Posted on 09/22/2015 4:58:57 AM PDT by MarchonDC09122009
http://www.techsecurityupdate.com/avg-to-flog-your-web-browsing-search-history-from-mid-october/
AVG to flog your web browsing, search history from mid-October September 21, 2015 John Leyden Uncategorized Comments Off Your secrets sold to advertisers
Changes in the privacy policy of AVG's free antivirus doodad will allow it to collect your web browsing and search history – and sell it to advertisers to bankroll its freemium security software products.…
Damnit. So, what would you recommend to replace it?
Free versions of Panda or Bit Defender.
Avast does not do this so far as I know....
Free anti-virus:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388652,00.asp
Paid anti-virus:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372364,00.asp
> Avast does not do this so far as I know...
Yes, Avast is fine.
AVG, not anymore.
thanks for the heads up. removing ine form my phone thats for sure. i guess thats the issue with ‘free’...
Thanks for the tip. I’ve used AVG for a long time but the GUI interface of their new “2015 Free Edition” is just awful and I knew they were on the way down when they started the pop-ups “upgrade for the new academic year”, “upgrade in time for the holiday season” etc etc
Thanks for the heads up!
bfl
Like I told a guy who’s supporting Sanders and loves his “free college” idea...”free” is worth what you pay for it...IE nothing.
"Users who run Avast’s security software should be aware that their surfing habits are tracked by a company called Jumpshot who creates statistics based on visited websites, as Avast recently announced."
Comodo was good for Win, last I used it.. Haven’t used Win for awhile, so, not sure :p
Is NOD still out there?
Flasback to Norton Utilities... Was the best you could get back in the DOS days.. and best PC util for beginning Windows;
But, as soon as Peter Norton sold Norton, it went downhill FAST .. :/
According to the link above, you can prevent Avast to collect data:
We are aware that some users don’t want any data – no matter how generic and depersonalized it is – to be used in market analysis. This is why we clearly state during the installation of our products what information we collect and what we do with it, and offer our users the ability to opt out from having that data collected. We believe we are unique in our industry in offering an opt-out, but we do so because we respect that choice to be our users to make, not ours. We’re grateful that more than 100 million of our users, when given a clear choice, have chosen not to opt out, and we thank you.
I’m getting soo sick of this ongoing industry behavior. I do love me some tech, and toys in general, but this and other privacy issues are really getting under my skin. I could see myself aggressively unplugging in a few years.
I keep asking myself recently..Is this brave new world of tech really worth all the hassle, and the automatic relinquishing of freedom and privacy?
I read the f’ng article, and your comment, after my mini rant. The statement/policy from the company is pretty reasonable. Give me complete and honest opt-out, and I’m happy.
If you’re using Windows 7, I absolutely recommend Microsoft Security Essentials! It is hands down the best free antivirus on the market and updates are distributed through Windows update as per normal updating. This cuts down significantly on system churn since the Windows update process is configured to run in the background while the system is idle.
If you’re using Windows 8+, Windows Defender is Microsoft’s built-in antivirus/antimalware solution. There’s no reason to install a secondary AV product.
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