PRAGUE, Czech Republic, February 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Alwil Software a.s. is pleased to announce that the award-winning avast! antivirus has now passed 75 million registered users. Since the first registration in January 2002, avast! antivirus has grown to be a truly global product. While it took 6 years to achieve the 50 millionth user, it has taken only an additional 12 months for this number to reach 75 million.

Pavel Baudis and Eduard Kucera, the founders of Alwil, said, We are very proud to have reached this truly amazing milestone. When we started the company just over twenty years ago, we strongly believed that we could make avast! antivirus a success, yet the community of loyal avast! users has grown more quickly than we ever imagined. We have only achieved this success with the help of our user community and we thank each and every user of avast! for their support; we could not be here without them.

This milestone demonstrates not only the success of the product but also the success of our vision of providing the best security possible, free to our community. The free avast! Home Edition allows tens of millions of internet users to safely and securely use the internet while our paid professional product provides extra capabilities to those businesses and users that need them.

avast! antivirus can be downloaded from http://www.avast.com, or from http://www. download.com. 75 million users have already given it their vote of confidence, with more than half this number coming from France, the United States, Brazil, Poland, Italy and Japan and many more in almost every country worldwide.

Until the end of February 2009, Alwil Software is offering a 25% discount on the normal price of avast! Professional Edition and avast! Professional Family Pack when purchased through its on-line store. To claim the discount online, enter the discount code 75Millions during the checkout process.

avast! Home Edition is available free-of-charge for non-commercial home use. avast! Professional Edition is provided for both home and commercial use, and also forms part of the avast! Professional Family Pack, the antivirus solution for home networks. All products can be downloaded and purchased from http://www.avast.com or from any authorized avast! reseller.

The full text of this press release can be found at:

http://www.avast.com/eng/press-release-avast-celebrates-75-million-regist ered-users.html

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For press contacts, email press@avast.com, +420-27400-5635