Avast caught collecting lots of info? Selling it to other companies?

I’m glad my company doesn’t collect info it doesn’t need. Under the SSI domain, I wondered why I needed info that wasn’t necessary but I complied as I didn’t know best.

What I did know, was that I had to keep this info safe. Keeping it safe meant that I didn’t expose it to the Internet unnecessarily and while I lost the original excel spreadsheet, I found an HTML file I really don’t need anymore.

This is the boost I saw on Friday.

BrianKrebs: The Federal Trade Commission has hit Avast with a $16.5 million fine over allegations that it told customers it would protect their security and privacy but then gave data about their browsing to a subsidiary called Jumpshot.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/02/ftc-says-avast-promised-privacy-pirated-consumers-data-treasure

The issue came to light in Dec. 2019, when Mozilla removed four Firefox extensions made by Avast and its subsidiary AVG after receiving reports the extensions were harvesting user data and browsing histories.

From the FTC’s presser:

“Avast rebranded Jumpshot as an analytics company, which advertised that its “[m]ore than 100 million online consumers worldwide” would give Jumpshot’s clients “unique insights to make better business decisions.”

“Jumpshot further claimed to give its clients the ability to “see where your audience is going before and after they visit your site or your competitors’ sites, and even track those who visit a specific URL.” Of course, Jumpshot’s source of that massive amount of data about people’s browsing information – some of it highly personal in nature – that it sold to advertising companies, data brokers, individual brands, search engine optimizing outfits, and others looking for detailed information about consumers’ browsing histories was Avast, the company that pitched its products as a solution to intrusive online surveillance.”

“According to the complaint, Jumpshot provided its clients with “extraordinary detail regarding how consumers navigated the Internet, including each webpage visited, precise timestamp, the type of device and browser, and the city, state, and country.” What’s more, most of the data included a unique and persistent device identifier, which allowed Jumpshot and its clients to trace individuals across multiple domains over time. The FTC says that included in the information Jumpshot sold was data about consumers’ visits to sites about religious matters, political candidates, health concerns like breast cancer, jobs at secure military facilities, student loan application information, dating interests, and sites of an adult nature. The complaint puts it this way: “The vast majority of consumers would not know that the Avast Software would surveil their every move on the Internet or that their browsing information might be sold to more than 100 third parties and stored indefinitely, in granular, re-identifiable form.”

https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-removes-avast-and-avg-extensions-from-add-on-portal-over-snooping-claims/

Mozilla removes Avast and AVG extensions from add-on portal over snooping claims is the ZD Net article that is linked.

FTC says Avast promised privacy, but pirated consumers’ data for treasure is the FTC notice. This press release goes in to a lot of detail on what was alledged and what is expected.

Remember I’ve told the story of me looking for AVG as I knew the name but didn’t remember the company? Maybe its a good thing that I never downloaded the thing.

This is unbelievable.

I also spotted a Cybernews article titled Avast to pay $16.5M over charges of unfair user data sales which I have not read yet.

I know that I wanted to post some and do other things, but yesterday was an interesting day and this is only a day or two old.

This article is similar to the article from ZD Net, but I’m posting it here for those who want to read differing coverage.

Nice going. Can’t do that today without people knowing about it. The game is up. Ten years ago it wasn’t such a big deal, but with all of the different rules needing to be followed today, it isn’t worth the risk.