Avast Antivirus Was Spying On You with Adware (Until This Week)

[V_R]

We warned you at the beginning of the year that many of your browser extensions are spying on you, tracking what you are visiting, and even inserting ads into pages. These aren’t just no-name developers either: even Avast, one of the most trusted antivirus vendors was in on the game.
Before we go even one step further, it’s important to note that they recently disabled the spying “shopping” feature in their browser extension. So if you are running the latest Chrome with extensions updated, you are fine. For now.
So Avast has stopped integrating the spying extension, but this is about the principle: you should be able to trust your antivirus provider. Why are they adding a feature that spies on your browsing, inserts ads… and all without properly notifying you?
And why, at the same time, are they claiming to stop spyware, even uninstalling other shopping extensions from other vendors, while they were doing the same thing they are supposed to stop?

Read on: http://www.howtogeek.com/199829/avast-antivirus-was-spying-on-you-with-adware-until-this-week/


Dirty.

 

[TriplexDread]

Very naughty indeed

 

[Ian]

Whaaaat?

Who on earth at Avast thought this was a good idea from an AV company?

 

[Anon_F]

Whaaaat?

Who on earth at Avast thought this was a good idea from an AV company?

It's a George Ratner moment i think!

 

[muckshifter]

It's a George Ratner moment i think!

Who ??

 

[nivrip]

They could lose an awful lot of customers. I'm sure many of the antivirus providers do the same but Avast have been specifically named.

Ratner - head of Ratner Jewellers who stated that many of his products were "crap".

 

[V_R]

I'll just leave this here....

http://www.bitdefender.co.uk/solutions/free.html

 

[floppybootstomp]

That's a bit unsettling. Personally I haven't used Avast for years. But atm I am using Microsoft's Security Essentials and it strikes me that Microsoft, having worse ethics than an alley cat, would not be averse to some snooping and dodgy placements.

Hmm.

And Hmm again.

 

[bootneck02]

I wondered where I was getting all those PUP infections from which good old Anti Mailwarebytes kept telling me about. I had Avast, I had read all the reviews and as I had a new built PC I thought I would splash a bit of dosh on the best antivirus software and it came out on top!!!!!!!!!! So now I have wasted money on a anti virus which installs crap on my pc. I have taken it off and reinstalled Bitdefender which previously never let me downI am so angry At the moment I am having difficulties as it has left a lot of bits and pieces on the hard drive so had to use IObit's file shredder to complete the job

 

[bootneck02]

P.S I also found it had disabled SUPERAntiSpyware when it was uninstalled, reinstalled SUPERAntiSpyware and found loads of spyware. I might get into trouble for saying this but DO NOT DOWNLOAD AVAST it is crap.

 

[muckshifter]

on the best antivirus software

http://www.bitdefender.co.uk/solutions/free.html

... just another opinion. Hey! you can even buy it.

 

[bootneck02]

I am with you Mr Mucks.