Does this internet browser window look familiar to you?

If so, you may be the victim of unwanted multiple browser toolbars. These browser add-ons have become a real problem in the last couple of years. Unfortunately, much free software nowadays comes with some unwanted add-ons; in most cases a so-called browser toolbar is installed. Many toolbars can be quite annoying because they:

• Change your homepage and your search engine without you realizing it
• Track your browsing activities and searches
• Display annoying ads and manipulate search results
• Take up a lot of space inside the browser
• Are difficult or even impossible for the average user to fully uninstall

It is especially for this last reason that avast! Browser Cleanup has been developed: To help our customers identify and get rid of unwanted browser toolbars and add-ons. It is integrated in avast! 8 and is also available as a stand-alone product on various download portals for use with friends without installed avast! Now, about 20 days after release of avast! Browser Cleanup, I think it’s time for a quick review of the results.

Some statistics after 20 days of release

Shortly after release I predicted that we would end up with about 100,000 different add-ons. Unfortunately I was wrong … totally wrong! Reality shows that I underestimated the scope of the issue. Twenty days after release of Browser Cleanup, our database shows …

• More than 220,000 different browser add-ons for the three main browsers
• More than 8,000 new add-ons per day
• More than 74% of all add-ons have a bad or very bad rating from our user community
• More than one third of all toolbars in our database are from only three companies

Top 20

The following numbers are based on about 4 million users which ran avast! Browser Cleanup in the first 3 weeks after release. The top 20 add-ins with a bad or very bad user rating can be seen in the list below. A lot of users decided to remove them:

Checking and cleaning the own browsers

If you want to verify your own browsers or get rid of an unwanted toolbar click on “Security” – “Tools” within the avast! window and chose “Browser Cleanup” or download the stand-alone tool e.g. at http://www.avast.com/en-us/download-thank-you.php?product=BC&locale=en-us
Stay tuned - we’ll post more on browser toolbars in the next days.