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Stop Avast from Adding Its Signature into Your Outgoing Emails


Avast is Lifehacker readers’ favorite antivirus program but it sure can be annoying. A recent update now inserts a footer advertising Avast into your outgoing messages. Here’s how to turn it off.

  1. Right-click on the Avast icon in your system tray and select “Open Avast user interface”

  2. Click the gear icon at the top right to go to Avast’s settings

  3. Under General, uncheck “Enable Avast email signature”

Imgur user Sinuce notes another place you might have to change settings:

  1. In the settings window, go to the Active Protection tab

  2. Click “Customize” next to the Mail Shield option

  3. Click the Behavior tab

  4. Uncheck “Insert note into clean message (outgoing)“

Both settings are turned on by default, which is very annoying—especially because you might not be aware that this signature is being added to your emails until you see one of your sent messages. I tried to send myself a couple of emails to trigger this signature but without luck, so it seems like it gets inserted randomly.

Here are some other settings you might want to change in Avast to make it less annoying.