Latest Avast 2016 R1 SP1 automatically inserts its own signature into emails you send from Web email services such as Gmail, yahoo Mail, etc, in web browsers. Yes! Avast now scans web email as well, but we feel this signature as a pure promotional tactic to attract new users.
If you’ve installed Avast on your computer, when you send an email, avast adds this signature to footer of the sent message: ‘This email has been sent from a virus-free computer protected by Avast. www.avast.com’
Users only notice this when they check their sent mail, main idea behind this could be users not using Avast will understand email sender uses Avast Antivirus to protect his system.
Disable Avast’s email signature
Avast has enabled this thing by default, here is how to turn it off.
1. Open Avast GUI, click on the Gear icon to open Settings > General
2. Uncheck ‘Enable Avast email signature’ and click ‘OK’ to apply the changes.
Note: Avast automatically embeds or injects the signature into sending emails irrespective of whether you’ve signature set or not in email service settings.
Recently Avast has acquired AVG, and shared the technologies between the two products, as a result, AVG has email signature thing as well, here is how to turn it off.
Disable AVG’s email signature
1. Open AVG interface
2. Click on Menu > Settings
3. In the Settings > General, uncheck ‘ Enable AVG Signature’.
4. Click ‘OK’.
This could well be that one more reason to ditch Avast and switch to other antivirus? What do you say?
Thanks, i tried to disable this feature by disabling ‘Add note on outgoing mail’ under mail protection configuration, but the check kept on until i unchecked this option on general configuration.
I really dislike this funcionality!!!
Disgusting. Total breach of ethics to stick this footer in without the knowledge of the sender. If it comes from my email and is signed with my name, I don’t want someone else piggybacking their own message which can then be attributed to me.
the avast auto signature insertion into outgoing emails is the attribute of a virus or malware. I immediately uninstalled avast and installed an antivirus that doesn’t violate ethics and common sense.
Worst marketing tactics ever.
I decided to uninstall Avast after discovering that this ad / footer was added without my consent
Changing the contents of someone’s email without consent is IMO the definition of MALWARE. I am not sure if it is even legal, and it sure as hell is not ethical. Who in the right mind at avast thought it was a good idea. Besides, over the last couple of years avast has been doing worse in comparative tests.
I was sending out invites to an event, and after I sent it I realized all of them had the signature added. It was embarrassing.
I uninstalled Avast and got myself a copy of bit-defender. But I have heard Avira is pretty good too.
You can try Avira, its good and doing well in recently done in AV-comparatives testing.
In avast business, this email signature get automatic enabled every time you start your PC (after Shut Down, Sleep or Hibernation). I am going to uninstall avast just because of this.