How to uninstall the AVG Security Toolbar

By Martin Brinkmann on September 7, 2012 - Tags:antivirus

AVG Technologies AVG Security Toolbar is included in the company’s latest range of security software, as a standalone application, and as a third party offer included in the installer of software such as TuneUp Ztilities, SlimCleaner or PowerIso. Yesterday’s release of AVG Antivirus Free 2013 included the AVG Security Toolbar as an offer, and if you did not select custom installation, you’d end up with the toolbar in Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

So what’s the purpose of the toolbar? It ships with a link scanner that displays security information about websites. This is similar to what Web of Trust does. The toolbar itself offers search, weather information, a link to a speedtest and other features that are not really related to security.

Deactivate the AVG Security Toolbar

The toolbar is installed from outside the web browser, which comes with the issue that you can’t uninstall the toolbar from within the browser. What you can do however is disable the toolbar in the browser which blocks it from being loaded during browser start or use.

Firefox

Load about:addons in the browser’s address bar and locate the AVG SiteSafety plugin under plugins here. Click on disable to turn it off in the browser. The button should turn to enable, which you can click on to turn the toolbar on again in the browser.

Internet Explorer

To disable the AVG Security Toolbar in Internet Explorer, right-click the toolbar in the browser and uncheck the AVg Security Toolbar option of the context menu.

Uninstall the AVG Security Toolbar

Uninstallation of the toolbar depends largely on how it has been installed on the operating system. If you have installed it as a standalone program or as part of another software installation, you can remove the toolbar using the uninstall a program control panel applet of the operating system.

If you have installed the AVG Security Toolbar as part of another AVG product, you can remove it running the installer again and selecting to add or remove features when it comes up. just uncheck the toolbar here and click next to remove the toolbar from the system.

Please note that the option to remove individual features from the installation is not displayed if you run the uninstaller.

I’d recommend to close all browser windows before you run the uninstaller to make sure everything can be properly removed from the system without leftovers.