Avast Software is a software company famous for its free antivirus program Avast Antivirus, first released in 1988. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined Avast for selling users' web browsing data to advertisers despite claiming that the product would block online tracking.
The fine also includes a ban on selling or licensing any browsing data for advertising purposes. The company is also required to notify users whose browsing data was sold without their consent.
The FTC said Avast had been collecting users' web browsing information through its browser extensions and antivirus software without transparency, storing the information indefinitely, and selling it without adequate notice or user consent.
The FTC also accused the company of misleading users by saying its software would block third-party tracking and protect privacy, but failed to disclose that it would sell detailed browsing data to more than 100 partners through its subsidiary Jumpshot. Companies that buy the data can link the unidentified information to Avast users’ browsing information, allowing them to be tracked and linked to users through their browsing history.
Avast's sale of user data has landed it with a hefty fine
The misleading security operation was revealed in January 2020 after an investigation by Motherboard and PCMag , which named Google, Yelp, Microsoft, McKinsey, Pepsi, Home Depot, Condé Nast, and Intuit as some of Jumpshot's potential partners.
A month ago, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera browsers removed Avast browser extensions from their stores. Security researcher Wladimir Palant labeled the extensions as spyware in October 2019.
The FTC alleges that the web browsing data sold by Jumpshot included information about users' web searches and the websites they visited, revealing religious beliefs, health concerns, political leanings, locations, financial status, visits to child-directed content, and other sensitive information.
Jumpshot describes itself as the only company to unlock protected data, claiming to have data on up to 100 million devices as of August 2018. The browsing information is said to have been collected since at least 2014. The privacy backlash prompted Avast to immediately end Jumpshot's data collection.
Avast has also merged with another cybersecurity company, NortonLifeLock, to form a new company called Gen Digital, which offers other popular products such as AVG, Avira and CCleaner. This comes almost a year after it was fined €13.7 million by the Czech Republic's data regulator for violating GDPR data protection regulations by collecting and selling internet browsing data.
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