Editing AVG AntiVirus (section)

== Controversy ==
As of 2014, there are numerous reports dating back to 2012 that the AVG SafeGuard Toolbar installs itself without the consent of the user, as a side effect of installing other applications. The toolbar program appears to cause significant RAM issues and can be considered an intrusive [[potentially unwanted program]] (PUP). Once installed, the AVG toolbar is virtually impossible to remove. The toolbar uninstaller does not function, instead re-installing the add-on if manually removed. Consequently, many discussions and blog posts have described complex procedures for removal of the AVG toolbar, each with very mixed results.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/877518|title="AVG Secure Search" is obviously a kind of malware that attaches itself to FF. Is Mozilla working on killing it?|access-date=17 December 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.reviversoft.com/blog/2013/06/removing-the-avg-toolbar|title=AVG Toolbar & Secure Search: How do I remove it from my browser & PC?|work=ReviverSoft Blog|date=13 June 2013 |access-date=17 December 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://botcrawl.com/how-to-remove-nation-toolbar/|title=How to remove Nation Toolbar&nbsp;— Search.nation.com redirect (Removal) - Tech & Internet Security&nbsp;— News & Guides|access-date=17 December 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://forums.anvisoft.com/viewtopic-56-6579-0.html|title=How to Remove AVG SafeGuard Toolbar and AVG Secure Search|access-date=17 December 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160109044234/http://forums.anvisoft.com/viewtopic-56-6579-0.html|archive-date=9 January 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_programs/completely-remove-avg-safeguard-toolbar/6860d9a3-66d0-4a99-8f00-e9c887e7df34|title=Completely Remove AVG safeguard toolbar|website=answers.microsoft.com}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.zdnet.com/article/avg-security-toolbar-is-the-worst-foistware-ive-ever-seen/|title=AVG Security Toolbar is the worst foistware I've ever seen|author=Emil Protalinski|work=ZDNet|access-date=17 December 2015}}</ref>

In September 2015, AVG announced that it would start tracking users for profit, analyzing their data for sale to the advertising industry. This measure received criticism from consumers, the press and security industry, as many users intended to use the software in order to protect themselves from spyware and would not expect the functions of spyware to be "hidden" in security software.<ref>{{Cite news|title = Antivirensoftware benimmt sich künftig wie Spyware|url = http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2015-09/avg-antivirus-nutzerdaten-verkaufen|newspaper = Die Zeit|access-date = 23 September 2015|first = Patrick|last = Beuth| date=22 September 2015 }}</ref>

In December 2015, the AVG Web TuneUp [[Google Chrome]] extension (automatically installed with AVG AntiVirus) was revealed to contain multiple critical security vulnerabilities.<ref>{{cite web|title=Issue 675: AVG: "Web TuneUP" extension multiple critical vulnerabilities|url=https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/detail?id=675|date=15 December 2015|access-date=29 December 2015}}</ref> Most notably, Chrome users' browsing history could be exposed to any website, cookies from any site the user has visited could be read by an attacker, and trivial [[cross-site scripting]] (XSS) issues could allow any website to execute arbitrary code (as another domain).

The XSS vulnerability allowed a user's mail from "mail.google.com" to be read by any website, or financial information to be read from the user's [[online banking]] site. The AVG team fixed this by only allowing "mysearch.avg.com" and "webtuneup.avg.com" to execute these scripts. Despite this remediation, attackers could leverage any of these attacks if an XSS vulnerability was found on the AVG sites. As of April 2016, Web TuneUp was still not available for download from the AVG website.