[The Exiled]

Avast AV accused of selling your click history, purchase details to third-parties

The company has come under fire in recent months due to a browser extension that was found to be sending user data to third-party marketing firms. At the time, Avast reassured users that their data was "fully de-identified and aggregated" during this process. However, an investigation by Motherboard and PCMag has uncovered that Avast is bending at the truth a bit, as it's relatively easy for marketers to build a profile on individuals, their purchase habits, and their browser click history. All of this trickery stems from Avast subsidiary Jumpshot, which provides user traffic details that it has obtained from 100 million devices around the globe. Data siphoned from users can be narrowed down to individual clicks timed down to the millisecond, which is then tied to a device ID. That persistent device ID will linger on until the Avast software is uninstalled from a customer’s computer. For its part, Avast says that this tracking is only attributable to its free antivirus software and adds that users can opt-out of data collection. For Avast users that may have missed this opt-out button previously, you can do so from within the Settings menu within the app.

Izvor: HotHardware