Hi all!
I‘m a Product Development Manager for Avira Scout. It is a pleasure to see you guys showing interest in our product! I‘d like to provide few comments to the questions raised above. Hope it helps
Please don‘t hesitate to ask if you have an interest in further details.
General privacy questions
Running a project of Scout size needs some telemetry data about browser health and malware. For example, when detecting malware and blocking pages we need a feedback channel for the malware detection to be able to identify and fix False Positives. We avoid collecting data on users as much as possible. Some will still be collected inevitably when collecting the product data, but never used since we don‘t create, store or maintain any user profiles and obviously don‘t use them in our business since they don‘t exist
As of today, this minor data collection happens in the Autopilot Extension using Mixpanel tool. This can be deactivated by switching off the relevant toggle or just going into the second mode in Autopilot. However already now we are experimenting with Human Web by the CLIQZ guys for our telemetry. See the paper:
http://josepmpujol.net/public/papers/big_green_tracker.pdf. Current tests look good and we plan to implement it soon.
Safesearch and Offers privacy questions
In order for Internet services to work the backend needs to get some data. You can‘t search without telling the server side what to search for. You can‘t shop without letting the shop owner know what you wish to buy. The question is what kind of extra data the service providers collect on you and how they use it later. In our case, we collect much less than other big guys in the browser market. And those things we eventually collect we don‘t use for data warehousing, profile building or whatsoever – we use them exactly for the purpose of providing the good services and the best products we can deliver.
CLIQZ privacy questions
CLIQZ is owned by Burda which is a big German media house. They want to create a privacy-focused alternative for Google. Mozilla is now also involved in CLIQZ. These guys take privacy concerns really serious. That‘s actually why we have integrated CLIQZ search into Scout. It makes the web searching experience much more private.
Extensions can be added to any Chrome
True. And Extensions have only limited influence on the browser. But this is just a start for Scout
And we have already now done a lot on top of this – for example, we‘ve removed quite some calls that every Chromium based browser makes to Google thus increasing user privacy protection level. We call it "de-googling"
Avira Connect must be installed
Unlike some other Avira products Scout indeed does not need Connect client in order to work once it is installed. However, instead of developing and maintaining a standalone "light installer" we‘ve decided to leverage the Connect client we already have. You can uninstall Connect after Scout installation if you like. It is not used for further updates.
Update delays concerns
Scout is usually updated to the latest major Chromium version within 2 weeks after it is released. And for critical Chromium security hotfixes we strive to make it in 3 days. Updating as fast as possible is our priority and I would say that we manage to do it with quite a short gap compared to other Chromium based browsers out there.