Antivirus and security company, Avast, is currently under fire for its harvesting and selling of user opt-in browsing data.
Avast is a company that will no doubt come up when talk turns to free antivirus software, and with good reason. Avast states they have over 435 million users.
Now however their reputation is under scrutiny, following a joint investigation by Motherboard as well as PCMag into the extent that it sells opt-in user data to third parties.
The reports and leaked documents highlight a pattern of secretive sales of internet browsing histories and activities to a subsidiary called Jumpshot.
This information is then packaged before being sold. It has been stated that Google, Microsoft, Yelp, Pepsi, Home Depot are among some of the bigger past, present, and potential clients.
In some of the reported cases, these clients paid millions of dollars for an all clicks feed and this feed included website tracking data, clicks, and detailed accounts of movement across sites.
This is limited to when users who install their free antivirus software opt into having their data collected. And Motherboard states it viewed data that also included Google searches, GPS coordinates, people visiting LinkedIn pages, YouTube histories, as well as porn site visits (watch out Caleb).
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source https://thegadgetblogtech.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/beware-of-what-you-are-opting-in-to-when-installing-free-antivirus-software/
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