Take. It. Out.
Completed
I have a paid license for Avira, and I swear, if this doesn't end, it's the last time I'm using it. I opened Task Manager today because something new called "OrganiZen" or whatever popped up in my right-click menu while in Explorer. I saw it was an Avira item and turned it off. Then, I notice "Optimizer Host" is now an entry that's running all the time. I didn't pay for that. I don't want it. I paid for anti-virus and that's all I want. I have a gaming system, and I like to keep background processes down to as little as possible.
I don't want Mail protection as my mail is all done online. Yet, I can't turn that off without it coming back on later or constantly giving me an "action required" notice.
I like the Phantom VPN. I may have been tempted to get it. However, Avira is getting to be on par with adware programs that install stuff constantly when not asked.
I want a lean, mean, anti-virus that does that. Nothing more, nothing less. No added features "previewed" by being installed, especially when I have to pay more to actually get them to work. You run to advertise? Send me an email and I'll look it over, but integrate it into my context menus or have it running in the background to do absolutely nothing but advertise for itself? No.
So, just letting you know, as a customer. When the time my license expires, if this isn't cut down to anti-virus and nothing but (since that's what's paid for), I won't be resubscribing. I have 11 Avira processes running right now, and that includes the MailScanner service that I just told Avira to turn off.
Oh, and I don't like scheduled scans I don't control. I don't want Avira running scheduled scans. I'll run a manual one when I want. Windows 10 was bad enough for that, which is one reason I paid for Avira, now it's doing it. Give me an option to disable that, which carries across reboots.
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Hello Dean,
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 now combined all modules under a uniform interface. It is never easy to accept a change, especially if it has a negative effect on you personally.
I ask you to understand that this decision was not taken lightly but is based on the needs of the majority of our users.
Best,
Lukas Huptas
Avira Community Manager
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So which does "Organizen" and System Speedup protect me from? Trojans, viruses, or worms? Those are two that have nothing to do with protecting my system. At the very least, make it so these extra programs are listed but do not run without explicit permission, and when something is disabled, it actually stops running in the background. I have Mailscanner disabled and yet it's still running as a process. Why?
I know you have to make money, so you want to advertise the other options. I have no problem with that. I have a problem with things running even when I don't want them to.
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+1
@AVIRA: If this doesn't get addressed, I'll spend my anti-virus dollars elsewhere.
To the community: to permanently remove some of Avira's background services, try to install them directly from
C:\Program Files (x86)\Avira\
I managed to uninstall the following (each, from its respective folder):
Avira Phantom VPN
Avira System Speedup
Restart will be required.
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