A message from Avast CEO Ondrej Vlcek

[Bryan320]

It's to late now MR CEO should have thought long and hard it is a sh***t storm on the avast forums.

https://blog.avast.com/a-message-from-ceo-ondrej-vlcek

To all our valued stakeholders – customers, partners, employees and investors,


I’d like to take this opportunity and address the situation regarding Avast’s sale of user data through its subsidiary Jumpshot. Avast’s core mission is to keep people around the world safe and secure, and I realize the recent news about Jumpshot has hurt the feelings of many of you, and rightfully raised a number of questions – including the fundamental question of trust.
As CEO of Avast, I feel personally responsible and I would like to apologize to all concerned.
Protecting people is Avast’s top priority and must be embedded in everything we do in our business and in our products. Anything to the contrary is unacceptable.
For these reasons, I – together with our board of directors – have decided to terminate the Jumpshot data collection and wind down Jumpshot’s operations, with immediate effect.
To understand why we have come to this decision, let me give you some context. We started Jumpshot in 2015 with the idea of extending our data analytics capabilities beyond core security. This was during a period where it was becoming increasingly apparent that cybersecurity was going to be about big data. We thought we could leverage our tools and resources to do this more securely than the countless other companies that were collecting data.
Jumpshot has operated as an independent company from the very beginning, with its own management and board of directors, building their products and services via the data feed coming from the Avast antivirus products. During all those years, both Avast and Jumpshot acted fully within legal bounds – and we very much welcomed the introduction of GDPR in the European Union in May 2018, as it was a rigorous legal framework addressing how companies should treat customer data. Both Avast and Jumpshot committed themselves to 100% GDPR compliance.
When I took on the role as CEO of Avast seven months ago, I spent a lot of time re-evaluating every portion of our business. During this process, I came to the conclusion that the data collection business is not in line with our privacy priorities as a company in 2020 and beyond. It is key to me that Avast’s sole purpose is to make the world a safer place, and I knew that ultimately, everything in the company would have to become aligned with our North Star.
While the decision we have made will regrettably impact hundreds of loyal Jumpshot employees and dozens of its customers, it is absolutely the right thing to do. I firmly believe it will help Avast focus on and unlock its full potential to deliver on its promise of security and privacy. And I especially thank our users, whose recent feedback accelerated our decision to take quick action.
This change represents a new chapter in Avast’s history of keeping people around the world safe and secure. We’re excited to demonstrate our commitment to innovation and security priorities – with a singular focus in 2020 and beyond. Thank you for your continued support and the trust you are putting into us. We will not disappoint.
Respectfully yours,
Ondrej Vlcek, CEO Avast

 

[Antus67]

He's good with words and took time to say the right thing but a bit to late..............should have remove this issue a long time ago.................trust is lost and damage is done.

 

[Bryan320]

Absolutely this guy is not stupid by any means he knows exactly what he and the company did. Surprisingly enough he thought he could get away with it and he did for (some time...) But now that the cat is out of the bag they might not have a choice but to remove some of the annoyances in the software itself because soon the company will be desperate to retrieve users back.

 

[plat]

Surely Avast foresaw and prepared at some point for this event, to be outed and the outcry to happen. They made a great fortune already. Damage is done. What I smell is arrogance and a profound disrespect for the customers, free and paid. Like this will blow over, like Web of Trust, and the stupid sheeple will forget and flock back eventually. By the way, if you do a search, you will find the WOT thing was discussed avidly on the Avast forums back in late 2016. lol!

So much money is made, I'm sure firms like Avast have R&D to explore the various means to data mine for profit, the means to evade detection and the legal loopholes. It's just too lucrative and profitable, right?

 

[oldschool]

I'm going to install Avast Free as a result of this outstanding decision. Or should it be AVG? Hmmm ...

 

[ForgottenSeer 823865]

Avast won't lose much, Average Joe don't care of that, only medias, geeks, and tinfoil hats. Avast is free, people rather use it while having some cons than pay.
Money rules the world , not privacy.

The message is smartly made, anyway they had enough datas, and if they want more, they will find a way to get more.

 

[oldschool]

Money rules the world , not privacy.

The message is smartly made,

Indeed, there are even people who pay to have their data mined! Very smart move!

 

[SumTingWong]

Avast is another version of Qihoo 360 with bad privacy and data harvest. I feel bad for AVG and Piriform to be on this Avast bad company.

You play a stupid game, you win a stupid price.

Losing customer trust is a bad business practice. CEO is shooting himself right now.

 

[SeriousHoax]

I'm going to install Avast Free as a result of this outstanding decision. Or should it be AVG? Hmmm ...

Make ̷A̷m̷e̷r̷i̷c̷a̷ Avast Great Again

 

[RKRN3]

Is Kaspersky Cloud Security free good enough?

 

[Captain Awesome]

Is Kaspersky Cloud Security free good enough?

No... Just use WD and visualizer tools along with that.

 

[RKRN3]

No... Just use WD and visualizer tools along with that.

What are those tools? Do you mean by HardConfigurator?

 

[Captain Awesome]

What are those tools? Do you mean by HardConfigurator?

Time freeze,EEK, Shadow Defender, Hitman Pro etc.

 

[RKRN3]

Time freeze,EEK, Shadow Defender, Hitman Pro etc.

I already have EEK and Malwarebytes Free.

 

[Dex4Sure]

Avast won't lose much, Average Joe don't care of that, only medias, geeks, and tinfoil hats. Avast is free, people rather use it while having some cons than pay.
Money rules the world , not privacy.

The message is smartly made, anyway they had enough datas, and if they want more, they will find a way to get more.

I beg to differ. More and more people are realizing Windows Defender is enough and this will hurt avast as much as all other 3rd party AV companies. Microsoft already harvests your data on Windows 10, so might as well use their AV when its really solid anyway.

 

[Captain Awesome]

Avast's history: 2014: Avast forum hacked leaked username and password of users(patched)
2019: Avast's Ccleaner hacked(patched but damage has been done)
2020: Avast's privacy leaked and data harvesting.(terminated main culprit but lost many longtime users)

Many reasons to uninstall it immediately.

 

[ForgottenSeer 823865]

I beg to differ. More and more people are realizing Windows Defender is enough and this will hurt avast as much as all other 3rd party AV companies. Microsoft already harvests your data on Windows 10, so might as well use their AV when its really solid anyway.

Agree, but it is not specifically related to Avast privacy drama.
People who uses Avast are either security aware people (those may indeed change opinion) but mostly by those who have it pre-installed by a repair guy selling a refurbished machine or fixing the user PC after an infection.

 

[Captain Awesome]

Avast's Shutdown of Jumpshot Will Harm the Web and the World - SparkToro

Last night, I got an email from Deren Baker, Jumpshot's CEO, informing me that the business would be winding down at the behest of their parent company,

sparktoro.com

 

[virusesmaximum]

I beg to differ. More and more people are realizing Windows Defender is enough and this will hurt avast as much as all other 3rd party AV companies. Microsoft already harvests your data on Windows 10, so might as well use their AV when its really solid anyway.

never a free av can overcome the protection of one paid.

 

[show-Zi]

If this statement had been issued before the problem was discovered, I think Avast was successful in increasing its followers. After discovering the problem and spending time thinking about measures to control the situation, this is only a standard comment.

This is a big topic for security enthusiasts, but I guess Avast users will not decrease significantly unless the media, such as newspapers and news shows, are loud. Avenger Joe is optimistic.