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There are few things more frustrating than when Avast is blocking a website that you know to be safe. While the anti-virus can save you a lot of pain, it also has a habit of being over-aggressive with its web filtering. Annoyingly, this isn't just limited to apps – it applies to apps too. Today we're going to show you how to disable avast online security so you can resume normal functioning.
What is Advanced Web Shield?
Advanced Web Shield is an Avast anti-virus feature designed to block suspicious websites and therefore protect users from malware and phishing attempts. To do so, it actively scans the data that is transferred when you browse.
Unfortunately, like any anti-virus software, Avast suffers from false positives at times – detecting completely harmless behavior as suspicious. As a result, it's useful to know how to add exceptions to Avast so you can still access the website you desire. We'll be teaching you this today, as well as how to turn off Web Shield permanently or temporarily to disable Avast online security altogether.
How to Disable Avast Online Security (Web Shield)
Most technical users will prefer to rely on their own intuition and their browser's built-in protection to determine whether a website is malicious or not. Thankfully, while Avast Web Shield is enabled by default, it's easy enough to turn off. You can even turn it off for a short period of time, which is often faster than adding a website to your whitelist.
If Avast Web Shield is blocking internet sites, here's how to fix it:
- Open Avast and press “Explore > Web Shield > Open Web Shield”
- Press the toggle switch next to the “Web Shield” heading
- Choose how long to disable Web Shield for
The “Stop indefinitely” option will completely disable Web Shield until you choose to turn it back on again. You may have to press “OK” to confirm the action.
- Check to see whether Web Shield is off
You should see a red toggle with an “x” in it on your Web Shield settings screen. Try visiting the blocked website again to see if you can access it.
How to Add an Exception to Avast (whitelist)
If you don't want to disable Avast online security entirely, you can add an exception for specific websites. This is also known as a whitelist, and can be expanded to as many websites as you wish.
Here's how to whitelist on Avast:
- Click “Account” in the sidebar, then “Settings”
- Open the Avast exceptions tab and click “Add an exception”
- Enter the URL of the website you don't want Avast to block and press “Add”
- Add additional URLs as necessary
You can also use this interface to define programs and folders for Avast to ignore if you're running into problems there.
Extra: How to Turn Off SmartScreen in Windows
Microsoft SmartScreen is a cloud-based anti-phishing and anti-malware component available in Windows 10 via different products. You can disable SmartScreen in Windows 11 and Windows 10 completely or case by case the various Windows SmartScreen filters.
How to Stop Google Chrome from Blocking Downloads
All too often you'll go to download something in Google Chrome, only to get the message “file may be dangerous so Chrome blocked it”, “file can not be downloaded securely”, or “Failed – blocked”. Sometimes, Chrome is protecting you from harm, but at other times it may be blocking something completely safe. We show you how to stop Chrome from blocking downloads either individually or when you try to download multiple files at once.
