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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

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    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.

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    Source:
    http://news.softpedia.com/news/avg-...ng-history-to-online-advertisers-492146.shtml
     
    starbuck, Sep 22, 2015
    #1
  3. Amd_Man

    Amd_Man Registered Members

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    Glad I stopped using it years ago. It got far too bloated and a resource hog.
     
    Amd_Man, Sep 23, 2015
    #2
    DSTM (Dougie) likes this.
  4. Match

    Match Registered Members

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    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!
     
    Match, Sep 23, 2015
    #3
  5. Rich M

    Rich M Guest

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    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?
     
    Rich M, Sep 25, 2015
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  6. Plastic Nev

    Plastic Nev SUPER MODERATOR IN MEMORY

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    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.
     
    Plastic Nev, Sep 25, 2015
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  7. Bill

    Bill Registered Members

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    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.
     
    Bill, Sep 25, 2015
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  8. Plastic Nev

    Plastic Nev SUPER MODERATOR IN MEMORY

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    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.
     
    Plastic Nev, Sep 25, 2015
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  9. IceMan37

    IceMan37 Banned

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    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.
     
    IceMan37, Sep 27, 2015
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