A newer version of Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus is available.
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5 out of 7 people found this review helpful
1 stars
Version: Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 9.0.0.407
"Highly Intrusive Adware thats a virus unto it self."
Pros: It's free, and does an ok job protecting against viruses, and works in xp64.
Cons: Mammoth daily spam ads.
Summary: To me the point of ad ware and anti-virus programs are to help protect you from things that interfere with you're computer and you work-flow. I also understand that Avira want you to purchase the full version of this software so try to push it on you; however, the way they go about it is literally more intrusive than some of the viruses it's supposed to protect you against.
For example. Lets say you get a bot virus on you're system, and unbeknown to you you're system is being used as part of a spam ring. Typically these annoying pests reside in the background of you're system and slow down you're computer a bit, but most of the time go unnoticed by the end user, unless you did a virus scan for them. Thats not all that disruptive even if you don't want it occurring. Anitvir will have no issue helping protect you from these little system sappers, but in exchange for it's "FREE" protection you have to endure being interrupted in the middle of what ever you are doing to deal with a pop up window that takes system focus. Thus it interrupts the writing of emails, papers, playing games, and even writing a review of the product it self. To say that the background viral process is more user unfriendly than the Antivir ads is like asking a person which hand would you like chopped off, your left or your right. Considering there are other free antivirus programs out there that do roughly as good a job as Antivir but don't shove spam in you're face every day, I would recommend not getting Antivir unless you go for the commercial one. I my self will not go that route however as I have a policy never to give money a company that spams me (or at least not in intrusive and anoying ways).
- 3 replies to this review
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extirpator try this http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-the-Popup-Ads-in-Avira-Antivir
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@ Gold Dust. I honestly wish that resolved the issue, but my system is set to handle the definition updates in the morning, but the spams often happen in the afternoon well after the definitions should have been updated. Yes it doesn't happen all the time, just once ever single day unless the computer is off. My gripe has less to do with the fact they are advertising (after all I am using a free version of their product) and more to do with how disruptive it is when it does. It steals focus from what ever I'm doing and puts the ad in my way. That is not user friendly, that is intrusive and unfriendly.
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Use the Scheduler for the updater, since the pop up add only comes up when you update. It does not comes up all the time like you are making it out to be.
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