Question Why does Trend Micro send telemetry to data mining firms?

[Game Of Thrones]

Trend obviously took the path of least resistance - full cooperation with the intelligence state. This may explain their fairly recent announcement of 'Major' expansion in their US Operations.. After all they are joined at the hip now with the intelligence complex and probably have near unlimited funds. Trend, by doing this, in my opinion have put consumer privacy and protection behind profit. I think we can safety assume they are whitelisting the toys intelligence uses, with those NSA and CIA contractors on staff - it's nearly a sure bet. Can you imagine the intelligence boon the telemetry of an AV would be? Trend is dead to me now.

Also note, the NSA's investment wing (Strategic Cyber Ventures) was formed by Trend Micro and the NSA (through Booz).. This is a bit similar to CIA's In-Q-Tel in that they are investing in firms that show promise in cyber security. One more way Trend is joined at the hip with US Intel.

I go out and when I back home you find another reason for ditching the trend be aware to not become the second Snowden ( kidding ) thanks for enlightening us man, I myself really appreciate that and always enjoy your posts here. to me, trend is dead until they say something about this.

 

[Slyguy]

Unfortunately I have got some confirmation that Trend Micro is part of the intelligence complex now. I think about it this way - let's say Booz/NSA come up with a new exploit, if their labs are merged with Trend how difficult would it be for them to whitelist this with Trend? Also since we now know Trend helped form an NSA investment firm in emerging tech companies this relationship appears tighter than at first glance.

Trend Micro and all of their products/associations are dead to me now.. Sadly. I'd say we should probably spread the word about this so people like whistleblowers, privacy advocates, regular citizens aren't caught up in what could be the telemetry/surveillance dragnet of Trend+Booz.

In the interest of disclosure, I used several tools to determine Trend's activity, including this one.. Which monitors/logs background application traffic to determine what they are doing and names the processes and locations;

 

[woodrowbone]

Wow! My own suspicions were that WSA is doing just what you described here...

/W

 

[Slyguy]

Wow! My own suspicions were that WSA is doing just what you described here...

/W

WSA employs spooks, I think their past press releases sort of gave that away. I'd try running Hacker Deterrent on it and see what telemetry and redirects are taking place from their modules. It's also possible much of this happens on the back end out of visibility of such tools.

For me, the idea of a PAID application harvesting my activity for profit is absolutely repulsive. Harvesting it for intelligence reasons is even more repulsive. Trend (and other firms) appear to be doing this.

I've only validated Emsisoft and Zemana NOT doing this.. I will be checking Dr. Web this evening. Avira, unfortunately does do this as well.. <sigh>

 

[woodrowbone]

If you have the time and feel for it, please check Avast.

/W

 

[Slyguy]

If you have the time and feel for it, please check Avast.

/W

I am considering testing this outside of a VM on a development machine and running through a variety of security products. Avira, unfortunately, seems to have a fascination with MIXPANEL. Ironically, Emsisoft labels Mixpanel as a malicious/privacy invasion site in their database.

 

[Slyguy]

No.. For Trend to scan it, it does it locally and then if necessary connects via core services to Trend Micro domains. The point here is, Trend is DEFINITELY connecting to telemetry harvesting domains during day to day use. You can test this yourself. There is no possible reason CoreServices should ever be connecting to a company like ScoreCardResearch.

Even more alarming to me.. CoreServices (Trend Internal Components) also connect to TMRG INC, otherwise known as RelevantKnowledge.
RelevantKnowledge by TMRG - Should I Remove It?

By the way, I believe the "B" domain Trend hits is the Booz Allen Hamilton one. (B for Booz) Just a guess really, I would need to reinstall it to find out for sure. But I think they'd probably feel putting Booz would be too obvious, and the B sufficed.

 

[Slerion]

Is this still a thing ? i could get licenses for it very cheap

 

[ispx]

trend micro is an interpol partner & they have no qualms in admitting it :

Spoiler: interpol

N2014-189 / 2014 / News / News and media / Internet / Home - INTERPOL

so why the huge astonishment?

The country Trend Micro is based is fully under the control of uncle Sam so they have to follow command from uncle if intentionally or unintentionally

wrong, trend micro's headquarters are in yoyogi, shibuya, tokyo, japan get your facts right

 

[L0ckJaw]

You can opt-out for datamining, i called the Dutch support and due to the new privacy law thats starting 25-5 you can disable the anonymous sending of data. I installed Max Security and the program is so light.
The detection rate is awesome.

 

[Mahesh Sudula]

You can opt-out for datamining, i called the Dutch support and due to the new privacy law thats starting 25-5 you can disable the anonymous sending of data. I installed Max Security and the program is so light.
The detection rate is awesome.

Yes TM is awesome and an all rounder..One question why do TM don't allow to delete Quarantine
It says auto deletion after an year. Though know the idea behind it to sniff the BB data and sample Hashes
Is it necessary at that level ??

 

[L0ckJaw]

I think its for the Cloud Scanning. i dont mind that i can not delete it.

 

[Pelocha]

It's Trend micro doing business with my privacy or not? Any news about it?
I'm using Trendmicro on my machines.

 

[L0ckJaw]

As of the privacy act of 25-5 they guarenteed me no and never have.

 

[Slyguy]

It's Trend micro doing business with my privacy or not? Any news about it?
I'm using Trendmicro on my machines.

If you like Trend, use it. It's a solid product and is very low cost. The only way to guarantee any privacy would be to use one of the AV's that has strong privacy policy, doesn't sell your data, isn't linked with any intelligence organization and uses 443 for communications. Then you need to consider what is done with the backend data/file collection and telemetry and this issue becomes much more complicated.

It's a fairly complex answer and I do not want to dissuade people from using otherwise competent, quality products simply because of the privacy issue exclusively. All things need to be measured.. For example I wouldn't have a Tivo, which I really like, if I placed privacy ahead of everything else, so privacy becomes a secondary concern.

Good luck.

 

[Paul.R]

It's Trend micro doing business with my privacy or not? Any news about it?
I'm using Trendmicro on my machines.

Change it, Trend Micro is doing business with CIA with this ones :

• Comodo
• Avast
• F-Secure
• Zemana Antilogger
• Zone Alarm
• Symantec
• Rising
• Panda Security
• Norton
• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
• EMET (Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit)
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• McAfee
• Kaspersky
• GDATA
• ESET
• ClamAV
• Bitdefender
• Avira
• AVG

My advice use Emsisoft, good privacy , good protection, good bb

 

[Slyguy]

Change it, Trend Micro is doing business with CIA with this ones :

• Comodo
• Avast
• F-Secure
• Zemana Antilogger
• Zone Alarm
• Symantec
• Rising
• Panda Security
• Norton
• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
• EMET (Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit)
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• McAfee
• Kaspersky
• GDATA
• ESET
• ClamAV
• Bitdefender
• Avira
• AVG

My advice use Emsisoft, good privacy , good protection, good bb

Are you suggesting Avast, Comodo, Zone Alarm, Rising, McAfee, MSE, Kaspersky offer more privacy than Trend? Not to belabor the point but suggesting a move from Trend to a Chinese AV, or Zone Alarm which is controlled by Unit8200 seems like throwing a baby out with the bathwater.

If privacy is a ONLY metric (and I suggest it not be), then your solutions might look like G Data, Emsisoft, ClamAV, FortiClient, K7, Symantec (SEPC), Sophos Home Premium, Bullguard and maybe a few others that are very lean (or empty) of telemetry and/or have the ability to totally disable logging. Avira was obviously left out because of their love affair with Mixpanel in case anyone is wondering.

I'd respectfully suggest that privacy be part of the decision making process but not the sole decision making metric to which you measure AV's by. If Trend suits you, keep it.. It runs nicely, looks great, and offers pretty nice protection IMO. Best of all, legitimate licenses are nearly free on Ebay from legitimate sellers. If you are concerned primarily with privacy then Trend probably isn't your best choice.

 

[darko999]

Change it, Trend Micro is doing business with CIA with this ones :

• Comodo
• Avast
• F-Secure
• Zemana Antilogger
• Zone Alarm
• Symantec
• Rising
• Panda Security
• Norton
• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
• EMET (Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit)
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• McAfee
• Kaspersky
• GDATA
• ESET
• ClamAV
• Bitdefender
• Avira
• AVG

My advice use Emsisoft, good privacy , good protection, good bb

That's a joke right, sad some people will actually believe in list like this; total no sense.

 

[Paul.R]

No, those antivirus from that list all "talks"with CIA in a way or another.

There reaction about articale in wikileaks:
Antivirus Vendors React To The CIA 'Vault 7' Leaks

 

[darko999]

No, those antivirus from that list all "talks"with CIA in a way or another.

There reaction about articale in wikileaks:
Antivirus Vendors React To The CIA 'Vault 7' Leaks

You are nuts and even did not care to read carefully what the link you posted says. Clearly much talking about exploits, like kernel exploit to bypass some Comodo verison 6.x but that's all. You can't take the link you posted and direct say they all owned by CIA, you are nuts again. A list that includes every single AV would made more sense, but you put Emsisoft like it is magic. Ohh the CIA owns 99% of AV market, but they can't put their finger on this magic product because it's so strong that they can't touch it. Come on...