AVG Will Sell Your Browsing History To Online Advertisers

[owsf2000]

I guess this is for anyone who uses AVG products. (Antivirus, etc)

To keep it free, they will essentially begin selling out their own users to online advertisers. More details about what exactly are going to be collected are listed here.

"AVG also adds that personal, identifiable information like addresses, age, or IPs, even if not sold, may sometimes be shared with collaborators."

In other words, they will be giving out your personal information despite saying they will not be doing so. (They just won't be -directly- selling it. It'll be more like a bonus tossed in I guess.)

Some people are defending it as "well at least they're giving a free product in exchange for your personal information. Most companies take your data after charging you for the product first." but really... is that how bad the online environment has gotten? Where having your data sold or given to people (Or hell, just collected in the first place) is OK?

People have to realize that online identity/credit/etc theft is ON THE RISE. We shouldn't be tolerating all these companies that want to grab our data as a bonus - because the idiots are often quite horrible at securing those big ass data bases they keep. And BECAUSE those databases are so huge, they become a real sweet target for online crime. Even if I trusted AVG, I don't want yet ANOTHER stockpile of personal data on the web by yet ANOTHER company looking out for itself and nobody else. Because as soon as they're hacked, their own data is only a very tiny portion of what gets stolen.

I may try to start a tag of "not so free" for shit like this. Because the cost we pay is just not measured directly in dollars. (But then you know how I am with tags.)

Comments

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Back when I got completely fed up with Symantec/Norton because of that goddamn WS.Reputation.1 horseshit and switched over to Avast (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/748960.html), right before I made the switch, it had been pretty much a coin flip as to whether I went with Avast or AVG. Not that Avast didn't and doesn't have its own issues (as that very link points out [though since then, after disabling all that shit, I haven't had any real problems out of it]), but right now because of the shit you talk about above, it makes me so glad that I did go with Avast over AVG. Well, at least until it is shown at some point that Avast does or will do similar horseshit, which is easily possible.