Beware: Avast and AVG are officially snoopware!

[soulweaver]

A joint report published by Vice and PC Magazine showed that Avast collects and repackages user data collected from installs of Avast Free AV and AVG AV and sells it to some of the world's biggest companies. Once again proving that if the product is free, you are the product!

The following data has been is hoovered

• Google searches
• locations and GPS coordinates on Google Maps
• People visiting companies' LinkedIn pages
• YouTube videos visited
• anonymous identification of those visiting porn websites

Buyers include companies like Google (no surprise), Microsoft (no surprise), Yelp among others.

Here are reports:

Go read these reports showing how an antivirus company tracked everything its users clicked online

When your antivirus is watching you instead.

www.theverge.com

The Cost of Avast's Free Antivirus: Companies Can Spy on Your Clicks

Avast is harvesting users' browser histories on the pretext that the data has been 'de-identified,' thus protecting your privacy. But the data, which is being sold to third parties, can be linked back to people's real identities, exposing every click and search they've made.

www.pcmag.com

Leaked Documents Expose the Secretive Market for Your Web Browsing Data

An Avast antivirus subsidiary sells 'Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site.' Its clients have included Home Depot, Google, Microsoft, Pepsi, and McKinsey.

www.vice.com

So, tell everyone around you who is using them to uninstall these ASAP!

Remember: Anonymous data is not really anonymous!
If you, for instance, click on a link which has your name, or visit your facebook profile, then the link is identified. The buyer will now know the identity of the person clicking the link, but how many people other than you visit your own FB home page as often as you do?

 

[lilboy]

What are the alternatives

 

[soulweaver]

What are the alternatives

If you are on Windows, I would say Windows Defender. I have been using this on all my windows systems (more than 15) and it does as good a job as any. If you absolutely want an alternative, you might be slightly better of Kaspersky. I am not too sure though.

 

[Marcus Fenix]

I have been using Kaspersky for a long time but I still am not sure what kind of telemetry data they are pulling from my PC.

If you think about it Microsoft and AV providers can pull a masssive amount of behavioural data which can then be sold to the highest bidder.

MS woke up to the Google way and started doing it a lot in WIndows 10 but I would not be surprised if all AV providers including the paid onesare selling our data too. All in the name of highest share price.Ohh the beauties of neo capitalism.

 

[Ramadhir Singh]

what a time to live
what considered as "spyware" by definition, is now a mainstream phone OS known as Android. And people still put their money in buying "antivirus". Win 10 is no different than Android, it track you in every possible manner and perfectly fits ins spyware definition.

Virus-Antivirus is a semi-fabricated industry by Microsoft in 2000's. what we have right now is just "water memory", except few rare cases.
The source of viruses are files from external sources - which now a days are internet. which is well guarded at multiple levels.

If on windows, the default shipped threat protection is more then enough , if anyone using Win 7SP1 +
Anything on top of it just a feel-good-factor.

 

[Party Monger]

I switch off all the random "sheilds" when installing Avast. Only the Av is on. Mostly used on office machines since 4-5yrs.. If there's any free alternative might shift..

 

[AK3D]

What are the alternatives

I switch off all the random "sheilds" when installing Avast. Only the Av is on. Mostly used on office machines since 4-5yrs.. If there's any free alternative might shift..

Comodo Personal Firewall has been working great for me for years (used to use Kerio Personal Firewall earlier). It also has HIPS blocking and alerts and an antivirus. However, I use the firewall as it has a lot of granular control per application, and prefer to use the Windows Antivirus which works very well.
Using Comodo, till they prove they're also snooping on our data.

 

[nRiTeCh]

Glad I only used Avast in 2k6 and 2k8 thereafter shifted to Nod32/Eset and since past 7 yrs no AV at all (even defender is shutdown for good)
No point in investing in these if you are very careful and know exactly what you are doing online and offline.

 

[Party Monger]

Comodo Personal Firewall has been working great for me for years (used to use Kerio Personal Firewall earlier). It also has HIPS blocking and alerts and an antivirus. However, I use the firewall as it has a lot of granular control per application, and prefer to use the Windows Antivirus which works very well.
Using Comodo, till they prove they're also snooping on our data.

How do you know all these dont siphon data too :|

 

[blr_p]

How do you know all these dont siphon data too :|

Why begs the real question, so what if they do. Why is that bad ?

So long as it is defined what they snoop on and who wants it...

 

[nRiTeCh]

Comodo Personal Firewall has been working great for me for years (used to use Kerio Personal Firewall earlier). It also has HIPS blocking and alerts and an antivirus. However, I use the firewall as it has a lot of granular control per application, and prefer to use the Windows Antivirus which works very well.
Using Comodo, till they prove they're also snooping on our data.

BTW in today's world you are already compromised right from your OS to the apps you install no matter how generic or otherwise. So in reality no company can say they don't sniff or spook in your privacy.

 

[newuser990]

everything (win 10, android, google etc) is spying on you what can we do? it is impossible to keep privacy these days.

 

[Ramadhir Singh]

Using Comodo, till they prove they're also snooping on our data.

+1 for comodo, using CIS in my win desktop. ( tried many time to replace it with something i always came back to them).
i don't use their default setting though, i switched to proactive configuration, disabled sandbox, tweaked HIPS & firewall setting as per my need. nothing can beat comodo in terms of memory footprint.
But recent version/(S) are bugged, and i'm glad im using an old build .

 

[AK3D]

How do you know all these dont siphon data too :|

Kerio was a simple firewall, and one of the best, till it stopped being supported. It didn't 'send data home'.
Comodo is much more in-depth, and you're right, I don't know that it doesn't siphon data.
However, it does allow me to stop any application dialling out (including steam games, or any other application), once you set a rule.

BTW in today's world you are already compromised right from your OS to the apps you install no matter how generic or otherwise. So in reality no company can say they don't sniff or spook in your privacy.

The one good thing about Comodo is that you can stop even windows system apps from reporting back (stuff like DeviceCensus.exe etc), once you set blocking rules. I'm sure Windows has a lot of other devious ways to get around firewalls and phone home, but a lot of items can be stopped.

+1 for comodo, using CIS in my win desktop. ( tried many time to replace it with something i always came back to them).
i don't use their default setting though, i switched to proactive configuration, disabled sandbox, tweaked HIPS & firewall setting as per my need. nothing can beat comodo in terms of memory footprint.
But recent version/(S) are bugged, and i'm glad im using an old build .

I agree - it's a good thing to have. I have a proactive config with the alerts popping up on most requests. While annoying, I prefer to be notified and take manual action to allow or disallow applications from accessing the internet or any windows components.

 

[booo]

all "anti-viruses" are actually viruses. and if you really want privacy, compile your own Linux.
if you really read the license terms, MS collects your data.

 

[nRiTeCh]

If you really wanna live a peaceful life just ignore everything as you already have sold yourself years back to google, ms and 100s of cos. hence stop worrying now.... You are already compromised the day you came Online!

 

[Futureized]

was not aware about term "snoopware"
thanks

Post automatically merged: Feb 9, 2020

If you really wanna live a peaceful life just ignore everything as you already have sold yourself years back to google, ms and 100s of cos. hence stop worrying now.... You are already compromised the day you came Online!

Hope you guys are aware about some new chrome changes related to file formats..
Some chrome browser release confirmed same.. and its going to be worst for sites linking to .exe etc. kind of extensions.

mods please check.. i will report this topic

 

[nRiTeCh]

was not aware about term "snoopware"
thanks

Post automatically merged: Feb 9, 2020

Hope you guys are aware about some new chrome changes related to file formats..
Some chrome browser release confirmed same.. and its going to be worst for sites linking to .exe etc. kind of extensions.

mods please check.. i will report this topic

I use FF or Edge. Does that matters?

 

[Futureized]

I use FF or Edge. Does that matters?

FF shows console warnings for me.. How much of world knows about rest ? Does never matters.
Wolf is in hen house = google !

 

[Rezep]

I have been using only windows 10 ltsc 1809 and defender for past 8 months now,the amount of bloatware they put into this shit is just below Xiaomi (funny since I'm typing this on my redmi note 7).