Avast Upgrades Browser Extension with Privacy Protection Capabilities

Emeryville, California, United States, November 22 - Avast (LSE:AVST), a global leader in digital security and privacy, has upgraded its free browser extension with an expanded feature set and a new design to provide digital protection across all major browsers. The software, renamed from Avast Online Security to Avast Online Security & Privacy (AOSP), combines effective online protection with Avast’s latest Privacy Advisor, providing automated contextual guidance to help people optimize their privacy settings across popular websites and services.

AOSP is a convenient standalone starter pack for privacy protection, and also complements Avast Free Antivirus or Avast One. AOSP provides effective anti-tracking, advertising opt-out and cloud-based phishing protection to improve detection speeds. In addition, AOSP encourages users to regain control of the data they share online via Global Privacy Control (GPC), an integrated service that, in one step, automatically communicates the user’s privacy preferences to any website a user visits that’s participating in the GPC initiative.

“Our ambition is to ensure that everyone has effective protection for life online. With AOSP, we want to give people free digital protection without inconveniencing them by requesting changes to their preferences or browsing habits,” said Chandler Givens, Head of Consumer Privacy at Avast. “At the same time, we see an opportunity to meet the needs of people frustrated by the complexity of websites and social media privacy settings and configurations. Often, these options are buried deep or people are unsure where to look in order to change them. With the Privacy Advisor feature within AOSP, users are guided straight to important privacy settings on their favourite websites and offered simple guidance to protect their personal information.”

AOSP includes the following set of security and privacy features:

• Privacy Advisor: provides educational advice and simple step-by-step instructions to adjust and improve the privacy settings on popular platforms such as Google, Facebook and LinkedIn

• Global Privacy Control: enables users to set their privacy preferences regarding the personal data they share with websites participating in the initiative. These preferences are automatically communicated to a website once it’s visited
• Advertising Opt-out: allows users to opt-out of all, or specific advertisements automatically, without the need to send Data Subject Access Requests (DSAR), thereby preventing advertiser data collection

• Anti-Tracking: prevents websites and advertisers from tracking user data and online behaviour to build profiles and target with personalized ads

• Safe Search: provides users with safer search engine results by highlighting those that are malicious or safe with a red or green status icon
• Phishing Protection: identifies and blocks phishing websites

AOSP is available globally and has been localized in the following languages: Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish + Arabic, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Korean, Norwegian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish, with more to follow in 2022.

Avast Online Security & Privacy is compatible with Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and Avast Secure Browser, and is available to download now. For more information, visit www.avast.com/avast-online-security.