..and selling your data to data aggregation companies. If you aren't paying for the product, you ARE the product.

"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"

https://www.vice.com/en_us/art...g-data-investigation

its been said -- if a product's free... YOU are actually the product.

pretty well true as far as tech goes

-------------------------

And, apparently, vice.com sells your information, too.

quote:

Originally posted by 229DAK:
And, apparently, vice.com sells your information, too.

Most websites use cookies. Vice asks, and gives you the option to decline that.

Just some fyi from personal experience, do not use Avast for anything. We wanted good protection for my wife's computer, as it was expensive and someone at my work stated when he owned his owned computer company, he recommended Avast. He used it himself.

Avast actually hacked my wife's laptop the day she bought the computer and installed the paid version of Avast. It was definitely them as they installed ransomware when we installed it from the site, after we contacted them to be sure we had the right company. After it happened, we called the same phone number on their site we called initially, only to be told we never signed up for their service/protection and they have no knowledge of us purchasing their protection, even after I showed them the confirmation code/number they sent.

Apparently this has been a problem with Avast, as the company was split years ago with some of their own employees going rogue and doing what they wanted,all the while STILL WORKING for Avast.

Fortunately, we bought the upgraded warranty for the computer and were able to swap it out for another brand new one from Staples when they couldn't get it worked out.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
Most websites use cookies. Vice asks, and gives you the option to decline that.

Likewise, Avast asks for permission to share your data with 3rd parties, and gives you the option to decline that.

So why is that okay when Vice does it, yet egregious when Avast does it?

If you initially consented when installing and setting up Avast but have since changed your mind, or just didn't pay close enough attention to realize what you were agreeing to, you can change your setting to opt out by opening Avast and going to Menu, then Settings, then General, then Personal Privacy. Uncheck the box that says "Allow usage data to be shared with 3rd parties for analysis of trends, business, and marketing".

I assume this, always.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
Most websites use cookies. Vice asks, and gives you the option to decline that.

Likewise, Avast asks for permission to share your data with 3rd parties, and gives you the option to decline that.

So why is that okay when Vice does it, yet egregious when Avast does it?

If you didn't initially decline it when installing and setting up Avast, or just didn't pay close enough attention to realize what you were agreeing to, you can change your setting to opt out by opening Avast and going to Menu, then Settings, then General, then Personal Privacy. Uncheck the box that says "Allow usage data to be shared with 3rd parties for analysis of trends, business, and marketing".

I was thinking the same thing and then read your post. Thanks for straightening this all out.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
Most websites use cookies. Vice asks, and gives you the option to decline that.

Likewise, Avast asks for permission to share your data with 3rd parties, and gives you the option to decline that.

So why is that okay when Vice does it, yet egregious when Avast does it?

If you didn't initially decline it when installing and setting up Avast, or just didn't pay close enough attention to realize what you were agreeing to, you can change your setting to opt out by opening Avast and going to Menu, then Settings, then General, then Personal Privacy. Uncheck the box that says "Allow usage data to be shared with 3rd parties for analysis of trends, business, and marketing".

Apparently those option are also available for the paid version. I have the paid version and all of these options are turned off. Thanks for pointing that out, Rogue.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
I assume this, always.

THIS. Any free service is paid by showing you ads or selling your info to advertisers. Even paid software does it too.

If you interwebz, someone is building a profile and selling it.

Cookies are website specific. A data set about what your preferences are, maybe what you do on the site. Vice for example can access that info, and use it to know what you read.

What Avast collects and is selling is every website all aggregated together. Every search. Every click. Related to the other information, and ultimately fairly easily identifiable by data scientists. It's a much more powerful (and to many, scary) dataset.

"December 2018, Omnicom Media Group, a major marketing provider, signed a contract to receive what's called the "All Clicks Feed," or every click Jumpshot is collecting from Avast users. Normally, the All Clicks Feed is sold without device IDs "to protect against triangulation of PII (Personally Identifiable Information)," says Jumpshot's product handbook. But when it comes to Omnicom, Jumpshot is delivering the product with device IDs attached to each click, according to the contract.

In addition, the contract calls for Jumpshot to supply the URL string to each site visited, the referring URL, the timestamps down to the millisecond, along with the suspected age and gender of the user, which can inferred based on what sites the person is visiting.

It's unclear why Omnicom wants the data. The company did not respond to our questions. But the contract raises the disturbing prospect Omnicom can unravel Jumpshot's data to identify individual users."

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
I assume this, always.

THIS. Any free service is paid by showing you ads or selling your info to advertisers. Even paid software does it too.

If you interwebz, someone is building a profile and selling it.

Agreed. I think we cannot ring the bell loud enough in trying to wake the world to what this really means though. Even I myself don't feel it's totally sunk in for me yet. How well they're able to understand the individual, by name. Perhaps better than one knows themselves. For me, the pot boiled slowly and I hadn't noticed. In on the Internet before so much was possible, it was targeted ads, which seemed fine. Now, some decade or two later, there's so much more possible. And with AI, it's going to quantum leap in capability and discovery.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig209:
its been said -- if a product's free... YOU are actually the product.

pretty well true as far as tech goes

-------------------------

Exactly what I was going to say.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
Cookies are website specific. A data set about what your preferences are, maybe what you do on the site. Vice for example can access that info, and use it to know what you read.

What Avast collects and is selling is every website all aggregated together. Every search. Every click. Related to the other information, and ultimately fairly easily identifiable by data scientists. It's a much more powerful (and to many, scary) dataset.

Certainly more powerful. But it still requires your consent. So just opt out, either from the very beginning, or at least now that you're fully aware of the issue.

Now, if they were doing this without informing anyone and without their consent, or were appearing to give you the option to opt out and still collecting/distributing your data anyway, that would be a serious problem.

But Avast isn't even one of those companies that takes a hardline approach like: "You must agree to this data harvesting otherwise you can't install/use our software." You're totally free to continue to fully utilize Avast's software even if you opt out.

For those reasons, I think your outrage is misplaced. Avast is certainly trying to collect data (as is literally every other software company), but appear to be doing it transparently above-board with clean hands.


The issue isn't necessarily that companies like Avast are collecting your data, because in order for them to do that you have to have agreed to it at some point. It's that folks agree to stuff without bothering to read what they're agreeing to, and just roll with the default settings on every piece of software because it's the quickest/easiest option. Companies are banking on the majority of people having that mindset, with those who choose to opt out being the minority.

Even worse, people are knowingly (or at least flippantly/ignorantly) signing away wide-reaching rights to their complete digital identity to significantly less reputable companies for mere trivialities, like a Chinese government-owned company's shiny mindless mobile game to entertain them for 5 minutes, or a Russian government-owned company's photo editing program to see what they'd look like as an old person.