Avast Free Antivirus

Description

Security software is expensive to develop and maintain. Virus definition databases require constant updates, threat researchers require salaries, and cloud analysis infrastructure requires servers running around the clock. For most of the early decades of the antivirus industry, that cost came directly to the consumer: you paid for protection, or you went without it.

Avast based its business on a different theory. In 2001, in financial trouble after more than a decade of selling licensed antivirus software, the company made its basic product free. More users meant a bigger threat detection network and a bigger network meant better software, which could attract paying customers for premium tiers. Between 2004 and 2006 alone, Avast’s user base went from one million to twenty million. As of 2015, Avast had the highest market share of any antivirus vendor in the world. Free antivirus protection had moved from financial risk to industry-defining model — and Avast Free Antivirus is at the heart of that story.

HISTORY

The company has existed for more than a decade before the free product. In May 1988, Pavel Baudis, a researcher at the Research Institute for Mathematical Machines in Prague, Czechoslovakia, received a floppy disk from a colleague who had returned from abroad. On it was the Vienna virus — one of the first computer viruses in recorded circulation. Baudis spent days taking the code apart, examining how it spread, and writing the first program that was able to remove it. He then asked his colleague Eduard Kucera to join him in building something more substantial.

Working under communist Czechoslovakia, where private enterprise was illegal, the two researchers joined with other entrepreneurially minded colleagues to form Alwil, a cooperative — the only commercial structure the government permitted. In November 1989, weeks after the Velvet Revolution began changing the politics of the country, Alwil began selling its antivirus software commercially. The full name of the product, Anti-Virus Advanced SeT, gave the company its eventual name: AVAST.

The cooperative was converted to a joint partnership in 1991 when the new post-communist government created a market economy. Alwil spent the 1990s competing with established Western antivirus companies, including Symantec, which used aggressive pricing to dominate markets where Alwil had little distribution advantage. By 2001, the company was in serious cash flow problems. Rather than fold or seek acquisition, Alwil made the freemium pivot: give the core antivirus away free, build scale through the user base, and monetize through premium upgrades.

Vince Steckler, who used to work for Symantec, became CEO in 2009 and brought with him the operational structure necessary to manage the company’s rapidly growing install base. In 2010, Alwil officially changed its name to Avast Software, after the name of the most popular product. That same year, CVC Capital invested $100 million, valuing the company at $1 billion. As of 2013, Avast has 200 million users in 38 countries, with software translated into 43 languages — all from a cooperative that began with a floppy disk and a virus in Communist Prague.

In July 2016, Avast acquired AVG Technologies, which at that time was the third largest antivirus vendor in the world, for $1.3 billion. The acquisition doubled Avast’s user base and brought AVG’s detection engine under one ownership, though both brands continued operating separately. In July 2017, Avast acquired Piriform – the UK developer behind CCleaner, Recuva, Defraggler and Speccy.

Avast was listed on the London Stock Exchange in May 2018 at a valuation of PS2.4 billion. In July 2021, NortonLifeLock announced that it was planning to acquire Avast for $8 billion. After regulatory clearance from the UK Competition and Markets Authority, the merger was completed in September 2022. The combined entity assumed the name Gen Digital, co-headquartered in Prague and Tempe, Arizona, with a portfolio ranging from Norton, Avast, AVG, LifeLock, Avira, and CCleaner.

JUMPSHOT DATA FTC SETTlement Controversy

The scale of Avast’s free user base created an asset beyond threat detection data. In 2014, Avast acquired Jumpshot, which was originally an antivirus startup, and turned it into a data analytics subsidiary. Jumpshot collected aggregated, anonymized browsing behavior from Avast users and sold that data to third parties. By 2018, Jumpshot was claiming data from over 100 million devices and was describing its offering in marketing materials as being able to see “every search, every click, every buy, on every site.”

In January 2020, a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag published internal Jumpshot contracts and leaked documents that revealed the extent of the data sales. Clients had included companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yelp, Home Depot, Conde Nast, McKinsey, Pepsi and Intuit. The data sold included full browsing histories with timestamps, device identifiers and location data at the city level. Although Avast removed names and email addresses, the persistent device identifiers enabled buyers to track individual behavior across multiple sites over time, and the supposed anonymization did not necessarily prevent re-identification when buyers combined Jumpshot data with their own existing datasets.

Avast closed Jumpshot on January 30, 2020, three days after the investigation was published. CEO Ondrej Vlcek admitted publicly that anything that threatened the trust of users was unacceptable.

In February 2024, the Federal Trade Commission settled its investigation of the Jumpshot operation. The FTC fined Avast $16.5 million and prohibited the company from selling or licensing browsing data gathered from Avast products to advertisers. The commission ordered Avast to delete all data Jumpshot had accumulated — more than eight petabytes of browsing records from 2014 to 2020. The FTC also required Avast to notify affected users and implement a comprehensive privacy program. The settlement was the first time the FTC had imposed a major penalty on an antivirus company for selling the browsing data its security software collected.

CURRENT FEATURES

Avast Free Antivirus focuses on a series of real-time shields that operate in the background at all times. File Shield scans programs and files when the operating system opens, runs, modifies, or saves them, blocking malicious content before it reaches the filesystem. Web Shield tracks data being transferred during browsing and blocks malicious scripts and dangerous downloads as they arrive, rather than after. Mail Shield scans incoming and outgoing messages in email clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird for malicious attachments and content. Behavior Shield monitors all running processes for suspicious behavior patterns — it can block a file based on its behavior similarity to known threats even if that particular file has no entry in the virus definitions database — it can detect newly-released malware variants.

CyberCapture sends rare or suspicious files to the Avast’s Threat Lab cloud environment for analysis before they are allowed to execute, returning a verdict without the user having to manage the process. Rescue Disk enables users to boot from a USB drive or CD and execute Avast’s scanner outside of a compromised operating system, which can detect rootkits and bootkit malware, which active Windows cannot safely remove.

Ransomware Shield, which Avast shifted from paid levels to the free version in a previous release cycle, protects designated folders from being modified by untrusted applications. Users specify which folders are to be protected; any application not on the trusted list must explicitly be allowed to write, delete, or encrypt files in the folders.

Network Inspector scans the home Wi-Fi network for devices and detects configuration vulnerabilities, such as routers with weak passwords or outdated firmware. The free version reports results but does not automatically remediate them.

Avast Assistant, which was added in recent updates, uses AI to analyze text, links, and emails for signs of scams. Users can paste a suspicious message or URL into the assistant and get an assessment of whether it exhibits signs of phishing, fraud or social engineering.

Independent testing lab AV-Comparatives gave Avast a Top-Rated Product for both 2024 and 2025. AV-TEST evaluations for September and October 2025 gave perfect scores of 6.0/6.0 in terms of protection and usability, with 5.5/6.0 in terms of performance — consistent with the product’s historically lightweight footprint.

The free version shows promotional prompts for paid upgrades and has no phone or chat support. Premium Security includes an Enhanced Firewall which includes per-application network rules, webcam security against unauthorized access, and a sandbox environment to run untrusted applications in an isolated environment. Avast One plans come with a VPN, identity monitoring, and system cleanup tools at different price ranges.