1. Welcome Guest! In order to create a new topic or reply to an existing one, you must register first. It is easy and free. Click here to sign up now!.
    Dismiss Notice

AVG Proudly Announces It Will Sell Your Browsing History to Online Advertisers

Discussion in 'General Software' started by starbuck, Sep 22, 2015.

  1. starbuck

    starbuck Rest In Peace Pete Administrator

    Joined:
    Sep 26, 2009
    Messages:
    3,830
    Location:
    Midlands, UK
    Operating System:
    Windows 10
    CPU:
    AMD Athlon II x2 250 Processor 3.00GHz
    Memory:
    8gb DDR3
    Hard Drive:
    500gb SATA
    Graphics Card:
    ASUS GeForce GTX 960 2gb
    Power Supply:
    650w PowerCool X-Viper
    dce22d6b0b52832e9109ec73d5014e6e.jpg

    AVG, the Czech antivirus company, has announced a new privacy policy in which it boldly and openly admits it will collect user details and sell them to online advertisers for the purpose of continuing to fund its freemium-based products.

    This new privacy policy is slated to come into effect starting October 15, and the company has published a blog post explaining the decision to go this route, along with the full privacy policy's content, so users can read it in advance and decide on their own if they want to use its services or not.

    This is what AVG claims it will collect from users for the purpose of selling to interested parties, mainly online advertisers.

    "We collect non-personal data to make money from our free offerings so we can keep them free, including:
    • Advertising ID associated with your device;
    • Browsing and search history, including meta data;
    • Internet service provider or mobile network you use to connect to our products; and
    • Information regarding other applications you may have on your device and how they are used."

    Because "free" is only "free" for users

    AVG has mentioned that it will not sell personal data like name, emails, addresses, or credit card details, but that these might sometimes leak inside the browsing history.

    When this happens, the company claims it will take precautionary measures to filter out personal details from the browsing history before selling it.

    AVG also adds that personal, identifiable information like addresses, age, or IPs, even if not sold, may sometimes be shared with collaborators.

    This seems to be a provision put in place to allow user data to be used for statistical and research purposes, and the company has stated that data will never be bundled together, only aggregated. This means that only emails would be put together in the same batch, never attached to any name, username, or other personal data.

    192c9fa9ca845b62c0b5ca1247f56deb.jpg


    Source:
    http://news.softpedia.com/news/avg-...ng-history-to-online-advertisers-492146.shtml
     
  2. Amd_Man

    Amd_Man Registered Members

    Joined:
    Sep 5, 2015
    Messages:
    598
    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Operating System:
    Windows 10
    Computer Brand or Motherboard:
    Asus M5A97
    CPU:
    Phenon II X4 955
    Memory:
    8 Gigs G. Skill Rip Jaws
    Hard Drive:
    120 Gig Kingston SSD, 640 Gig Western Digital Black Edition
    Graphics Card:
    Power Color HD5770
    Power Supply:
    Corsair TX750
    Glad I stopped using it years ago. It got far too bloated and a resource hog.
     
    DSTM (Dougie) likes this.
  3. Match

    Match Registered Members

    Joined:
    Apr 23, 2009
    Messages:
    4,175
    Location:
    Wolverhampton, UK.
    Computer Brand or Motherboard:
    Abit AN52
    CPU:
    AMD Athlon dual core 5000+
    Memory:
    4 Gig Corsair
    Hard Drive:
    160 Gb Hitachi 500 Gb Western Digital
    Graphics Card:
    Radion XFX 4650
    Power Supply:
    550W EZcool
    I once had avg free, when it displayed the message you have an infection please buy the full version to remove it, it got removed! But I think this will bring on the downfall of the free version!
     
  4. Rich M

    Rich M Guest

    Joined:
    Dec 24, 2013
    Messages:
    4,580
    Location:
    NE Pa USA
    Operating System:
    Windows 7
    Computer Brand or Motherboard:
    MSI Z97 PC Mate LGA 1150 Intel Z97
    CPU:
    Intel i7 4790K 4.0Ghz
    Memory:
    Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 2133
    Hard Drive:
    Crucial 256 Gb SSD+ WD Raptor 300 Gb Sata III
    Graphics Card:
    Radeon R9 280 2GB HDMI
    Power Supply:
    Seasonic 750 watt
    Yeah I agree Ray that thing today with it's "Search Bar" is a mass of bloatware on a pc. Avira went down the same "rabbit hole"
    a few years ago and Avast same way and none of them are worth using. The old concept was you offerred a free version for home users as a way of giving back from success and hoped for donations to help defray the costs. I guess there is nothing to give back anymore?
     
  5. Plastic Nev

    Plastic Nev SUPER MODERATOR IN MEMORY

    Joined:
    May 2, 2009
    Messages:
    2,801
    Location:
    In front of a monitor in Blackburn Lanc's UK.
    Operating System:
    Windows 7
    For a long time and especially in the days of XP I used Avast, however also during that time AVG was becoming a real pain with many users complaining of problems of many sorts, not just things like false positives, but many other problems as well. That decided me to never bother with AVG at all. Now of course Avast has gone the same way just like a lot of other security software seems to have done. Although it doesn't get the rave revues, Microsofts own MSE is enough for me and just back it up with Malwarebytes free version along with common sense browsing.

    Nev.
     
  6. Bill

    Bill Registered Members

    Joined:
    Oct 30, 2010
    Messages:
    601
    Location:
    Southeastern US
    Computer Brand or Motherboard:
    Asus P8Z77-V
    CPU:
    Intel i5 3570
    Memory:
    8GB Kingston DDR3 1600
    Hard Drive:
    Plextor SSD SATA 6 128 GB, WD Velociraptor 150g
    Graphics Card:
    eVGA GTX 550 TI
    Power Supply:
    Antec NeoPower 550w
    Nev, your history and mine are the same with AVG, Avast, and now MSE. I don't go to the dark side of town and Malwarebytes seems to be sufficient.
     
  7. Plastic Nev

    Plastic Nev SUPER MODERATOR IN MEMORY

    Joined:
    May 2, 2009
    Messages:
    2,801
    Location:
    In front of a monitor in Blackburn Lanc's UK.
    Operating System:
    Windows 7
    I also meant to mention I do also have SAS installed, though all it seems to find are tracking cookies, which may be fairly harmless, but I reckon to be better off without them.

    Nev.
     
  8. IceMan37

    IceMan37 Banned

    Joined:
    Apr 24, 2014
    Messages:
    1,079
    Operating System:
    Windows 10
    Computer Brand or Motherboard:
    MSI Z87M-G43
    CPU:
    I5 4690k @ 4.6
    Memory:
    16GB Hyper X 1866
    Hard Drive:
    1TB WD_Blue | 240Gb Sandosk SSD
    Graphics Card:
    eVGA GTX 970 FTW
    Power Supply:
    750W Tt
    Pretty sad really. I can remember AVG in it's heyday around 2004-2007 and all the accolades it had and write ups they had for being a great alternative if you wanted a free antivirus. I used it from time to time in those days but have not used it for about 7 years or so. I think they started to lose their footing when the paid antiviruses came out with basically better free versions of their own AV and MSE got better as time went on.
     

Share This Page