If You Use The Avast Forum, You Need To Change Your Passwords

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If you're registered on the online support forums hosted by Avast, makers of the top-rated free antivirus software, then you may have heard that the forum has recently been hacked and has been taken offline for now.

There is no indication that usernames and passwords have been accessed (the company says that they were all encrypted, or at least hashed), but this is still a concern.

If you have used the Avast forums, and the password you chose was unique to that system, then there's no need to do anything. However, if you were registered on the forums and you used the same password elsewhere, on other systems, it would be wise to change that password on those other systems. Otherwise, if someone does manage to discover the Avast usernames and passwords, they can then be used on other systems too.

Note that this only affects the Avast forum. The antivirus software itself is not affected, and you can continue using it as normal.

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Comments

@Anupam - I would be more inclined to support Avast if they were less aggressive with those annoying nag notifications that they bombard me with every time I log on.

Which nag notifications? Log on where? :D

Every time I log on to my computer I have to deal with the Avast nags that tell me they can clean my browser, remove grime from my registry or provide anonymous VPN etc. At some point they should have realized that if I wanted the paid version I wouldn't have installed the freeware software. Avast is a first rate anti-virus program but I don't recall any anti-virus products I've used in the past being this aggressive with self promoting nag notifications.

I have Avast installed on my computer since a long time now. I haven't come across any such nags that you have posted about... strange. I am using the latest version. I have come across occasional pop-ups like the one that comes up when its definitions are updated, but that's it... none of the above nags. Maybe just a guess, but there's an option in Settings to disconnect your account from Avast... if it's enabled, disable that and see. Also, I should mention that I do not choose to install any of the tools that Avast offers, like browser protection, browser cleanup, etc. If you had chosen that, maybe that's why the nags are occurring? Well, whatever it is, I am not getting them. Maybe you can post this on their forum, once it comes up again.

Oh, the irony.......

Well as of 12 NOON on May 27, 2014 (Eastern US Time zone) the forums are STILL down. So, I guess it is the ever popular "waiting game" and wait and wait for them to come back up just so I can change my password.
It is a shame there could not be a "projected time til return of service" for the forums.

I am a member of their forum, and I got an email saying that they will be using a different software for their forum now, which should be more secure. Doing that will take time, and therefore, we as users have to be patient, and show our support to them.