Avast Free Licence

[frank]

Anyone had difficulty recently trying to obtain the free licence, I've filled out the online form at Avast twice now but still never received anything back, installing Avast free on grandaughters laptop. I've used them for years and never had a problem.

 

[neil_g]

Nope, my home machine just renewed itself okay.

Got any ad or script blockers that may be breaking the form?

 

[frank]

Had a try again this morning after making sure any ad blockers etc were off, didn't have any anyway. Seems registration is no longer required for the free version >>> https://www.avast.com/registration-free-antivirus
This page wasn't there a couple of days ago.

 

[DuncTheGeek]

You shouldn't need to fill in a form although they always liked to force a 'renewal' once a year to ensure that you're running an upto date engine. (They don't want you getting hit & then blaming them as their free version is the 'shopwindow' for commercial users).

This yearly renewal/registration was their opportunity to upsell of course but you don't need to. The free versions are quite acceptable, even if you're looking at security certification such as Cyber Essentials - the main thing is that they're active, scanning on demand and updating themselves as soon as new virus defs come out.

Also consider AVG or Bitdefender. Some people like Kaspersky but I wouldn't really rely on Windows Defender...