Avira Criticized for Recommending Controversial Product

Softpedia ^ | 6/14/2011 | Lucian Constantin

[catnipman]

Avira has stirred up some controversy among users after deciding to display ads for a third-party registry cleaner within the free version of its antivirus product.

Avira AntiVir Personal, the free solution offered by the German security vendor, is one of the most popular anti-malware products on the market today and has over 100 million users.

It seems that Avira recently partnered up with Uniblue, the owners of ProcessLibrary.com, a database of information about Windows processes, and creators of several software products.

The partnership between the two companies requires Avira to display ads for Uniblue RegistryBooster within AntiVir Personal.

These ads have taken users by surprise and have even upset the more knowledgeable ones as Uniblue RegistryBooster doesn't have a good reputation in the security community.

In fact, some security enthusiasts consider the product to be scareware, not necessarily due to its functionality, but because of the aggressive advertising tactics employed by Uniblue.

...

Update: We have changed the licensing type on our Avira AntiVir Personal listing from "Freeware" to "Ad-supported" as a result of this incident. Avira gave us assurances in the past that it won't display third-party ads through the product citing company ethos.

Since those policies have clearly changed and we want our users to be well informed about what they install, we have updated our listing accordingly. A similar change will be enforced for paid versions of Avira AntiVir if the product's Service Pack 2 (SP2) ships with the rebranded Ask toolbar included.

[catnipman]

This really, really, sucks, as antivir was my goto free antivirus program for my clients. Avast and AVG just hog WAY too many resources, and besides, as far as I can tell, no antivirus program really works anyway.

I used antivir because it was relatively lightweight and unobtrusive.

Now I've got hundreds of clients that may attempt to allow antivir 10 to update to SP2 and wreck their systems.

[TomGuy]

Many of these and pay programs become bloatware.

I use Avast 5. I tried Avast 6, but they had added a sandbox feature. Even shut off in their control panel, their sandbox conflicts with an independent program I use called Sandboxie. I back-graded to Avast 5. I am going to hate when they quite supporting 5 and I have to find another antivirus programs. I will quit using Avast before I quit using Sandboxie. I started Avast after AVG got so bloated it conflicted with some other programs.