The features are called Avira Browser Safety, (available for Chrome and Firefox) and Avira SafeSearch, and they both work as browser extensions.

Browse the Internet safely…

Why the focus on browsers? These days, as firewall protection has improved significantly, most malware and identity theft no longer come from e-mail attachments but instead come from infected websites exposing visitors to drive-by downloads, code injection, password-stealing Trojans, etc. Even perfectly legitimate sites can be temporarily compromised and website owners usually don’t even know their site has been hacked, so avoiding dodgy sites is no longer a guarantee that you won’t be infected.

Avira Browser Safety and Avira SafeSearch protect you and your privacy by blocking these website-based threats.

The new features work together to guide you to safe websites when you browse the Internet and warn you about harmful websites before you click on the links. They also block trackers and advertising scripts that are trying to profile your browsing activity.

… and smart

In addition to the security focus, when you are doing online shopping on e-commerce sites, Avira will notify you if the item you are looking at is available at a lower price on other sites.

This additional feature makes online shopping safer by directing you to e-commerce sites from our trusted partners—which Avira has checked out for their security and privacy policies. We have researched these merchants for you to make sure they have appropriate data privacy procedures, reasonable return policies, no history of payment complaints, and no aggressive third-party ad networks running on their sites. So you save money, time and avoid potential hassles.

In case anyone might be wondering if Avira needs to track users’ web browsing habits in order to present these shopping offers, the answer is NO. Avira just compares the product SKU that is on your screen at that moment against a list of inventory among our partners. Avira does not permanently track your web habits in any way and you will never receive a re-targeted advertisement because of us, nor will we ever sell your information to anyone.

Avira also earns a commission from these shopping referrals. We use these earnings to help support our 350+ engineers so that we can continue to offer you the world’s best security software (which earned a 100% perfect detection rate as measured by AV-TEST)—all for free.

Of course, if you’d rather not use Avira Browser Safety or Avira SafeSearch you can always turn them off. The rest of our software will keep on protecting you as before.

CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT

The introduction of Avira Browser Safety and Avira SafeSearch represent just the latest step in Avira’s constant improvement.

When we opened our doors in 1986, the definition of computer “security” meant stopping annoying but relatively benign programs that spread via floppy disks! By the late-1990s, security had evolved to include e-mail viruses, and the growing use of the Internet lead to new forms of sending and contracting viruses, worms, Trojans and other malware. Professional spammers and organized crime syndicates took over from ‘recreational’ hackers in the mid-2000s, and introduced some of the first malware that actually stole credit card numbers and collected personal identity information.

To keep up with these changes in the nature of online threats, Avira constantly has to invent new technologies for detecting and disabling malware. You don’t even notice most of these innovations because they work behind the scenes.

The coders and virus hunters at Avira today are proud of the software that we have engineered for you, and we hope you’ll try out Avira Browser Safety (install for Chrome or Firefox) and Avira SafeSearch. Stay tuned for exciting future developments.

The post Browse the Internet smart and safely with Avira Browser Safety and SafeSearch appeared first on Avira Blog.