- Mar 25, 2014
- 398
Avast Antivirus Was Spying On You with Adware (Until This Week)
- Thread starter Petrovic
- Start date
- Status
- Jan 15, 2012
- 594
they confessed that they installed softwares/addons with their AV/IS that had nothing to do with what their product's purpose.
thats adware in my book. i dont trust them anymore.
some say other's are doing it too, so what? we are talking about AVAST here!
- Sep 2, 2014
- 85
eset smart security 8
- Oct 2, 2011
- 1,558
Do I need to uninstall my Avast ???
No, just remove/uninstall the Safeprice extention.
- Feb 21, 2013
- 360
so what antivirus should i get now is emisisoft AV any good
No one is asking you to switch??? Avast has made a reasonable explanation if you are worried about what info avast stores then you should really be worried about the NSA.
- Dec 4, 2013
- 2,800
Although the decision is up to you, I feel that no, you should not have to uninstall your Avast unless you are convinced this mass fear is based upon a real and present danger or a more subjective and moral question as to what you believe is the honest truth. I'm keeping Avast.Do I need to uninstall my Avast ???
Don't just worry. Read VLK's response on Ryan's post (page 2, above yours). It settled my personal doubts.
Edit:
@dragonx1983, many here on MT trust and recommend Emsisoft AV as well as their paid (..I think) Anti-Malware (I hope to win an AV license key from our giveaway!
) but as Viking posted, an option would be to remove/un-install SafePrice ext.Our Window 7 system has ESET NOD 32 Version 8 ('till February) while on the Windows system 8.1 which I am posting from, we still have Avast!,
though it is without SafePrice.
Last edited:
- Apr 3, 2014
- 1,460
sorry but Avast does not force to install it, and give you the option not to install toolbar
Microsoft does not give you this option when you install, instead of that they are running tasks, using your pc resources to send them data. and they are selling it.
which one is worst?
Both.
I use Windows for duty (and good games too , he, he) , I like more more Linux (usually more respectful of your privacy , although here has been some ... ), especially Xubuntu and Manjaro . But when you buy Windows , you know that, unfortunately , you lose certain rights on behalf of a private company.
Avast has displeased me that is supposed to do the opposite of what you suggest and they do not trust .
I think not properly report the " profits " of the extension.
Both.
Kind regards
I use Windows for duty (and good games too , he, he) , I like more more Linux (usually more respectful of your privacy , although here has been some ... ), especially Xubuntu and Manjaro . But when you buy Windows , you know that, unfortunately , you lose certain rights on behalf of a private company.
Avast has displeased me that is supposed to do the opposite of what you suggest and they do not trust .
I think not properly report the " profits " of the extension.
Both.
Kind regards
- Apr 3, 2014
- 1,460
I'm installing a lot of windows 7, it really pist me off to dig into the tasks to find what called experience and delete it.
i will need to build bat file to delete it.
Avast, small prob for me
cheers
Sometimes Windows installations I measure the time for old LPs , eg installing Windows , Libreoffice , Thunderbird and Qihoo on my computer as long as Weekend Warriors (Ted Nugent ) + School Out ( Alice Cooper) + some creatures of the Night ( Kiss) .
Good luck with your installation, by the way , have you seen @Malware Test test ?.
http://malwaretips.com/threads/avast-free-antivirus-2015-test-and-review.35658/
You'll like it .
Kind regards
Good luck with your installation, by the way , have you seen @Malware Test test ?.
http://malwaretips.com/threads/avast-free-antivirus-2015-test-and-review.35658/
You'll like it .
Kind regards
- Apr 5, 2014
- 6,008
- May 25, 2014
- 1,559
@omidomi: No i do not remember them right now, but this is bad for Avast. Im thinking about heading to Kaspersky, Emsisoft or maybe Trend Micro.
Most likely Kaspersky.
As i might want to get a mac cause im getting sick of all the errors i had with Windows.
Most likely Kaspersky.
As i might want to get a mac cause im getting sick of all the errors i had with Windows.
Last edited:
- Apr 5, 2014
- 6,008
- May 25, 2014
- 1,559
Well im planning on getting a Mac or Gaming PC and i will keep this laptop so i need something with offline protection so e can dump Trend Micro for now.
And Emsisoft doesnt have a AV for Mac, and i dont even know if i will install one on OSX.
And Emsisoft doesnt have a AV for Mac, and i dont even know if i will install one on OSX.
- May 25, 2014
- 1,559
Ondrej Vlcek COO Avast Softwre:
A couple of days ago, howtogeek.com published an article about Avast and accused us of spying on our users. Given that the article contains a number of inaccuracies I feel it is necessary to react. As these are some pretty serious allegations, I also hope that we will be given some room on their site to defend ourselves. We requested the opportunity to discuss the author’s findings, but he declined to do so.
The article basically says that Avast used the SafePrice browser extension to spy on its users. That the SafePrice extension (which they first call “adware”) collects all URLs that the user visits, and then sends them to the cloud, together with a user ID. To demonstrate the problem, they used Fiddler (a free browser monitoring tool) to dissect the requests being generated by SafePrice and found the user ID in some of the requests, concluding that the product is “spying”. Finally, they say that all of this was true up until last week when we made SafePrice a standalone extension (removed it from the main Avast Online Security extension).
Let me start by saying that Avast’s browser extensions, together with some other modules inside Avast, rely heavily on cloud functionality. That is, in the particular case of URL scanning, we do transfer the URL the user is visiting, together with additional metadata to the Avast cloud, which then does the necessary processing and synchronously returns the answer. By scanning URLs in the cloud, Avast is able to detect malicious activity, from viruses and malware, phishing and hacking. You may not realize but collecting URL information for this very purpose is extremely common in the security industry, as this information is essential to providing this kind of service.
Now, regarding Avast SafePrice. SafePrice searches the web and offers its users the best price possible when shopping online from sites we trust, safeguarding users from possible online scams. While formerly the user had to do research and visit price comparison portals, SafePrice now offers automated help to find the best and trustworthy offerings. Avast SafePrice sends data to our server regarding the products our users are looking for and the URLs they are visiting. All personally identifiable information is stripped in real time, so the shopping data is completely anonymous. Again, I don’t think this can come as a surprise to anyone – I mean, did you expect SafePrice to have all the product IDs and all the offers stored locally? That just doesn’t make sense at all.
Originally, SafePrice was indeed part of the main Avast browser extension (as the article suggests). However, as most of the people in this forum know, in July 2014 we changed the strategy and moved it to a separate extension. The installation of this extension is now completely voluntary (on an opt-in basis) and its presence doesn’t influence Avast’s efficiency to block malicious sites. Since we have made this change, SafePrice accumulated almost 3 million installs just from the Chrome Web Store alone and became the most popular shopping extension for Chrome.
By the way, the other allegation was that Avast pushes SafePrice while recommending that users remove other similar browser extensions via Avast Browser Cleanup (BCU). I have explicitly checked our BCU database of community ratings and found that all the major shopping extensions, including PriceBlink, InvisibleHand, Shoptimate, and Groupon have good ratings and are not recommended for removal by BCU. Only those that our community of users have assessed as poor are so recommended.
One of the other issues raised by the article was whether the user ID is PII (personally identifiable information) or not, and why it is being transferred. The Avast user ID is a random, machine-generated ID that is created during the installation of the product. So by itself, it is certainly not a piece of PII. And the reason we include it in the request is because context is very important. The efficacy of a security product is severely limited if requests are done without a context, i.e., if it is not possible to tie them together into a “stream”. And in the case of SafePrice, we use the user ID just to be able to count our active users. In general, we really don’t see anything bad in doing this, in fact, if we were, we would have probably tried to hide what we’re doing in some way – while, as the author of the article uncovered quite easily using Fiddler, the user ID is there just as a regular json field. Which makes me even more frustrated, as it is very likely that if we actually made the field less noticeable, the article probably wouldn’t have been written. We’re not trying to hide anything.
Now, the key is not only what information is collected, but also what is done with the collected information and how the user is informed about the collection process. Avast is committed to protecting its customers on all fronts, which is why we inform our users, even beyond our EULA and Privacy policy, that their browsing information will be collected but stripped of personally identifiable information and used to improve services, such as online web security. We actually tried to make this very, very explicit, and that’s why we have the screen (attached) in the Avast installer.
As you can see, the title of the screen says “Please Don’t Skip This – Read it Carefully”. Honestly, I don’t know how to make it more explicit than this.
If you have any additional questions, I’d be happy to answer them.
Thanks,
Vlk
A couple of days ago, howtogeek.com published an article about Avast and accused us of spying on our users. Given that the article contains a number of inaccuracies I feel it is necessary to react. As these are some pretty serious allegations, I also hope that we will be given some room on their site to defend ourselves. We requested the opportunity to discuss the author’s findings, but he declined to do so.
The article basically says that Avast used the SafePrice browser extension to spy on its users. That the SafePrice extension (which they first call “adware”) collects all URLs that the user visits, and then sends them to the cloud, together with a user ID. To demonstrate the problem, they used Fiddler (a free browser monitoring tool) to dissect the requests being generated by SafePrice and found the user ID in some of the requests, concluding that the product is “spying”. Finally, they say that all of this was true up until last week when we made SafePrice a standalone extension (removed it from the main Avast Online Security extension).
Let me start by saying that Avast’s browser extensions, together with some other modules inside Avast, rely heavily on cloud functionality. That is, in the particular case of URL scanning, we do transfer the URL the user is visiting, together with additional metadata to the Avast cloud, which then does the necessary processing and synchronously returns the answer. By scanning URLs in the cloud, Avast is able to detect malicious activity, from viruses and malware, phishing and hacking. You may not realize but collecting URL information for this very purpose is extremely common in the security industry, as this information is essential to providing this kind of service.
Now, regarding Avast SafePrice. SafePrice searches the web and offers its users the best price possible when shopping online from sites we trust, safeguarding users from possible online scams. While formerly the user had to do research and visit price comparison portals, SafePrice now offers automated help to find the best and trustworthy offerings. Avast SafePrice sends data to our server regarding the products our users are looking for and the URLs they are visiting. All personally identifiable information is stripped in real time, so the shopping data is completely anonymous. Again, I don’t think this can come as a surprise to anyone – I mean, did you expect SafePrice to have all the product IDs and all the offers stored locally? That just doesn’t make sense at all.
Originally, SafePrice was indeed part of the main Avast browser extension (as the article suggests). However, as most of the people in this forum know, in July 2014 we changed the strategy and moved it to a separate extension. The installation of this extension is now completely voluntary (on an opt-in basis) and its presence doesn’t influence Avast’s efficiency to block malicious sites. Since we have made this change, SafePrice accumulated almost 3 million installs just from the Chrome Web Store alone and became the most popular shopping extension for Chrome.
By the way, the other allegation was that Avast pushes SafePrice while recommending that users remove other similar browser extensions via Avast Browser Cleanup (BCU). I have explicitly checked our BCU database of community ratings and found that all the major shopping extensions, including PriceBlink, InvisibleHand, Shoptimate, and Groupon have good ratings and are not recommended for removal by BCU. Only those that our community of users have assessed as poor are so recommended.
One of the other issues raised by the article was whether the user ID is PII (personally identifiable information) or not, and why it is being transferred. The Avast user ID is a random, machine-generated ID that is created during the installation of the product. So by itself, it is certainly not a piece of PII. And the reason we include it in the request is because context is very important. The efficacy of a security product is severely limited if requests are done without a context, i.e., if it is not possible to tie them together into a “stream”. And in the case of SafePrice, we use the user ID just to be able to count our active users. In general, we really don’t see anything bad in doing this, in fact, if we were, we would have probably tried to hide what we’re doing in some way – while, as the author of the article uncovered quite easily using Fiddler, the user ID is there just as a regular json field. Which makes me even more frustrated, as it is very likely that if we actually made the field less noticeable, the article probably wouldn’t have been written. We’re not trying to hide anything.
Now, the key is not only what information is collected, but also what is done with the collected information and how the user is informed about the collection process. Avast is committed to protecting its customers on all fronts, which is why we inform our users, even beyond our EULA and Privacy policy, that their browsing information will be collected but stripped of personally identifiable information and used to improve services, such as online web security. We actually tried to make this very, very explicit, and that’s why we have the screen (attached) in the Avast installer.
As you can see, the title of the screen says “Please Don’t Skip This – Read it Carefully”. Honestly, I don’t know how to make it more explicit than this.
If you have any additional questions, I’d be happy to answer them.
Thanks,
Vlk
- Mar 15, 2011
- 13,070
Do I need to uninstall my Avast ???
No need, this type of migration is normal but hard to accept since it comply on issues which an obvious move towards downhill reputation.
Remember the protection provide by Avast doesn't change at all.
Billmartin
Level 1
- Mar 27, 2014
- 14
I personaly love Avast i turn the safe price off and turn on hardened mode to agressive and configure it for its maximum protection
- Jul 27, 2013
- 43
Well, if you have an active base of several million users who don't pay anything for the product and there comes an advertiser that offers your $1-2 for each installation of a toolbar, wouldn't you go for the deal too?
It's easy money and I can just guess that the venture capitals in their back are pushing for profits no matter what. Which makes it very very hard to resists.
Ad networks want exactly the opposite of the antivirus/security industry. The one side wants to collect as much information about users as possible, the other side wants to sell you a product to maintain a reasonable level of privacy. Truth is: That doesn't combine! Never.
Even with free stuff, you're always paying a price. Sometimes it's just your email address that you have to provide, sometimes you must accept to be exposed to tracking ad-networks. Truly free software that doesn't rely on any funding is very hard to find today.
- Apr 3, 2014
- 1,460
I don't see anything wrong with that. the extension will save you money so why not.
I'm now thinking of installing avast just for the extension hope I'll be able to save money.
thanks Avast.
I'm now thinking of installing avast just for the extension hope I'll be able to save money.
thanks Avast.
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