
Firefox) and Avira SafeSearch, and they both work as browser extensions.
Why the focus on browsers? These days, as firewall protection has improved significantly, most malware and identity theft no longer come from e-mail attachments but instead come from infected websites exposing visitors to drive-by downloads, code injection, password-stealing Trojans, etc. Even perfectly legitimate sites can be temporarily compromised and website owners usually don’t even know their site has been hacked, so avoiding dodgy sites is no longer a guarantee that you won’t be infected.
Avira Browser Safety and Avira SafeSearch protect you and your privacy by blocking these website-based threats.
The new features work together to guide you to safe websites when you browse the Internet and warn you about harmful websites before you click on the links. They also block trackers and advertising scripts that are trying to profile your browsing activity.
In addition to the security focus, when you are doing online shopping on e-commerce sites, Avira will notify you if the item you are looking at is available at a lower price on other sites.
This additional feature makes online shopping safer by directing you to e-commerce sites from our trusted partners—which Avira has checked out for their security and privacy policies. We have researched these merchants for you to make sure they have appropriate data privacy procedures, reasonable return policies, no history of payment complaints, and no aggressive third-party ad networks running on their sites. So you save money, time and avoid potential hassles.
In case anyone might be wondering if Avira needs to track users’ web browsing habits in order to present these shopping offers, the answer is NO. Avira just compares the product SKU that is on your screen at that moment against a list of inventory among our partners. Avira does not permanently track your web habits in any way and you will never receive a re-targeted advertisement because of us, nor will we ever sell your information to anyone.
Avira also earns a commission from these shopping referrals. We use these earnings to help support our 350+ engineers so that we can continue to offer you the world’s best security software (which earned a 100% perfect detection rate as measured by AV-TEST)—all for free.
Of course, if you’d rather not use Avira Browser Safety or Avira SafeSearch you can always turn them off. The rest of our software will keep on protecting you as before.
The introduction of Avira Browser Safety and Avira SafeSearch represent just the latest step in Avira’s constant improvement.
When we opened our doors in 1986, the definition of computer “security” meant stopping annoying but relatively benign programs that spread via floppy disks! By the late-1990s, security had evolved to include e-mail viruses, and the growing use of the Internet lead to new forms of sending and contracting viruses, worms, Trojans and other malware. Professional spammers and organized crime syndicates took over from ‘recreational’ hackers in the mid-2000s, and introduced some of the first malware that actually stole credit card numbers and collected personal identity information.
To keep up with these changes in the nature of online threats, Avira constantly has to invent new technologies for detecting and disabling malware. You don’t even notice most of these innovations because they work behind the scenes.
The coders and virus hunters at Avira today are proud of the software that we have engineered for you, and we hope you’ll try out Avira Browser Safety (install for Chrome or Firefox) and Avira SafeSearch. Stay tuned for exciting future developments.
Would like to be able to disable the comparison shopping feature. Also a lot of videos don’t load (HTML5? Or Flash?)
Hi Matt,
Please visit the settings page for your browser apps/extensions. Here you’ll be able to disable the comparison shopping feature. Regarding the videos: What browser do you use?
Best,
István
Avira browser safety needs an exceptions list. I don’t like turning it (ABS) off as necessary when I want to view things like streaming video on websites I want to watch things on (and then have to turn it back on again when I leave the website). For example, when I go to NBC’s The Voice website to watch an entire episode of The Voice, I get this notice when Avira Browser Safety isn’t disabled:
“Sorry, we can’t play this video in its intended experience because we’re unable to load the accompanying message from our sponsors.
If you are using ad-blocking software, please disable it and try loading the page again.”
I have another adblocker that I have to shut off to watch these full episodes, but it has an exceptions list in which I included The Voice website.
Please add an exceptions list to the Avira Browser Safety extension in the next version of Avira Browser Safety.
Hi Gaius,
Thank you for your feedback – it’s appreciated! We’ll forward your feedback internally.
Best,
István
Yesterday, when i surfing my internet, this pop-up appear, ( normally harmful webpage would be blocked by avira extension.) the whole chrome is frozen. This is a typical fake error message which for scamming. What happen was the whole browser had frozen. meaning the Avira extension would not do their things and i had no way for reporting it since i can’t click anything on my browser. The only way to close this is by “ending task” using the task manager.
I hope Avira take note of this incidence n hopefully it also will improve our security.
People who not good is computer would felt on this.
the link of this error message is : http//www.computerprotective.com/system-pc-alert/logs-file/index.html
Thank You
Hi Chua,
Our apologizes for this behavior. Please submit the link on this website: https://analysis.avira.com/en/submit and it’ll be reviewed. Thanks!
Best,
István
i was sceptical amased when my cousin introduced me to free avira antivirus but it has proved to be more efficient in tackling intrusions into my pc , it even better than some paid antivirus . that is why i want to change my browser to chrome + avira safesearch . next month i will subscribe to buy avira antivirus.
Firefox is blocking Avira Browser Safety & any sites related to it. Has this been addressed by Avira?
Oh myy goodness! Awesome article dude! Many thanks,However
I am goig through difficulties with your RSS. I don’t know why I can’t
subscribe to it. Is there anybody else having similar RSS
issues?Anyone who knows the solution will you kibdly respond?
Thanks!!
Since i have safeseach installed by Avira My searchs are working badly and i don’t how to get rid off from safesearch
some newbies just were unhappy to see their original browser settings “hijacked” to ask.com. My suggestion is that give those starters a “Double-check” alert so they know what will happen if they apply that offer.
Thanks!