Avast is watching what I'm on

system · 2017-04-23T17:39:42.000Z

Now that might seem like a really dumb statement because, of course it’s watching what I’m on otherwise how else would it know when to block something. My problem isn’t that Avast is watching the sites I’m accessing my problem is I don’t know what it’s doing with that information.

Okay lets get into the details. When I ever open anything NSFW, I get the popup to buy the VPN, clearly Avast is taking the website I’m on, comparing its a to a predetermined list of NSFW websites and matching it. When it gets a match it says oh this guy is looking at NSFW content lets give him an ad for the VPN. Is that not really shady behaviour? It’s essentially saying “Hey, we’re snooping at everything you do, but buy this piece of software from us so other things can’t snoop too!”

If that’s not shady I don’t know what is, and what concerns me is what is it doing with this information, selling my browser history off to gawd knows who for whatever ulterior motive? This has made me realise that really I have no idea what Avast is doing in the background all the time, clearly more than is labelled that’s for sure. Tracking my browsing history and displaying ads depending on what I’m looking at, now where have I seen that before hmm.

Stop stalking me Avast, not cool bro.

Eddy · 2017-04-23T17:49:17.000Z

It is not possible for any anti-malware software to protect you/your system if it doesn’t check certain things.
https://www.avast.com/eula
https://www.avast.com/privacy-policy
https://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB137

About the pop-up, you can disable them in the paid versions as has been told a huge amount of times on this webboard.

avast is NOT stalking you at all.

RejZoR · 2017-04-23T21:21:18.000Z

Well, Microsoft is doing that and your ISP as well. But they never mention it to you in form of an ad so you’re not bothered. But avast! raised your attention because of the ad. But is it any different? avast! is a security company and its ethical point is to keep it in check with privacy and discrete operation. Besides, they have 400 million users, do you really think they have the time to check what someone out of these 400 million users is looking at NSFW content? There is so much data going around, all they see is aggregated data in shape of statistics. And that’s it. If you don’t trust even that, then you better uninstall all commercial products and go with 100% open source software starting with OS itself. You’ll still have to trust your ISP though, no way going past that other than if you become and ISP…

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