Avast safezone free download - SMUD Safezone, SafeZone, Avast SecureLine VPN, and many more programs.
Avast is now making Avast Secure Browser available to existing Avast SafeZone Browser users. Avast Secure Browser is both an update and a successor to Avast SafeZone Browser and includes a range of new security and privacy tools.
Best apps for securing Android and managing privacy settings The 5 best weather apps with the most accurate forecast 9 best food tracking apps The best apps for.
Avast Safe Zone browser is a free browser from avast that is the combination of chrome and opera browsers. Avast Browser doesn’t depend on any kind of the antivirus or antimalware involved in your computer.
Avast Secure Browser is a free Chromium-based web browser by security company Avast that is advertised as private, fast, and secure on the official download site.
The web browser is the official successor of Avast SafeZone Browser which Avast discontinued some time ago to focus development on the new browser.
We will take a close look at the web browser in our review; you will learn about installation and use, functionality that it provides, and whether the fast, secure and private promise is kept.
Avast Secure Browser
Avast Secure Browser is available as a standalone download for Microsoft Windows and also as part of Avast's security products. You find the download link in the summary box below the review.
SafeZone installations will be updated automatically to the new browser.
Installation
The standalone download is offered as a web installer which means that most program components are downloaded during installation. A click on options on the first installation screen displays several setup preferences:
Place a shortcut on the desktop (yes), taskbar (yes), and in the start menu (no).
Launch the browser when the installation finishes (yes).
Set the default program language.
Import bookmarks and settings from my current default browser (no).
Import cookies from my current default browser (no).
Make Avast Secure Browser my new default browser (no).
You need to check the import options if you want to import bookmarks, settings or cookies from the default system browser. Note that the import function supports imports from the default system browser, and that the import will fail if the default browser is not supported by Avast (example: if Pale Moon is your default browser, imports will fail as it is not supported).
Note that the browser supports the importing of bookmarks and settings from other browsers after installation.
Just load secure://settings/importData at any time to configure the operation. Supported browsers are Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Internet Explorer. You may import from a bookmarks HTML file as well.
Note: Avast collects and sends usage statistics and crash reports to company servers automatically. Users are not prompted about this during installation. You may disable the collecting and sending on secure://settings/ under privacy and security.
Using the browser
Avast Secure Browser is based on Chromium, the open source part of Google Chrome, Vivaldi, Opera and other Chromium-based browsers.
If you used Google Chrome in the past, you will feel at home right away as the interface resembles that of the browser.
You will notice some differences though as well as Avast's browser comes with several built-in browser extensions.
Three extension icons are visible in the browser's toolbar that provide video downloading and ad-blocking functionality and a link to the new Security & Privacy Center.
A quick check on secure://extensions/ (yes, Avast uses secure:// for internal pages and not chrome// or about://), lists a total of seven extensions of which five are enabled. The installed extensions are:
Adblock -- an ad-blocker powered by uBlock Origin. Supports third-party filter lists, custom rules, and whitelists.
Avast Passwords (disabled) -- integrates with the passwords component of Avast security products. You need to install compatible software on the device to use it.
Avast SecureLine VPN -- integrates Avast's SecureLine virtual private network in the browser. Enabled by default but requires that Avast SecureLine VPN software is installed on the Windows machine.
Bank Mode (disabled) -- switch to a virtual desktop to communicate with important sites such as online banking sites. Bank Mode is only available if Avast Antivirus or other Avast security programs that support it are installed on the PC.
HTTPS Encryption -- enforces the use of HTTPS on supported websites.
Privacy -- an anti-tracking extension that blocks companies and sites from tracking you online.
Video Downloader -- download videos to your PC.
Avast Secure Browser users may disable or enable extensions but it is not possible to uninstall any of them.
Security & Privacy Center
Security & Privacy Center is another feature of the browser that is a unique feature. It is a control interface to enable or disable built-in features, and is used by Avast to list company products that complement the browser.
You control the ad-blocking, privacy, HTTPS encryption, and password manager extensions from the Security & Privacy Center, and new tools that are not listed as extensions.
These are:
Anti-Fingerprinting (disabled) to block or limit fingerprinting for tracking purposes.
Anti-Phishing (enabled) to protect against phishing attempts.
Extension Guard (enabled) to block the installation of untrusted browser extensions.
Flash Blocker (enabled) to block all Flash content.
You may launch a new private browsing window (called Stealth Mode) and a Privacy Cleaner (clean browsing data) from the Security & Privacy Center as well.
Avast's browser lists the installation status of Avast Antivirus, Bank Mode and Avast SecureLine VPN at the top of the page. Download links are provided when products are not installed; the links redirect to the Avast website.
Avast Secure Browser Benchmarks
How fast is Avast's Secure Browser? My initial assumption was that the browser's performance should be more or less identical to that of Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers.
I ran tests using stable versions of Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera and Avast Safe Browser. Benchmarks are linked; feel free to give this a try on your end and report the results in the comments below (Basemark and HTML5 Test: higher is better, Ares: lower is faster).
Browser / Test
Basemark
Ares
HTML5 Test
Avast Secure Browser
581
26ms
528
Google Chrome
570
25ms
528
Microsoft Edge
207
85ms
476
Mozilla Firefox
90
84ms
489
Vivaldi
429
27ms
520
Opera
415
29
528
The benchmark results show that this is indeed the case. The small score differences between Avast Secure Browser and Google Chrome are not significant; expect the same performance in Avast's browser and Google's browser.
To sum it up: The performance of the web browser is excellent. It is as fast as Google Chrome in benchmarks and that carries over to real-world usage as well. While you won't see a five times performance boost when you compared it to Mozilla Firefox, it is an area that the browser does really well in.
What about privacy?
One of Avast's main promises is that Secure Browser protects user privacy better than other browsers. I decided to run tests using the default configuration and with all privacy features enabled.
Panopticlick by EFF stated that Avast Secure Browser offered 'strong protection against Web Tracking' and that the browser did not have a unique fingerprint (in both configurations).
Avast Safezone Browser Free Download Filehippo
Other privacy tests highlighted that the browser's protection was not perfect but still better in many cases when fully enabled. The test on Maxa Tools, for example, listed the number of installed plugins, the device's IP address and the location based on the IP, as well as other information. A rerun of the test with fingerprinting protection enabled did not improve the results.
You may see some improvement depending on which test you run and whether you connect to Avast SecureLine VPN, but the same can be achieved with any other VPN as well.
To sum it up: Avast Secure Browser comes with built-in functionality to protect user privacy. While that is good overall, it does not offer 100% protection against all forms of invasive data collecting or fingerprinting.
Closing Words and verdict
Avast Secure Browser is a brand new browser that is based on Chromium. The browser is fast and comes with privacy enhancing extensions and settings that do improve privacy up to a point.
The fact that usage statistic and crash reports sending is enabled by default damages that somewhat; I'd expect a prompt from a privacy-focused browser during setup that asks me whether I want to enable the send-home functionality or not.
Another negative is that you can't uninstall extensions that the browser comes with. Disabling may work for most users but if you like a clean browser, you may not like the sticky nature of all default extensions.
Avast is off to a good start with the new browser. It offers better functionality than the company's SafeZone Browser and does well in benchmarks and other tests. The company needs to publish regular updates to not fall behind the Chromium release cycle and leave security issues unpatched for too long after patches become available.
It is too early to tell whether Avast is up for that. I'll revisit the browser in a couple of months and keep an eye on it in the meantime to find out more about that.
Now You: What's your main web browser right now, and why?
Avast Secure Browser
Operating System
Security
Landing Page
Advertisement
Several antivirus vendors have taken the open-source Chromium browser and created derivatives that they claim are more privacy-friendly and secure. Yet, at least two of them were recently found to have serious flaws that don’t exist in Chromium.
The latest example is the Avast SafeZone browser, internally known as Avastium, which is installed with the paid versions of Avast’s antivirus and security suites. Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy found a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of Avastium when opening an attacker-controlled URL in any other locally installed browser.
By exploiting the flaw, an attacker could remotely read “files, cookies, passwords, everything,” Ormandy said in a report that he sent to Avast in December and which he made public Wednesday. “He can even take control of authenticated sessions and read email, interact with online banking, etc.”
Ormandy created a Web-based proof of concept exploit that can list the contents of the computer’s C: drive, but an attacker could easily extend it to have any potentially interesting files sent back to him.
According to the Google researcher, Avast opens a Web accessible RPC service on the local computer that listens on port 27275. A malicious website opened in any browser can therefore send commands to this service by forcing the browser to make requests to http://localhost:27275/command.
While most of the available commands are not particularly dangerous, there is one called SWITCH_TO_SAFEZONE that can be used to open a URL in Avastium. And not just any URL like http:// or https:// ones, but also local or internal URL schemes like file:/// or chrome://.
That’s because, for some reason, Avast has removed what Ormandy calls a “critical security check” that prevents non-Web-related URL schemes from being opened from the command line. This protection, which exists in the original Chromium, was not present in Avastium, making it possible for an attacker to ultimately construct a payload that can read local files.
After Ormandy reported the flaw on Dec. 18, Avast deployed a temporary fix that broke the attack chain. The company provided a complete fix Wednesday as part of Avast version 2016.11.1.2253.
This week Ormandy also disclosed a critical vulnerability in Chromodo, another Chromium-based browser that’s distributed by security firm Comodo as part of its Internet Security suite. That vulnerability stemmed from the fact that Chromodo disabled one of the most critical browser security mechanisms, the Same Origin Policy.
Avast and Comodo are not the only security vendors who have created so-called “safe” browsers based on Chromium and are shipping it with their products. If Ormandy continues to investigate them, it will be interesting to see if he finds additional examples of serious flaws that were introduced in such browsers and are not present in Chromium.
Joxean Koret, a security researcher who has found vulnerabilities in antivirus products in the past, advised people on Twitter not to use the browsers provided by antivirus vendors. “I’ve analyzed 3. All broken,” he said.
“Selling antivirus doesn’t qualify you to fork chromium, you’re going to screw it up,” Ormandy said in a Twitter message earlier this week.
Avast Safezone Browser Free Download Softonic
To comment on this article and other PCWorld content, visit our Facebook page or our Twitter feed.