AVG Proudly Announces It Will Sell Your Browsing History

[The Infidel]

I used to use AVG before Windows 8 and this makes me a bit sad and somewhat upset. I'm now running Windows 10 and use the built in security. At least, I know that Microsoft mostly will sell this information to... well, itself, I guess.

In one way, I'm not surprised, but still, I can't help but think that security companies should have a somewhat higher ethical standard than the rest. I guess it's true that when something is free, you are the product...


http://news.softpedia.com/news/avg-prou ... 2146.shtml

AVG Proudly Announces It Will Sell Your Browsing History to Online Advertisers


Only non-personal details will be sold, AVG claims
AVG, the Czech antivirus company, has announced a new privacy policy in which it boldly and openly admits it will collect user details and sell them to online advertisers for the purpose of continuing to fund its freemium-based products.

This new privacy policy is slated to come into effect starting October 15, and the company has published a blog post explaining the decision to go this route, along with the full privacy policy's content, so users can read it in advance and decide on their own if they want to use its services or not.

This is what AVG claims it will collect from users for the purpose of selling to interested parties, mainly online advertisers.

"We collect non-personal data to make money from our free offerings so we can keep them free, including:

- Advertising ID associated with your device;

- Browsing and search history, including meta data;

- Internet service provider or mobile network you use to connect to our products; and

- Information regarding other applications you may have on your device and how they are used."

Because "free" is only "free" for users

AVG has mentioned that it will not sell personal data like name, emails, addresses, or credit card details, but that these might sometimes leak inside the browsing history.

When this happens, the company claims it will take precautionary measures to filter out personal details from the browsing history before selling it.

AVG also adds that personal, identifiable information like addresses, age, or IPs, even if not sold, may sometimes be shared with collaborators.

This seems to be a provision put in place to allow user data to be used for statistical and research purposes, and the company has stated that data will never be bundled together, only aggregated. This means that only emails would be put together in the same batch, never attached to any name, username, or other personal data.

[Purple]

So in essence they have turned their AV into spyware?

[Edi]

It's what almost all of these freeware AV companies do. Avast sells some information, but does not specify what. I expect Avira does too. How else are they going to make money?

I've ditched the free AV software years ago because F-Secure these days is less of a resource hog and provides better protection for less hassle to boot.

[Vendetta]

AVG's been shit for years. It couldn't catch a cold.

[Temjin]

How the mighty have fallen.

I remember when AVG was considered one of the best pieces of anti-virus software out there, beating many subscription based ones.

Now it's a joke.