8 years ago
5
AVG Proudly Announces It Will Sell Your Browsing History To Online Advertisers
AVG, the Czech antivirus company, has announced a new privacy policy in which it boldly and openly admits it will collect user details and sell them to online advertisers for the purpose of continuing to fund its freemium-based products. This new privacy policy is slated to come into effect starting October 15.
Continue Reading
http://slashdot.org
Join the Discussion
I seldom touch a Windows-machine, so I might be wrong, but: Isn't everyone using the free Microsoft anti-virus-solution ("Defender"?) nowadays? In that case, AVG's move would look like a last desperate move to make some cash before vanishing into oblivion.
AVG has been fading into nonexistence for a while now. As soon as it reached that status a few years ago of being one of the most common antiviruses and things started specifically targeting it... the product just became bad. It got worse as an antivirus, a handful of competitors showed up, and they started becoming more aggressive with advertisements. So I'm inclined to agree that it's a last-minute cash grab
I think that the average user will continue using AVG despire popups, browsing history selling and so on.. It's just because the average user doesn't know better. And now, being one of the most common antiviruses, AVG has an easy way to bring in even more profits.
For me, the rot set in when AVG began installing a 'Yahoo' toolbar, and various other third party nonsense designed to supplant my chosen browser (Firefox at the time ). It was sad to see, but that was a few years ago now, so this is the final nail in the virtual coffin for me. I replaced it with Comodo and Malwarebytes, but even they are starting to falter. I also had issues with Avast, and now use ESET as a paid anti-virus. Personally, I think we need a genuinely neutral assesment of some of these programmes. I know it's difficult in this age of pop-ups . Everything has an ad or sponsor now...
I went from AVG to Avast and yeah, they both had the same problems. Avast degraded into a pop-up notification monster, with the added fun of minimizing full screen application each time one popped up. Fastest uninstall of my life lol
Currently, I'm using BitDefender. Not quite the iron curtain of some other antiviruses, but it quietly does it's job, doesn't eat up absurd amounts of system resources, and leaves me alone :) I don't tend to catch viruses even without an antivirus installed, so it's more than enough for me.