7Zip to look into the SFX (I didn't want to run the EXE as I neither trust Ask nor Avira any longer). Inside the SFX-Archive I still see "apntoolbarinstaller.exe" and "apnstub.exe", which are digitally signed by Ask.com
To be absolutely sure I then run the setup on an old and no longer used laptop. The Ask toolbar is still required when you want to protect the web traffic. Since the majority of malware currently seems to be Drive-By, the product is either useless or your surfing habits are sent to Ask.com (so you can receive more targeted ads).
I agree, that a company needs to earn money (not only for R&D), but a security company also needs to focus on its reputation and the pure need of money doesn't excuse everything. Uniblue (scareware?), ask.com (targeted advertisements?), Amigo360 (snake oil?)... are moves towards the dark side.
Unless Avira abjures to "sell" their user base I will stay with MSE & Avast now - so YES I did turn it off.

[gery]

i have been using Avira premium for over a week and no pop ups so far.

[nord1]

Originally Posted by SeeTheTruth

Inside the SFX-Archive I still see "apntoolbarinstaller.exe" and "apnstub.exe", which are digitally signed by Ask.com

Uniblue (scareware?), ask.com (targeted advertisements?), Amigo360 (snake oil?)... are moves towards the dark side.

Interesting... I made the switch from Avast 7 because I didn't like their cloud implementation to Avira 12 and I did the install very late at night, so did not look too closely. Guess I wasn't totally exhausted, as I must not have clicked on installs for any of the addons you mention here. (Remove the check marks to stop the install, no?). I did find both in the Avira sub-folder, so zipped them up to look at later and removed them. Do not like any of these type of installs, including Avast that wanted to install Chrome which I don't use (I use IRON instead).

[kefob]

Originally Posted by SeeTheTruth

Kefob, either the information you received is simply wrong or you are trying to fool the people here! I've downloaded Avira Free Antivirus just 5 minutes ago and used 7Zip to look into the SFX (I didn't want to run the EXE as I neither trust Ask nor Avira any longer). Inside the SFX-Archive I still see "apntoolbarinstaller.exe" and "apnstub.exe", which are digitally signed by Ask.com
To be absolutely sure I then run the setup on an old and no longer used laptop. The Ask toolbar is still required when you want to protect the web traffic. Since the majority of malware currently seems to be Drive-By, the product is either useless or your surfing habits are sent to Ask.com (so you can receive more targeted ads).
I agree, that a company needs to earn money (not only for R&D), but a security company also needs to focus on its reputation and the pure need of money doesn't excuse everything. Uniblue (scareware?), ask.com (targeted advertisements?), Amigo360 (snake oil?)... are moves towards the dark side.
Unless Avira abjures to "sell" their user base I will stay with MSE & Avast now - so YES I did turn it off.

I did some checking into this. Apparently the free version does not come with any sort of web protection, and if you click that you want to install the web protection in the setup then you see the option to install the toolbar. You do not see it if you do not click this option, which I never do so I hadn't seen it.

[Osaban]

Originally Posted by kefob

I did some checking into this. Apparently the free version does not come with any sort of web protection, and if you click that you want to install the web protection in the setup then you see the option to install the toolbar. You do not see it if you do not click this option, which I never do so I hadn't seen it.

I would like to add that the web guard had never been available in past versions of Avira free therefore the toolbar is the price to pay if you want to have it. Do I want to have it? No, not even on my premium version.