Jun 14, 2011 09:56 GMT  ·  By

Avira has stirred up some controversy among users after deciding to display ads for a third-party registry cleaner within the free version of its antivirus product.

Avira AntiVir Personal, the free solution offered by the German security vendor, is one of the most popular anti-malware products on the market today and has over 100 million users.

It seems that Avira recently partnered up with Uniblue, the owners of ProcessLibrary.com, a database of information about Windows processes, and creators of several software products.

The partnership between the two companies requires Avira to display ads for Uniblue RegistryBooster within AntiVir Personal.

These ads have taken users by surprise and have even upset the more knowledgeable ones as Uniblue RegistryBooster doesn't have a good reputation in the security community.

In fact, some security enthusiasts consider the product to be scareware, not necessarily due to its functionality, but because of the aggressive advertising tactics employed by Uniblue.

Softpedia has tested the paid version of Uniblue RegistryBooster some while back, both as a stand-alone product and as part of Uniblue's PowerSuite, and didn't find any malicious behavior.

It's true that the product didn't stand out with anything special and there are free alternatives that do the same thing, but it certainly doesn't resemble scareware programs which usually lack any real functionality and only exist to trick users.

While the jury's still out on Uniblue RegistryBooster and the marketing practices of its creator, Avira claims it wasn't aware of the concerns regarding the product.

"We are currently checking the facts about customer reports with bad Uniblue RegistryBooster experience and are discussing internally. Uniblue received our feedback and is always looking for constructive reviews for improving and add of functionality to the software," a company representative said.

"If the customer doesn't want to report issues to Uniblue for solving he can easy get his money back within 30 days through the Uniblue satisfaction guarantee," he added.

However, it seems that not only users of Avira's free product were affected by this partnership. Paying customers also received an email from the company promoting RegistryBooster. The ad displays a four-star award given by Softpedia to the product back in 2009.

We want to make it clear that this award was given for the product's functionality as it was at the time compared to other products on the market and did not take sales or marketing tactics into consideration.

In addition to the RegistryBooster controversy, Avira seems to have also upset some users by bundling a rebranded version of the Ask toolbar in the upcoming AntiVir Personal SP2. Screenshots published by the company suggest that a Web protection component called WebGuard cannot be installed without this toolbar.

Update: We have changed the licensing type on our Avira AntiVir Personal listing from "Freeware" to "Ad-supported" as a result of this incident. Avira gave us assurances in the past that it won't display third-party ads through the product citing company ethos.

Since those policies have clearly changed and we want our users to be well informed about what they install, we have updated our listing accordingly. A similar change will be enforced for paid versions of Avira AntiVir if the product's Service Pack 2 (SP2) ships with the rebranded Ask toolbar included.

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Avira's in-product ads stir up controversy
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