Does Avast For Mac Really Work

$8.99

Pros
Good speed test results. Free version available.
Cons
Confusing pricing structure. Few servers and few server locations. No stand-out features.
Bottom Line
Avast SecureLine offers VPN security and solid speed test scores, but it's hampered by a lack of features and servers, as well as convoluted pricing.

A virtual private network, or VPN, adds an additional layer of security to your internet connection. Avast SecureLine VPN has the pedigree of a leading antivirus company behind it, and it produced some impressive speed test scores in testing. But it comes up short of the best VPNs thanks to an expensive and inflexible pricing plan and unimpressive server infrastructure. It has the core of a good service, but one that needs fleshing out. Instead, I recommend Editors' Choice winner NordVPN, which offers a powerful yet friendly product, and co-winner Private Internet Access, which has the most robust VPN collection of VPN servers I've yet reviewed.

Sep 18, 2017 Avast Free Mac Security is free. It supports Macs running any version of OS X, as long as they have 128MB of RAM and 750MB of available disk space. Avast Free Mac. Review by Israel Torres Introduction avast! Mac Edition is an Antivirus software for Mac. The software offers the following features: On-Access Scanning User friendly interface Automatic updates Integrated email protection PowerPC and Intel supported Simple Installation This software is not free, however they offer a free 60 day trial version to download from their website.

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What Is a VPN?

Does Avast For Mac Really Works

When you're connected to a VPN, it creates an encrypted tunnel between your computer and the VPN company's server. This is why you need a VPN. Information sent through this tunnel is unreadable to anyone who tries to intercept or spy on it. If you're using the Wi-Fi at a coffee shop, for example, you won't have to worry about the owner of the network or bad guys lurking on the network stealing your data.

That encrypted tunnel also masks your web activities from your internet service provider. That's handy, especially since Congress recently gave the green light for ISPs to start selling anonymized user data.

VPNs can also be used to circumvent internet restrictions, either imposed by oppressive governments or, say, the BBC making sure that only UK citizens can stream videos. That's because a VPN can connect to servers located in places other than your actual, physical location. If your local government blocks certain websites, a VPN will tunnel out to another country where you can access the internet freely. A VPN also hides your IP address, since your web traffic appears to be coming from the VPN server and not your computer. Note that it's up to you to research local laws and terms of service before using a VPN.

All that said, using a VPN doesn't guard against all dangers. Malicious ads, malware, and other network attacks can still harm your computer and steal personal information. I highly recommend using antivirus software to keep your computer protected from all angles.

Pricing and Features

When I first looked at SecureLine, I was dismayed to find that it didn't offer a multi-device pricing tier. Thankfully, Avast has since loosened up and rolled out a pricing scheme that is far better for consumers. For $79.99 a year, you can secure up to five devices on any platform. At checkout, you can also select a two- or three-year plan for $149.99 or $219.99, respectively. It's not until the checkout screen that you also see a monthly billing option for $8.99.

If you don't feel the need to secure all the devices in your house, you can settle for Avast's device-specific plans. It costs $5.99 per month to secure one PC with Avast, or $59.99 per year. To secure five PCs, which is the industry average, you'll have to pay $79.99 per year. There are other combinations of PCs and billing cycles to explore.

The Mac-only version costs $59.99 per year, or $7.99 per month, to secure five devices. The Android-only package is $19.99 per year, or $2.99 per month, for five devices. The iOS-only version similarly costs $19.99 per year, or $2.99 per month, for five devices. Interestingly, if you opt to add Android VPN, iOS VPN, or Mac VPN plans to your PC plan, they cost only $9.99 per year or $2.99 per month. If you select the Mac version, mobile plans are still full price but the PC version is reduced to $29.99.

While I appreciate the variety of pricing options Avast allows, it can be a challenge to understand. Most other services are more flexible—with twice yearly or even quarterly subscriptions—and easier to understand. KeepSolid VPN Unlimited is the most flexible, even offering a low-cost $3.99 weekly plan that's ideal for vacations.

If you're not willing to pay up right away, SecureLine has a seven-day free trial period that is mercifully ad-free and mostly free of irritating upsell reminders. However, there are totally free VPN services out there, such as the browser plug-in for Hotspot Shield Elite. I noticed that if I tried to buy a subscription through the SecureLine client after my trial period ended, the price was a specially discounted $39.99.

The average monthly price among the ten best VPN services fluctuates, but is between $10 and $11. Editors' Choice Winner Private Internet Access comes in significantly below that threshold, at $6.95 per month. NordVPN, on the other hand, is also an Editors' Choice winner but costs $11.95 per month. It justifies that expense with unique features like double encryption servers and access to the Tor anonymization network via VPN.

While I am glad to see Avast make the pricing for SecureLine competitive, I am a bit irked at how it pushes annual plans. The finicky nature of networks means a VPN that's fast and useful one day could be fatally hamstrung the next. Consumers also aren't used to paying large, up-front costs for internet services, making these annual fees look less attractive than flexible monthly plans.

Also, Avast follows the lead of other antivirus companies and doesn't include a VPN subscription in any of its omnibus security suites. That's really unfortunate, considering that a one-year subscription to Avast SecureLine is pretty close to the price of a Avast Internet Security 2017 subscription.

If you want to secure more than phones and PCs, other VPNs have you covered. TorGuard offers routers with its software already installed, providing protection to each device that uses the router to connect to the internet. This includes smart fridges and dumb video game consoles. TorGuard also lets you purchase subscription add-ons, such as additional licenses, access to a super-fast network, and static IP addresses. SecureLine, by comparison, is a bare-bones service.

Despite the change in pricing, I still expected more features from SecureLine. There's no option to change VPN protocols, and the protocol used by the service is not easily discoverable on its website. According to Avast, SecureLine uses the OpenVPN protocol on Windows and Android devices. Mac and iOS users use IPSec instead. Avast also pointed out that SecureLine fixes a DNS leak issue, providing customers with improved security. SecureLine does not, however, provide ad-blocking, which was once rare in the VPN space but is becoming more common. TunnelBear, in particular, provides a standalone ad-blocking browser plug-in that looks and works great.

Avast SecureLine grants access to a mere 29 VPN servers spread across 21 countries. These cover several cities across the US, as well as Central and South America, China, Eastern and Western Europe, Russia, and Turkey. Notably missing altogether are African servers, though that's not unusual among VPN services. The best VPN services have significantly more robust networks, however. Foremost among them is Private Internet Access VPN; that service has more than 3,000 servers available for users.

These numbers matter. The more server locations a VPN company provides, the more likely you are to find a faster, nearby server while traveling. It also means you have more options for location spoofing. Furthermore, the more servers available, the less likely you are to be crammed into an overcrowded server and get a smaller piece of the bandwidth pie.

If you're keen on P2P filesharing and BitTorrent, you're in luck: Avast SecureLine allows file sharing traffic on its servers. That said, TorGuard has built its business on serving torrenters. That company offers several subscription add-ons, such as access to a high-bandwidth network and static IP addresses, that are sure to appeal to file sharing aficionados.

Avast, the company behind SecureLine, is headquartered in the Czech Republic. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, there are currently no mandatory data retention laws in the Czech Republic. A representative from Avast told me that company limits the data it collects to metadata, such as the time of connection and your network location. 'We do not log any of the data content,' the representative told me. Additionally, according to the company's privacy policy, what metadata is collected is deleted within 30 days. A company representative also confirmed for me that Avast does not inject ads into users' web traffic, nor does the company profit from the sale of user data.

Hands On With SecureLine

SecureLine's presence on your computer is minimal. You can access some of its key functions through a system tray icon, but you'll probably use the main app. This is a small, single window that provides access to all of SecureLine's features with ease. I tested the Windows client on a Lenovo ThinkPad T460s laptop running Windows 10.

You can select a server from a pull-down menu, or let SecureLine choose the closest (and probably fastest) server. That's simple, but I would prefer a search box to make finding specific servers easier. Also, I really like the way NordVPN shows the popularity and latency of each server, making it easier to choose a good one.

On one hand, SecureLine presents a clean and simple design. On the other, it's not the most friendly experience I've had with a VPN. TunnelBear, with its bright colors and cute bears, is definitely the most engaging. SecureLine is simple because it doesn't have much to offer. Its settings menu is mostly bare, aside from a toggle to automatically activate when connecting to an unknown network. That's a handy feature, but TunnelBear and PureVPN also include the option to route specific traffic outside of the encrypted VPN tunnel.

Using a VPN is great for security, but it can make some basic things really tedious. For example, Netflix blocks VPNs in order to prevent people from spoofing their location and watching videos that aren't available in their real location. Surprisingly, I had no trouble watching Netflix while connected to SecureLine, but that could change at a moment's notice.

Avast For Mac Antivirus Free Download 2016

Speed Tests

With rare exception, using a VPN will slow down your internet connection. That's because your traffic has to go through more fiber and more machines to complete its journey. I try to get a sense of the impact each VPN makes by running a series of tests using both domestic and international servers on Ookla's speed test tool. (Note that Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, which also owns PCMag.)

First, I run a series of speed tests using a nearby VPN server with and without the VPN active. I discard the highest and lowest results, average what's left, and find a percent change for latency, download speed, and upload speed between the two sets of results. This test puts an emphasis on speed, since the server I'm using is nearby. Second, I simulate connecting to a VPN server that's further afield by connecting with an Ookla test server in Anchorage, Alaska, and a VPN server in Australia.

In the domestic testing, SecureLine made a surprise early showing by improving latency by 29.9 percent. That means there was almost 30 percent less latency with SecureLine than without, a feat I've yet to see duplicated. But keep in mind that latency is really only important if you're doing intensive online gaming. SecureLine also managed minimal impact on download speeds, slowing downloads by only 6.3 percent. That's one of the better scores I've seen, but it pales in comparison to PureVPN, which actually increased download speeds by an unprecedented 346.4 percent. Notably, AnchorFree Hotspot Shield Elite is the only other VPN to improve download speeds in this test, by a respectable 45 percent. In the upload test, SecureLine also had strong performance. It slowed uploads by only 4.1 percent, the second-best score behind VPNArea, which reduced upload speeds by just 3.2 percent.

My international testing always yields worse performance results due to the distances involved, and Avast SecureLine is no exception. I found that it increased latency by 360.8 percent. That's significantly more than leader Hotspot Shield Elite, which increased latency by just 155.4 percent. SecureLine's download performance was middling in this round of testing. It reduced download speeds by 14.4 percent, which is a smidge worse than the competition. PureVPN dominates this test, improving download speeds by 403.8 percent. TunnelBear and Buffered VPN also improved download speeds, by 98.9 percent and 10 percent, respectively. SecureLine fared better in the upload test, where it reduced speeds by 3.3 percent, one of the better scores for this test. HotSpot Shield Elite pulled out a surprise win in this test; it's the only VPN to improve upload speeds that I've yet seen, even if it's only by 1.4 percent.

In general, Avast SecureLine managed above-average scores, particularly for downloads. When I look for the fastest VPNs, download speeds are my main consideration. But PureVPN is still the king of the speed heap for two years running, and has earned an Editors' Choice award for its trouble.

A Line, Secured

Avast SecureLine has a strong pedigree from its antivirus roots and notches some successes in its own right, especially in speed tests, where SecureLine managed above average results. It also plays nice with Netflix and allows BitTorrent and P2P. Unfortunately, SecureLine has a tiny number of servers and server locations, making it a tough sell in a crowded space. I'm happy to see the SecureLine pricing become more competitive, but it's still tricky to understand for the average consumer.

I'll continue to recommend my Editors' Choice winners KeepSolid VPN Unlimited, NordVPN, Private Internet Access, and PureVPN. All of these services offer more robust networks, more advanced features, and simple, flexible pricing.

Avast SecureLine VPN

Bottom Line: Avast SecureLine offers VPN security and solid speed test scores, but it's hampered by a lack of features and servers, as well as convoluted pricing.

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Does Avast For Mac Really Work

We warned you at the beginning of the year that many of your browser extensions are spying on you, tracking what you are visiting, and even inserting ads into pages. These aren’t just no-name developers either: even Avast, one of the most trusted antivirus vendors was in on the game.

Update 2: We just want to point out that this happened in the past, and Avast has cleaned up their act. They have a decent product, and while you can read this for historical purposes, you should know that many of the other antivirus vendors are doing worse things.

Update: Avast has posted a response to our article on their forum. We stand by our article and our research with the exception of one very inconsequential technical detail that we have updated below. The purpose of writing these types of articles isn’t to be vindictive — we just honestly want to make the world a better place for PC users.

Before we go even one step further, it’s important to note that they recently disabled the spying “shopping” feature in their browser extension. So if you are running the latest Chrome with extensions updated, you are fine. For now.

So Avast has stopped integrating the spying extension, but this is about the principle: you should be able to trust your antivirus provider. Why are they adding a feature that spies on your browsing, inserts ads… and all without properly notifying you?

And why, at the same time, are they claiming to stop spyware, even uninstalling other shopping extensions from other vendors, while they were doing the same thing they are supposed to stop?

On our test system, the only spyware and crapware that Avast actually detected and removed were the ones that competed with their own shopping extension.

Avast Online Security Extension Added a “Shopping” Component

About a week ago, we were playing around with installing a lot of nonsense from crapware sites, so we loaded up trusty Avast antivirus to see how much of the malware it would actually catch during the process. We were shocked to find out that some of the adware wasn’t from a third-party, but from Avast itself.

The problem lies in the SafePrice component of their Online Security extension, which adds shopping recommendations (ads) as you are browsing around the web.

Here’s the thing: many people actually want shopping extensions that help them find better prices — in fact, one of the HTG staff writers recently asked me what was the best way to find better prices. As a standalone product, if you specifically and deliberately choose to install something like this, there’s nothing wrong with it.

The problem is that Avast snuck this component in to their browser extensions that have at least 10 million users for the Chrome version alone. And then they enabled it by default.

Note: as we were doing research for this article, they updated their extension to not include the shopping feature, but it was there since maybe around last December.

Spying, You Say?

You might remember earlier how we said that this extension is spying on you and, unlike many websites, we’re definitely not going to make some claim like that without proof of what is really going on. So we loaded up Fiddler to see what’s really going on behind the scenes and under the hood and behind the curtain.

As it turns out, every single URL that you visit was being sent to Avast servers — first there would be a check to /urlinfo on one of their servers, passing in a unique ID that represents you on every single request. In this way they can build a list of every single page you have ever visited. They claim on their web site that they remove all personally identifying information, but how, exactly, are they able to do that when they are tracking every single page you visit and sending back that URL with a unique ID to represent you?

Update: Avast contacted us to point out that the /urlinfo page that we showed in the screenshot is actually part of their security extension, which does make sense. The /offers page, however, is sending back data as well.

That unique tracking ID is the biggest problem here: while it might not identify you by name, it’s enough to tie your whole browsing history together, and that’s a scary thing.

And remember, you didn’t ask for this. You just wanted to keep yourself safe online with a trusted antivirus provider.

The Bottom Line: Browser Extensions Have Wayyyy Too Much Power

RELATED:Warning: Your Browser Extensions Are Spying On You

This behavior, while ridiculous and sad from a company you should trust, isn’t new at all. Almost every product and service on the Internet and almost every browser extension, app, and website, are doing some form of tracking. Here on How-To Geek we use Google Analytics to see our site statistics, and our advertisers probably use a lot of other tracking that we can’t control. And it’s the same with every single web site.

Personal information and big data have become the standard; because after all: if a product is free, the real product is you. If you are browsing and reading a completely free web site, it’s not that big of a deal… after all, sites like ours need to pay our writers, and advertisements are the only way to do that. The problem is when it’s across everything you do.

The problem is that most browser extensions have access to everything you are seeing on the Internet, across every web site. And they aren’t properly disclosing this to you.

Malwarebytes For Mac

So the next time an extension says it can “Read and modify all your data on the websites you visit”, perhaps you should click that “Remove from Chrome” button instead.