Avast, an antivirus program with more than 435 million users worldwide, said it will stop collecting and selling the private web browsing histories of its users following a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag into the sale of that data. In addition, Avast said it will completely shut down Jumpshot, the subsidiary company it used to sell this data.

They were collecting and selling browsing history data? What the hell man.

I think my old gaming PC is still running Avast antivirus. I thought they could be trusted, but I guess this is another case of, “If the service is free, you are the product” kind of thing. This is not cool. I'm going to have to go through our PCs at home to see what kind of antivirus they are running.

Link: Avast Antivirus Is Shutting Down Its Data Collection Arm, Effective Immediately

Tags: #Technology #Privacy