Avira was undervalued in the original sale. Investcorp traded Avira to Norton at a discount and made a big payday for themselves. I don't envy any Avira employee, this company has been played. Norton and Avira? No one saw the synergy there. There was always a synergy between Avast and AVG, and it was always a topic to combine the two companies. Had investcorp not been calling the shots, Avira would have been sold to the likes of Bitdefender, Avast or Check Point, not Norton. Anyway, Norton has been selling at 75% discount in my country through direct sales. This is not a sign of a company rich in cash. I hope things work out and Norton won't just fire the talented Avira engine and definitions team.
Today, I got false positive from Avira, which bricked my PC for some time, until I updated it in Safe Mode and it by itself fortunately restored quarantined system file by itself, which was: Code: AntiVir has detected 'HEUR/AGEN.1104764' in the file C:\Windows\SysWOW64\gdi32.dll . Oddly there is nothing about it in Avira Activity. I had to look for it in Windows Log. Limit for my patience was broken. I'm uninstalling Avira for good. Any recommendations for free antivirus?
Investcorp always knew it, it was Avira who got played here - the original sale should have had a much higher value.
It was not Avira alone. NortonLifeLock with that price bought Avira and Bullguard. Simply it was not published in that time. It was announced just two days ago = https://www.avira.com/en/press/avira-bullguard-announcement-feb-2021-en https://www.bullguard.com/press/press-releases/2021/announcement.aspx https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/avira-bullguard.436246/ -------------------------
I totally agree, which is why I uninstalled it, even with an active Pro license. It just kept getting worse... Even contacted Avira support, and they said nothing they could do. They want to protect all users the same way, and don't want you to disable all of the protection modules except for the AV.
For crying out loud, even Avast lets you customize the installation of what you do and don't want installed....
Odd that Avira did not even get a mention in this article: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/best-antivirus/
Avira Antivirus Pro review: Obnoxious and annoying ...and the in-app advertising really sticks in the throat August 13, 2021 https://www.itpro.co.uk/security/antivirus/360563/avira-antivirus-pro-review-obnoxious-and-annoying
Guys, perhaps a stupid question but if I install Avira Free will it nag me? In other words is Avira Free worth it?
OK thanks, that's what I already suspected. And apparently even Avira Pro will annoy you. I'm not really into Sophos Free, but I have been reading good things about Bitdefender Free, hopefully it won't connect to the cloud all of the time.
I gave up on Avira Pro before my subscription ran out. So I switched to Bitdefender Free, after trying the paid version of Bitdefender. Then requested and received a refund from Bitdefender, as that was just as annoying for me as Avira Pro, if not even more so. IMHO, there are not many minimalist AV programs left these days, other than Windows Defender. I do use that on my laptop, but at times it seems to be a bit heavy on my system. I think Bitdefender Free may actually be lighter on resources, but at times seems a bit more aggressive on web connections. I have had a few website that I have added exclusions for, but still cannot login until I disable Bitdefender real-time protection temporarily.
Yes, that's why I'm sticking with Win Defender, if I could find another AV that's just as light and (mostly) non-intrusive I would probably switch. And I really hate AV's who are monitoring web traffic, I beileve Win Defender doesn't do this. Basically, third party AV's both free and paid have ruined it for themselves. I think M$ can attract even more users if they fixed WD's interface and provided more power user options.
You could report these websites as a false https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/40673/
Yeah, maybe I could, but as a free user now that I got a refund on the paid version, that might be expecting a bit much, eh?