Results of the AV-Comparatives 2013 Security Survey (pdf) are in, and once again AVAST leads among consumer preferences. Since AV-Comparatives is an independent testing firm, we always look forward to what they have to say. Here are some highlights:

According to survey respondents, AVAST remains the most widely used antivirus solution worldwide, claiming first place as the most used computer antivirus in Europe and South/Central America.

We are also glad to report that AVAST is the only brand to be among the top three most-used brands in all four global regions surveyed.

At the time this survey was conducted, AVAST was protecting just over 184 million PCs, Macs, and mobile devices.

To make the above news even better, the survey’s respondents requested AVAST as their top interest for future testing.   Read more…

As most of our readers and fans know, we now protect more devices (PC, Mac, and Android) globally than any other antivirus provider.

As our business model is such that our freemium software serves as our ‘advertising’ (we don’t do traditional advertising), and most of our users come to us via referrals, we receive quite a bit of thanks from avast! users around the world.

And as our software is available in about 40 languages, we hear from grateful people in Spanish, German, Russian, French, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Polish, English, and of course, in addition to a few others, the native Czech of the land where we are headquartered.

For years we put selections of this positive feedback on our webpages at avast.com. But recently the world has been shifting toward social media based feedback, which means we don’t hear as much from avast! users through our web contact form (and that’s ok!).

But now and then we still do. And occasionally a message really catches our eye. Today, that message came from Wyoming, USA, in perfect ‘cowboy’ speak.  Read more…

AVAST typically has a lot of great news to report and we’re looking for a full-time native speaker of English — with a background in IT journalism (this is important!) — to join our team in Prague.

For more information, please visit our job description for PR News Writer – English native speaker (click link).

Please note that questions about the position will NOT be answered here. Thanks.

Late yesterday (28 June 2012), AVAST Software’s VP of Windows Products, Pavel Sedina, announced a new release of avast! Free Antivirus, avast! Pro Antivirus, and avast! Internet Security.

The new version is 7.0.1451 and contains the following totally new features:

• WebRep now supports Opera
• SiteCorrect module for the detection of unwanted websites

And, in addition to the new features, our developers have made the following modifications:

• Changes in the AutoSandbox module
• Outlook plugin redesign
• Windows 8 compatibility updates
• Emergency Updater
• Improvements to Remote Assistance (support for UAC prompts, etc.)
• Improvements to avast! SafeZone™ (protection against kernel-mode keyloggers, updated SafeZone Browser, clipboard sharing, etc.)
  

We offer very special thanks to our developers, our QA team, and most importantly our loyal users, who have for many years provided us with great constructive feedback. Anyone can complain, but avast! users consistently amaze us with their new ideas.

For more technical info, please visit http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=100247.0

For the millions of you who have avast! already installed, just open your avast! control panel, then go to Maintenance -> Update Program

Or, you may download the new update file directly here http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe

AVAST Software Announces Winner of its Latest Facebook-Based Promotion

To promote the release of new avast! version 7, AVAST Software ran a promotion for a lucky user to win seven days in ‘paradise’, an all-inclusive holiday for the winner to a destination of his or her dreams. To win, participants had to enter the promotion on www.facebook.com/avast and estimate correctly what the avast! active user base would be two months later. Surprisingly, eight participants actually got the correct number of 150,107,324 active users.

However, it was Daniel Santos do Nascimento from Maceió in Brazil who picked the correct number nearly 7 weeks earlier. “I thought of it like a maths test,” explains Daniel, “I looked at the last 6 months number of active users and used the approximate growth to estimate the probable next number – but  to be honest, I was just lucky!”

Daniel, an avast! user for over three years, decided to let his wife choose the destination, “My wife has always wanted to go Rio de Janeiro and this opportunity has allowed her dreams to come true,”

Daniel, his wife and son are now planning their all expenses paid trip and avast is now planning a bigger competition to coincide with the registration of the 200 millionth user which based on strong growth could well take place in 2012.

We like to think that the avast! voice telling us that our virus database has been updated is almost like a pleasant song, something to cheer us all up, reminding us that nobody needs to sing the PC blues.

So it’s great to know we’re not alone, and that our users also think this way. Here’s an example by “Ferrett Steinmetz,” an Ohio-based writer, who recently tweeted:

A quick read down Mr. Steinmetz’s twitter wall shows similar cleverisms about a large number of subjects. You can follow him on twitter @ferretthimself.

Also, feel free to change your avast! voice or even record your own avast! voices via our avast.com Community pages.

Hello avast! Blog readers. Occasionally we hear from people who wonder how we can (or why we would) give away such great software for free – namely, avast! Free Antivirus and our Android offering, avast! Free Mobile Security.

My unofficial response is that we closely align ourselves to the principles of rock and roll. To keep ourselves in the right head-space in the Marketing/PR department, we listen to the following songs – every day – in constant rotation:

Rolling Stones – “I’m Free”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FG7N09qjVQ
“I’m free to do what I want any ol’ time…”

The Who – “I’m Free”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjH8_y5JWnY
“I’m free…”

Pearl Jam – “Corduroy”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_kKPTo7EM4
“Can’t buy what I want because it’s free…”

Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Give It Away”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsMQO12Hfc
“Give it away, give it away, give it away now…”

Read more…

On 21 December, 2011, we launched our Android antivirus/anti-theft solution (see our official press release). The beta version, released a few weeks earlier, was well received, and generated a lot of initial buzz in the Android community. What follows are quotes from early reviews, many of which were written about the beta version. We have also received a lot of great feedback from our avast! user community, and thus a few days ago AVAST CTO Ondrej Vlcek responded to 10 frequently asked questions about avast! Free Mobile Security.

Here is some of the initial praise from the Android community:

“It has the potential to overshadow just about all of the apps in our Mobile Security App Shootout.”
“A strong contender for the best overall security app on Android.”
“Extremely sophisticated security solution accessible to everyone.”
– Android Police (product review, 7 December 2011)

Read more…

Yes, most of us complain about all the seemingly unnecessary changes that Facebook initiates far more often than we’d like (just about the time we figure out how to navigate everything)… but it’s good to remember that Facebook is a free service. Of course some will argue that nothing is really ‘free’, but at least +140 million active avast! Community members know differently.

Value proposition

Some of you will remember the days of Rolodex. Mine was typically overfilled with business cards and scraps of paper – taped, glued, or even stapled in place. Sometimes a few ‘creative’ oversized business cards or paper scraps would clog up the ‘machine’, and maintaining changes to phone numbers, addresses, and job titles was always a major problem.

So Facebook, for me, was a welcome change. All my contacts keep their own info updated, and I can find them at any time via the search box. And my Facebook account serves 4 key purposes:

Read more…