Avira Free Security succeeds Avira Free Antivirus
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Dear Avira Community,
Avira Free Antivirus becomes Avira Free Security! What sounds like a name change at first glance, has big changes "under the hood".
In the past, pure virus protection was completely sufficient to protect your system - unfortunately, this is no longer the case today. For this reason, we must react to new threat scenarios away from viruses, worms, and trojans. For this reason, we have combined all modules under a uniform interface.
For you, this means: More overview and easy administration.
On the following page you will find more information:
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Okay, I hate being that guy raging for no reason on new features and I understand you want to promote your products, as a free user I should have no right to complain.
For the past few years I've been uninstalling the separate products when it was still possible. On 8.1 it remains, but makes the tray icon disappear.
On Windows 10, you now force installation of Phantom VPN and Optimizer (amongst other things), so far it's fine. It becomes less okay when it gets in the way of users. And let me say I don't agree on your views that an AV only isn't enough for protection, especially when most websites today use SSL/TLS. This is only to promote your stuff (understandable) at the detriment of usability.
Now let me recount the conversation I had with an user over the phone today (shortened a lot).
User : I have that VPN thingy showing up, what do I do?
Me : double-click the VPN tray icon and go to the little wheel on top right.
User : It shows 20Mb used on 500Mb.
Me : Click on the little wheel, do you see it? You never activated the VPN, right?
User : No I didn't.
Me : What do you see after ckicking on the little wheel?
User : I see only send diagnostic data activated green, nothing else.
Me : Okay, let it be, I'm gonna find you another AV soon.
You see, what happened there is people are annoyed. This person never uses public wifi (desktop wifi card), and I don't want his traffic data going through your VPN by mistake, that in itself is a security issue. His ISP network is perfecty fine, he doesn't want a VPN.
By hiding everything to the users and bloating Avira in the past few years, you managed to make a perfectly fine product into an annoying, unusable product people don't want, even if the AV part is more effective.How to correct this in my opinion :
-NEVER force anything on your users, let them install AV only. Nothing should be ticked by default at installation. Or at least let us uninstall the other features individually like on W 8.1 without the tray icon disappearing/updates reinstalling everything.
-Let us access settings without going though Security/Protection settings/Real time protection little cogwheel. It's outright unusable.
One last thing : do you realize I write this because I care about your product? It was the most straightforward, with very light updates on slow connexions, with a clear interface... I want the old Avira back, pre-launcher era... Or I may as well install Comodo (horribly bloated), will make no difference today. I've been putting up with your questionable choices for years, and now is the point of no return.
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Hello Avira Community,
we can totally understand you and your feedback you posted.
Avira has the name to be always as close to the customers as possible and we always try to bring you the best protection you can have in this new modern world who everything is changed to be more digital and connected.
For that reason we are always develop new solutions and ways to give you this high standard protection.
And of course we also understand that changes can not always be positive and not everyone likes what we think would be a good idea.We are always grateful for your support, your interaction and your feedback about our products and I can promise you, that we take every feedback serious and we consider our thoughts about our changes.
Thank you.
Best,
Felix Bär
Avira Customer Service Engineer
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I subscribe to this post because I share every single word was written.
I'm sorry @Felix Bar, but your sentence "And of course we also understand that changes can not always be positive and not everyone likes what we think would be a good idea" should lead you to restore customization in install process where the user can decide what to install and what to install not.
That way everyone can enjoy and like the features they want, and not the features YOU want us to install.
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For Opera it's quite easy, let setup install it and then remove it from Installed Applications.
And as it was written in another post, you can also remove other "default" modules like firewall and email protection using the old setup in Avira folder "C:\Program Files (x86)\Avira\Antivirus"
Anyway it's really time that Avira returns to a customized installer where user decide what to install and what not.
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If you have Opera blocked on your network the update fails because it can't install the browser, then re-prompts, fails again and repeats endlessly. I found that one out today on my old laptop that has the free version installed.
Even on the paid version I have on my main home PC it just upgraded to the new release and just force installed the optimizer, the VPN, and all that. Thanks to this thread for showing me where to go to remove most of the components I don't use. You can't remove parts through add/remove programs anymore.
Also, am I alone in finding the new UI rather unintuitive compared to the old one? Probably because it tries to bundle all the products together and I'm looking to just do my antivirus scans and configuration.
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So I just uninstalled avira.
I received multiple alerts from my firewall for avira installing and trying to run 3rd party executables without my consent or permission.
system speedup,
vpn
spotlight
\avira_system_speedup.tmp
\avira.systemspeedup.maintenance.exe
ect..
If I didn't install these features during the original install, don't install them without my permission.
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Yes a sad state of affairs with regard to Avira. Unless they sort it out quickly I'll be going else where also!
See also : Avira Control Panel Pop-up
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Yes. Avira does what he said he does not allow for others (install software without permissions and do not allow to uninstall them) .
Maurizio-Focareta say it is possible to set parameters into "C:\Program Files (x86)\Avira\Antivirus". Yes, just for antivirus.
There is a way to uninstall system speedup and VPN (in the directory under "C:\Program Files (x86)\Avira") by using unistall application.
For security and updater, only disallow corresponding service.... I do not find another way to uninstall them
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