Alarming news about AVG antivirus
By Koalemos
@Asylum (47893)
Manchester, England
November 4, 2015 3:23am CST
An article in a recent computer magazine drew my attention to a very disturbing new policy that has been introduced by the company. They are collecting data through the program which will be sold to companies in order to provide revenue from their free antivirus program.
The company itself claims that all data will be sold as anonymous data and that no person’s personal details will be included. This seems like a puerile claim to me because no company will pay for anonymous data that cannot aid them in targeting their advertising or email campaigns. The data is to be sold to enable targeted advertising, which obviously depends on knowing IP addresses and other details.
AVG is one of the largest providers of free antivirus and has a huge database of customers. This practice will generate excellent revenue but does contravene any suggestion of privacy.
Fortunately I do not use this particular antivirus program.
11 people like this
14 responses
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
4 Nov 15
@Asylum Anonymized data certainly does have a value, especially if (as in the case of AVG) the IP address can be used to give just an approximate location without identifying you personally. It is, in fact, just the same as giving someone your zip code only when completing a survey. That information is valuable because companies can see variations in general areas.
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
4 Nov 15
@owlwings That seems to be rather generalised data rather than something which could financially benefit a company.
As for the IP address, it does not serve much purpose unless it is complete and identifies me. My IP address shows me as being in Milton Keynes, whereas I live in Manchester which is 150 miles away. This is simply because the ISP's servers are based there.
2 people like this
@Missmwngi (12915)
• Nairobi, Kenya
4 Nov 15
I also believe there is a catch on that one. There must be some info they will use to reach out to more people
1 person likes this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
4 Nov 15
@Missmwngi The problem is that we may never know. If selling your details results in extra junk emails etcetera then we are unlikely to be able to associate this with any specific event.
We all get unwanted emails, but how can you track the source of the information that has been used to target you?
2 people like this
@Missmwngi (12915)
• Nairobi, Kenya
4 Nov 15
@Asylum Exactly,just wait and see if they got a plan after the data collection
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
4 Nov 15
A great many companies do this and not only ones which offer a free service. AVG is by no means the only one. The data really is anonymized, as described in their detailed description (see below). Your IP address is available to every single website you access and AVG anonymize the data they sell by obfuscating the last group of digits. That means that your connection could be one of up to 255 individual customers supplied by the same Internet provider.
Of course, it's up to you whether you accept their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy or not. You will find that many companies have a very similar Privacy Policy with similar restrictions on how they use the data they collect. Not many explain what data they collect and how it is used as AVG, however. I give them full marks for a well-written and very detailed description!
Learn about our commitment to protecting your personal data and information
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
4 Nov 15
I will give AVG credit for being honest enough to publically announce the introduction of this rather than covertly applying it. Nevertheless, I have serious doubts about the anonymity of data to be sold.
Information such as 1 out of these 250 internet customers has an interest in a specific field is not a very saleable piece of information.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
4 Nov 15
@Asylum Well, you might not want to buy it (and neither would I, for that matter) but, believe me, the kind of data we are talking about is of great interest and very saleable to certain people. It would take too long to detail what information and who might be interested but if, to take an example out of the air, significantly more people in one area are searching for golfing information, that would be of intense interest to anyone selling golfing equipment and might help them in their decisions on where to expand their offline outlets.
I realise, by the way, that there are anomalies in the geographical locations of some IP addresses. I believe that it is a problem with certain Internet providers and can, therefore, be filtered out quite simply when producing the data for sale.
@rosekiss (30414)
• Eugene, Oregon
4 Nov 15
I use AVG but I purchased the premium version. I am not sure if that was a good thing or not, but I do like the antivirus program, very much. It catches things that I wouldn't catch on my own, and it will block websites that they find suspiciious. I like it much better than Norton/
@allknowing (135369)
• India
4 Nov 15
i gave up AVG years ago. This news is really disturbing. These free downloads always have a catch.
1 person likes this
@changjiangzhibin89 (16750)
• China
4 Nov 15
I once used AVG for some time and uninstalled it afterwards.Now I use Avira free Antivirus.
1 person likes this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
4 Nov 15
A lot of people seem to have previously used AVG and subsequently changed, but there are still millions of people using this program today. It is one the major free antivirus programs and will certainly generate a vast revenue for the company through data sales.
1 person likes this
@marguicha (222404)
• Chile
4 Nov 15
It is childlike to say that it will be anonymous. As you say, it would be absurd. It seems that we have to stay away from that antivirus company.
@kevin1877uk (36988)
•
4 Nov 15
I don't use AVG either, too much of our information is already sold without us knowing about it.
@kevin1877uk (36988)
•
4 Nov 15
@Asylum No it won't be that is for sure, we'll never truly know how much of our information is sold to companies.
@changjiangzhibin89 (16750)
• China
4 Nov 15
I once used AVG for some time and uninstalled it afterwards.Now I use Avira free Antivirus.
@epiffanie (11326)
• Australia
4 Nov 15
We used that anti virus a few years ago.. but we decided to use apple products .. no need to use those..
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
4 Nov 15
Surely you are not operating without an antivirus?
I know that many people assume that Apple and Linux are safe from virus attacks, but it is strictly true. Apart from this if you downloaded a Windows based virus it may not affect your system but could be transmitted a friend who uses Windows via email.
@Pattitude (1287)
• Newton, North Carolina
5 Nov 15
I had not heard this. I used to use them years ago, it was an okay program for free, there is a paid version, as well.
@thauser (35)
• United States
7 Nov 15
I no longer use AVG since my internet provider offers McAfee at no charge.
