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We want to delve deeper into the news that came out a few days ago, relating to the use (and abuse) of user data by a subsidiary of Avast, that is to say Jumpshot. The news came out on January 27, 2020 on Vice.com (Motherboard). The Vice article talks about one investigation carried out by PCMag And Motherboard. On January 30th theAvast announcement in wanting close, with immediate effect, Jumpshot and its data collection.
Spoilers: Avast and AVG antiviruses spied on their users.
Avast and AVG? Stay away
Avast is a free antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. AVG is also a free antivirus with millions of users around the world and is also a subsidiary of Avast from the 2016. What happened with the company Jumpshot it is very serious and, unfortunately, as often happens, to ordinary people it doesn't matter much. Maybe because the topic and the gravity of the incident are not immediately understandable or maybe because it is not presented by the media in the correct way? Unfortunately we don't know but we will do our best to make the topic known easy understanding for everyone.
The investigation: were Avast and AVG antiviruses spying on their users?
According to theinvestigation, Jumpshot which is a subsidiary of Avast, collected personal data regarding all the activities carried out by users who used the free version of Avast and of AVG with the usual excuse Of protect them from malware for free.
The data collected included the Google searches, the GPS coordinates on Google Maps, the LinkedIn pages visited, i Youtube videos viewed and the profiling of users who they looked at porn sites.
After raking them thoroughly he resold them to companies third parties for profiling and marketing purposes. Among the buyers of this stolen data were clearly large companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, Yelp And Tripadvisor. But also famous brands like Pepsi And Sephora. In short, antiviruses Avast And AVG they spied on their users and resold the data they had accumulated.
The data are, as often happens, anonymized but we know well that this beautiful word it means little or nothing. In this regard we want to quote a part of PCMag, cybersecurity experts agree that with such precise and accurate data it is still possible to identify individual users.
To put it simply: a log like the one we highlight below will not tell the individual anything. But Amazon, instead, can easily trace the identification of who bought that iPad at that time.
Device ID: abc123x Date: 2019/12/01 Hour Minute Second: 12:03:05 Domain: Amazon.com Product: Apple iPad Pro 10.5 - 2017 Model - 256GB, Rose Gold Behavior: Add to Cart
At first glance, the click looks harmless. You can't pin it to an exact user. That is, unless you're Amazon.com
Quote fromitem by PCMag
Users, as always, were totally unaware of all this. We will dedicate an article to antiviruses later. We'll talk about theirs dubious usefulness for the majority of users and gods privacy concerns. Doubts that we have always had and which unfortunately have been confirmed in recent days.
Always doubt those who want to control everything you do for free for your good.
Read the articles by PCMag and of Vice on this topic, if you want to comment on the news you can find us on Reddit.
If you are interested in other news on privacy, visit our section News. Otherwise you can search alternatives to Google products or read our product reviews FOSS (Free and ORpen Source Ssoftware)
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