The latest Windows 10 ALSO seemed to install McAfee anti-virus- which I DID NOT WANT because I like and pay for Avast.
I refuse to use McAfee for the reason you stated.
Back in the day I put in a 3.5 floppy disk that I had not used in like 5 years, and McAfee suddenly popped up saying it had a virus, and I had to pay to have it fixed. This was impossible because it was a newer virus on a 5 year old disk. I knew they were screwing around.
I have caught both Mcafee and Norton playing games like that many times over the years. I finally removed all antivirus ware from my system and just downloaded AVG about every six months to check my system then removed it. In the last ten years before installing linux I never got one virus even though I had no antivirus. I had lots when I did have either Mcafee or Norton installed. This result was self explanatory to me.