According to a report published in Motherboard, a science & technology blog belonging to VICE, Anti-Virus software offering firm Avast software has been caught selling its users’ web browsing data and other sensitive information to those interested.
However, the fact to be notified here is that the firm is not doing it directly, but is indulging in the sales activities through a subsidiary company called Jumpshot.
Security researchers from Motherboard say that the Avast software can track users and google searches and collects data from all web related services used by the Avast Antivirus user including LinkedIn pages, YouTube Videos, and X rated sites(only if the user who has installed Avast, browses the A-rated sites for reasons).
A report released by Motherboard says that the software firm is found selling data via Jumpshot in the name of selling data of its users’ actions.
What’s interesting in the report is that almost all major companies like Microsoft, Pepsi, Google, Amazon, Sephora, Home Depot, Intuit, and others are found buying this data which was discovered by the Motherboard researchers in Jan’2020.
Avast has reacted to the news and clarified that it doesn’t record any of its users’ personal identification information like Mac addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and IP addresses. It also clarified at the same time that users do have the option to customize the data sharing option with Jumpshot via a pop-up message in the antivirus software- but God knows who is aware of this fact in real.
Note- Jumpshot claims to create a profile data of Avast users with their user consent and says that it does so to build trend analytics related products and services which then is analyzed by large tech giants to serve better.
The post Avast antivirus caught selling user data appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.
January 28, 2020 at 08:51PM
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