1y ago

Avast fined $16.5 million for ‘privacy’ software that actually sold users’ browsing data

www.theverge.com

Avast, the cybersecurity software company, is facing a $16.5 million fine after it was caught storing and selling customer information without their consent. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the fine on Thursday and said that it’s banning Avast from selling user data for advertising purposes.

82 comments

They definitely made more than that selling data what a fucking joke
- F*C fines are just protection money payments.
If the software is free, but not open source, it's harvesting your data. How else do you think these companies stay in business?
- The only way to fully prevent it is to remove the profit-motive altogether.
  
  Yeah I love it when people say "if you don't pay you are the product" as if paying for youtube premium, google one, reddit premium or spotify will stop them from harvesting your data haha that's how naive we were back when we thought data was collected only for ads.
- Free my ass! Avast charges money for that service. Hell they make you subscribe to use any service outside basic virus scan. So customers paid to have their data stolen and sold.
- I dislike this sentiment. Just because something is FOSS or open source, doesn't mean it's not harvesting your data or doing something nefarious.
  
  kinda wrong sentiment to get from the statement. statement is only saying if
  if free and NOT open source > data harvest
  it doesn't necessarily imply that
  if free and open source > doesnt data harvest
  at all. its just you have the ability to find out via code of they do or not. thats more or less in the boat of logical paradoxes you can make.
  
  A good example would be Yuzu (the Switch emulator), it was open source and collected so much telemetry that Nintendo might go after their users.
  This might be fear tactic but it shows you that you aren't safe
- So companies like Proton and BitWarden are harvesting your data with their free tiers?
  
  I haven't looked into Proton, but BitWarden is open source both server side and client side.
Five years ago, I posted on Reddit about how Avast had installed a browser without my consent and set it as default while I was out of town and away from my computer. That post has had comments added to it several times a year ever since, meaning that they're still trying that nonsense. They stole my data without my consent by importing all of my browser data, and now it's come out that they blatantly sold it without my consent as well.
I said it then, and I say it now: If you install something without my knowledge or consent, you're a virus, plain and simple.
$16.5 million is not even a slap on the wrist
- A great business model actually
Cybersec company ❌
Advertisement/Data mining ✔️
Jesus Christ.
Remember when Google's Motto was "Don't be Evil" It was supposed to be a jab at Microsoft, but it feels like every year tech companies find news ways to just be fucking evil.
PS. Google kind of fails to live up to that motto too, I don't even know if it's still an official motto.
- Google execs knew this motto will just get in the way of maximizing profits for shareholders, so they dropped it a few years ago.
- I don’t even know if it’s still an official motto.
  It's not
- No, they didn't. Alphabet was created as a parent company in 2015 and uses the similarly vague "Do the right thing" in their code of conduct. Google itself still has "Don't be evil" in their code of conduct, unchanged. Google needed Alphabet to not be Google (or they'd get fined to hell) so having everything identical wouldn't have been a smart idea.
  That this easily Google-able myth is so pervasive is a wonderful microcosm about online gullibility and laziness.
- Kind of? They would happily sell your mother heroine and auction off her house. They fail at not being evil like Antarctica fails at being hospitable to palm trees.
- Corporations have no soul to damn and no body to incarcerate.
- I'm all for crapping on large publicly traded companies but lumping Google in with companies that sell your data isn't honest. Google does not and never has sold user data. They sure as hell use your data for their own ad network but they do not sell that data wholesale. Meta and other data brokers sell your data and this Avast company sells your data through a product they claimed stopped tracking. I'm not pro-Google but to compare their business model (which is very transparent about how it handles your data and how it's never sold) to Avast's business model (which is to completely lie to the end user while literally selling everything that user does) is not an honest comparison.
- If you use antivirus software you're a dumbass. Just don't download viruses?
- I tried Windows Defender a couple of years ago for an entire year. I thought it was dog water. The anti-ransomeware feature was the only nice thing about it. I now use BitDefender.
  
  What are you clicking on all day?
Do we know how much money they made on it? If it was more than $16.5 then it was still a good step on their balance sheet.
This stuff needs to be fined at the full income they made from the tool plus some penalty. Corporations only care about their balance sheets.
That's horrifying. I remember using the avast private browser when I was younger as to not get tracked by Google chrome, but i was just getting tracked by avast instead. :(
- It's capitalism. You get to choose who steals your personal data.
  
  Unless you use a trusted firefox fork
  
  False choice. Self hosting is an option, and not even that difficult these days.
  People are lazy.
And I'm sure that fine was as high or higher than the profit they made from the data... what, it wasn't?!
Cost of doing business
- Jesus christ right!! I'm curious how much they made off that data.
This is fucking garbage.
When a company gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar, it's not a punishment to put one of the cookies back.
Fines should be ten TIMES what the company made from their misbehaviour, not ten percent.
Ah, the snake oil turned out to be poisonous.
Can't believe a company with a notorious history of spying on users is at it again for the 234th time!
Is there a class action lawsuit?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Avast, the cybersecurity software company, is facing a $16.5 million fine after it was caught storing and selling customer information without their consent.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the fine on Thursday and said that it’s banning Avast from selling user data for advertising purposes.
From at least 2014 to 2020, Avast harvested user web browsing information through its antivirus software and browser extension, according to the FTC’s complaint.
“We are committed to our mission of protecting and empowering people’s digital lives,” Avast spokesperson Jess Monney said in a statement to The Verge.
“While we disagree with the FTC’s allegations and characterization of the facts, we are pleased to resolve this matter and look forward to continuing to serve our millions of customers around the world.”
In January, the FTC reached a settlement with Outlogic (formerly X-Mode Social) that prevents the data broker from selling information that can be used to track users’ locations.
The original article contains 398 words, the summary contains 155 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- “While we disagree with the FTC’s allegations and characterization of the facts, we are pleased to resolve this matter and look forward to continuing to serve our millions of customers around the world.”...translation, we regret being caught but look forward to the opportunity of exploring alternate ways to exploiting consumers for profit.
  
  Good bot.
They should be put out of business and those responsible jailed
I wonder what other uses there are to sell data that is not for advertising? My second thought goes to what is in place to stop a middleman from saying that they would not sell information for advertising purposes, but selling the data for "quality control of data acquisition" purposes. If you are getting a service for free, you are the product.
- Political campaigns? A political candidate may want to know his opponent's supporters and may think he can do a more targeted wooing. 1 may say it's advertising too.
  Also, he can send bots to the political discussions that folks participate in. The bots can start nasty political arguments.
  A greedy religious figure may want to encourage more to join his religion. More members, more cash.
who the f*ck uses Avast in 2024? I get it you use Windows for reasons but anti virus software? really?
- Why downvotes? Shitshows' integrated AV is good enough.
And people still think they can trust password managers lmao
- Why? What's wrong with Keepass?
  
  Keep ass?
  
  Who knows? I just keep track of my own passwords so when the rest of you find out I won't be a part of it lol. Everyone on lemmy is so anti Google and anti Microsoft because of what they do with your data, that it's actually hilarious that so many just freely give EVERY SINGLE PASSWORD for their accounts to password management apps, like nothing bad could ever come from it.
  If you can keep track of your passwords yourself, why take such a massive gamble?
- https://github.com/bitwarden/
  
  Yeah, those. Thanks for the example.

82 comments