Avast Anti-Virus Selling more than 400 Millions of Users Browsing Activities, Porn Search History, Every Click, Every Buy and Selling to Its Clients – Google, Microsoft, Pepsi, Yelp, TripAdvisor
Antivirus firm Avast Is Reportedly Selling Your Porn Search History To Google, Pepsi, And Microsoft.
Avast is one of the leading security firms with more than 435 million active users per month, and well known for offering Free Anti-Virus software is now selling more than 400 Millions of Users Browsing Activities, Porn Search History, Every Click, Every Buy and Selling to Its Clients-Google, Microsoft, Pepsi, Yelp, TripAdvisor.
According to research published on Motherboard & PCMag.
Avast, an Antivirus firm that makes free antivirus software that's used by more than 400 million people around the world, is reportedly spying by selling"highly sensitive" web browsing data with a company called "Jumpshot". The software appears to track users' clicks and movements across the web and collects data on things like searches on Google and Google Maps, as well as visits to specific LinkedIn pages, YouTube vids, and even user's porn search history.
According to Daily Mail, Antivirus firm Avast also tracked individuals visits to porn sites like PornHub or YouPorn and their searches.
‘Though the data is reportedly not personally-identifiable, meaning it's not accompanied by a name or other identifier, experts interviewed by Motherboard say the level of detail tracked by Avast may undermine its anonymity’.In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman for Avast said,
Jumpshot doesn't acquire "personal identification information, including name, email address or contact details," and that users have always had the option to opt-out of sharing data with Jumpshot.In return, these companies are paid millions of dollars for Jumpsuit products such as “All Clicks Feed,” which tracks user behavior, clicks and other behavior on the internet.
However, the data collection is ongoing, the source and documents indicate. Instead of collecting information through software attached to the browser, Avast is doing it through the anti-virus software itself.
Last week, months after it was spotted using its browser extensions to send data to Jumpshot, Avast began asking its existing free antivirus consumers to opt-in to data collection, according to an internal document.
The company's privacy policy says, with consent, personal data is used to "create a de-identified data set that is provided to Jumpshot to build trend analytics products and services."
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