Avast is selling millions of user’s Personal Data

avast

One of the most popular and mostly-used Antivirus Software, Avast has been accused of collecting and selling its user’s sensitive personal data. Reports suggest that, Avast and most other renowned Antivirus Soft wares had been doing this since years. Though the recent report only exposed Avast at this time.

As per the reports suggest, Avast has been collecting user’s web browsing data and web search histories to big Software Companies including Google and Microsoft. The exposing report comes from a joint investigation done by PCMag and Motherboard. PCMag has given this report as a conclusion of their investigation of leaked documents from Avast’s subsidiary Jumpshot.

According to the report, when you install any version of the Avast Security on your computer, it will run in the background not only protecting you from security threats, but also tracking you all over the internet. Avast would collect your browsing data, web search history, browser cookies and in most cases, also the list of the websites you visit in daily basis. Avast’s subsidiary Jumpshot would collect that data and sell it to big Tech Companies.

The information PCMag collected from Jumpshot also includes data about user’s clicks and behavior across the web and even data about user’s mouse cursor movements. That’s some insane level of data thievery. Though In a reply, Avast said that they have stopped providing data collected by its Browser Extensions to Jumpshot and selling them to third-party companies.

However, the reports say that Avast is still collecting personal data of users through its original PC Software itself. As Avast has almost close to 500 Million users, we can guess that more than 400 Million users have already been affected by Avast’s sketchy data mining system even if Avast stops doing this in the future.