Avast Questions

[system]

I want to get this straight.

I still want to use Avast Free , but i want a exact answer if possible.

• What exact personal information does Avast collect , if you have Avast Free installed on your computer ?

• If it collects personal information , to what third party’s does it send too ?

• Why is the privacy section in the EULA not listed in the privacy policy ? if i click the privacy policy on Avast.com i see other information then in the privacy section in the EULA.

• And what exactly do they mean with this ‘’ The collected information may be transferred to third parties or to other countries that may have less protective data protection laws than the country or region in which you are situated ‘’ , what third party’s do they mean ? , and what country’s do they mean , i live in The Netherlands and my information goes to Czech Republic i assume , any other country’s my information goes too ?

• If i do not participate in the community of Avast , ( unchecking the box ) if i install Avast , do i still get 100% protection from Avast , including the cloud features ?

• And i do want to help Avast in a way , only not by giving personal information , i dont mind to send anonymous information to Avast to make their detection ratio etc better , if i uncheck the box , what information does still get sended to Avast ?

• And if i uncheck the box , does WebRep still collect information on what sites i visit , and what i type in search engines ?

• If i do not install WebRep , am i still protected against exploits ? , if i do not install WebRep , which protection feature falls ?

I do not want to make Avast look bad or something , i just want exact information , straight forward , not in a cryptic way , just tell me a exact , straight forward answer please.

I prefer to hear it from a Avast worker , i have read the EULA , but i want to hear it from a worker himself.

[system]

You already have a thread for this.

The CTO said he would give you an answer.

Since you can’t get much higher up the authority chain than that, I guess all you can do is wait, or send him an email in case he forgot.

[system]

@Gargamel360 post:2

You already have a thread for this.

The CTO said he would give you an answer.

Since you can’t get much higher up the authority chain than that, I guess all you can do is wait, or send him an email in case he forgot.

I didnt ask all the questions there , this thread i ask all the questions i wanted to ask.

And the answer that he is going to give on that topic is only partially to my question , also to other questions from other forum members.

[GopherJohn]

I doubt that anyone could answer your questions to your satisfaction, ever. It’s a wasted effort; like swimming in a circular drain. :

[system]

@Gopher John post:4

I doubt that anyone could answer your questions to your satisfaction, ever. It’s a wasted effort; like swimming in a circular drain. :

Why not ?

Is it so hard to give a straight answer to the questions i ask ?

I don’t think that is too much to ask for.

[system]

Mainly because you ask audit-level questions.

And because its hard to deal with someone who has a zero-trust issue…kind of like how you have problems dealing with people who have blind-trust issues, no?

Other than that, @anyone besides OP, I can’t tell you what to do, but I suggest we just leave this to the company men/women now. Lest we end up with a thread here like the one running at Wilders right now, which is accomplishing nothing that I can see.

[Asyn]

@Gargamel360 post:6

Lest we end up with a thread here like the one running at Wilders right now, which is accomplishing nothing that I can see.

+1

[igor0]

I’d say the key question is - what exactly do you consider to be a personal information?

[system]

@igor post:8

I’d say the key question is - what exactly do you consider to be a personal information?

Well , anything that can identify who i am and everything related to that.

And , what does Avast consider to be personal information ?

Really , its not that hard for somebody who knows the answer to answer my questions right ?

Otherwise its just keeping the answer for yourself for own benefit.

[system]

@igor post:8

I’d say the key question is - what exactly do you consider to be a personal information?

Do you know the answer to the questions ?

So yes , can you answer them ?

[Vlk]

OK, let me give you some answers. Please see below.

@Pindakaas post:1

• What exact personal information does Avast collect , if you have Avast Free installed on your computer ?

Registration of Avast Free AV: name, email address
Product itself: your IP address, your Avast ID.

@Pindakaas post:1

• If it collects personal information , to what third party’s does it send too ?

Currently, I’m not aware of any.
The data from the registration will not be shared with any third party.
The data sent by the product may be shared in the future (if there was strong enough reason to do so) but only in aggregated form.

@Pindakaas post:1

• Why is the privacy section in the EULA not listed in the privacy policy ? if i click the privacy policy on Avast.com i see other information then in the privacy section in the EULA.

Do you mean the privacy policy link down on www.avast.com? Well, that page talks about data collected from the website. Of course, the product itself has a different privacy policy, and that’s in the EULA which is part of the product (located in C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\License).

@Pindakaas post:1

• And what exactly do they mean with this ‘’ The collected information may be transferred to third parties or to other countries that may have less protective data protection laws than the country or region in which you are situated ‘’ , what third party’s do they mean ? , and what country’s do they mean , i live in The Netherlands and my information goes to Czech Republic i assume , any other country’s my information goes too ?

Third parties: see above.
Countries: Avast itself (as a company) currently has 5 locations (Czech Republic, USA, Germany, Austria and a parent company in the Netherlands). There may be other locations/offices opened during the lifetime of the product/EULA.

Currently, the personal data from the registrations are stored exclusively on our servers in Prague (i.e. inside the EU) - although they may be routed through our US servers.

@Pindakaas post:1

• If i do not participate in the community of Avast , ( unchecking the box ) if i install Avast , do i still get 100% protection from Avast , including the cloud features ?

Pretty much. There might be some tiny little things now and then, but in general, the protection level should stay the same.

@Pindakaas post:1

• And i do want to help Avast in a way , only not by giving personal information , i dont mind to send anonymous information to Avast to make their detection ratio etc better , if i uncheck the box , what information does still get sended to Avast ?

Community membership isn’t really about any personal data. The only thing that may be considered personal are the two things mentioned above – your IP address and the installation ID of your avast (which allows us to track your history, measure the number of active installations etc).

@Pindakaas post:1

• And if i uncheck the box , does WebRep still collect information on what sites i visit , and what i type in search engines ?

WebRep is a cloud-only feature. As such, it has no other way than to send this information to our servers - to get a rating info about a domain, you obviously have to send the domain name to the server.

BTW WebRep doesn’t send full URLs, just domains.

@Pindakaas post:1

• If i do not install WebRep , am i still protected against exploits ? , if i do not install WebRep , which protection feature falls ?

If you don’t install the WebRep / browser plugins, besides the WebRep ratings, you will also lose the phishing site protection. There’s some additional functionality planned for the plugins in the next program update as well.

@Pindakaas post:1

I do not want to make Avast look bad or something , i just want exact information , straight forward , not in a cryptic way , just tell me a exact , straight forward answer please.

That’s fine, no worries. I don’t think we have anything to hide here… we’re not in the business of stealing your personal data and selling it on the black market, really…

Cheers
Vlk

[system]

may I “politely” ask how many times the OP intends to re-post a thread with the very same topic ???

edit: I mean seriously, this is bordering harassment :o

[rhuds13]

The OP seems to have maybe a language barrior causing missunderstanding but VLK answered all questions in a simple and easy way to understand. Avast is just trying to cover any future problems legally while still providing great service to all. Good straight answeres to people asking for easy way to understand goes a long way in showing just how Avast cares for the users. Tks VLK.

[system]

@Vlk post:11

OK, let me give you some answers. Please see below.

@Pindakaas post:1

• What exact personal information does Avast collect , if you have Avast Free installed on your computer ?

Registration of Avast Free AV: name, email address
Product itself: your IP address, your Avast ID.

@Pindakaas post:1

• If it collects personal information , to what third party’s does it send too ?

Currently, I’m not aware of any.
The data from the registration will not be shared with any third party.
The data sent by the product may be shared in the future (if there was strong enough reason to do so) but only in aggregated form.

@Pindakaas post:1

• Why is the privacy section in the EULA not listed in the privacy policy ? if i click the privacy policy on Avast.com i see other information then in the privacy section in the EULA.

Do you mean the privacy policy link down on www.avast.com? Well, that page talks about data collected from the website. Of course, the product itself has a different privacy policy, and that’s in the EULA which is part of the product (located in C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\License).

@Pindakaas post:1

• And what exactly do they mean with this ‘’ The collected information may be transferred to third parties or to other countries that may have less protective data protection laws than the country or region in which you are situated ‘’ , what third party’s do they mean ? , and what country’s do they mean , i live in The Netherlands and my information goes to Czech Republic i assume , any other country’s my information goes too ?

Third parties: see above.
Countries: Avast itself (as a company) currently has 5 locations (Czech Republic, USA, Germany, Austria and a parent company in the Netherlands). There may be other locations/offices opened during the lifetime of the product/EULA.

Currently, the personal data from the registrations are stored exclusively on our servers in Prague (i.e. inside the EU) - although they may be routed through our US servers.

@Pindakaas post:1

• If i do not participate in the community of Avast , ( unchecking the box ) if i install Avast , do i still get 100% protection from Avast , including the cloud features ?

Pretty much. There might be some tiny little things now and then, but in general, the protection level should stay the same.

@Pindakaas post:1

• And i do want to help Avast in a way , only not by giving personal information , i dont mind to send anonymous information to Avast to make their detection ratio etc better , if i uncheck the box , what information does still get sended to Avast ?

Community membership isn’t really about any personal data. The only thing that may be considered personal are the two things mentioned above – your IP address and the installation ID of your avast (which allows us to track your history, measure the number of active installations etc).

@Pindakaas post:1

• And if i uncheck the box , does WebRep still collect information on what sites i visit , and what i type in search engines ?

WebRep is a cloud-only feature. As such, it has no other way than to send this information to our servers - to get a rating info about a domain, you obviously have to send the domain name to the server.

BTW WebRep doesn’t send full URLs, just domains.

@Pindakaas post:1

• If i do not install WebRep , am i still protected against exploits ? , if i do not install WebRep , which protection feature falls ?

If you don’t install the WebRep / browser plugins, besides the WebRep ratings, you will also lose the phishing site protection. There’s some additional functionality planned for the plugins in the next program update as well.

@Pindakaas post:1

I do not want to make Avast look bad or something , i just want exact information , straight forward , not in a cryptic way , just tell me a exact , straight forward answer please.

That’s fine, no worries. I don’t think we have anything to hide here… we’re not in the business of stealing your personal data and selling it on the black market, really…

Cheers
Vlk

I appreciate your answers greatly !

Made me giggle a bit that a global moderator actually answers.

Shows that they actually care

I am now allot more relaxed about this , i will install Avast now.

And , IMO i do not ask the same questions over and over , i got my answers now , so i wont ask the questions i asked on this thread anymore.

Only , why am i ‘’ watched ‘’ again now ?

[system]

What does aggregated mean ?

[Vlk]

@Pindakaas post:15

Maybe it’s already answered but i do not know , what data does the product send ?

Again, personal information sent by the product is just the IP address and the Avast ID.
(by “personal”, I mean any entity that could allows us to identify you).

Besides that, there’s a bunch of other non-personal data of course (all the filerep stuff, URLs, suspicious samples (executable files only), …).

@Pindakaas post:15

And i can understand english , only not every single word , what does aggregated mean ?

Let me give you an example.
An IP address is useful to us as it allows us to do GeoIP lookups. I.e. we can find your (rough) location - usually at least country.
And aggregating the data (in this case, by IP address / country) allows us to say something like: In the last 30 days, our dear Dutch users have seen X web domains, of which Y were infected, leading to a total number of Z malware infection attempts.

Thanks
Vlk

[system]

@Vlk post:16

@Pindakaas post:15

Maybe it’s already answered but i do not know , what data does the product send ?

Again, personal information sent by the product is just the IP address and the Avast ID.
(by “personal”, I mean any entity that could allows us to identify you).

Besides that, there’s a bunch of other non-personal data of course (all the filerep stuff, URLs, suspicious samples (executable files only), …).

@Pindakaas post:15

And i can understand english , only not every single word , what does aggregated mean ?

Let me give you an example.
An IP address is useful to us as it allows us to do GeoIP lookups. I.e. we can find your (rough) location - usually at least country.
And aggregating the data (in this case, by IP address / country) allows us to say something like: In the last 30 days, our dear Dutch users have seen X web domains, of which Y were infected, leading to a total number of Z malware infection attempts.

Thanks
Vlk

Ok , thanks for clearing that up

[system]

Oh , and 1 last really paranoid question ,

WebRep , it collects the domains u visit , but it does not collect passwords or usernames & other info you enter on that website right ? ( unlikely but i want to ask )

[CraigB]

Your questions were already answered by Vlk

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=95250.msg759717#msg759717

[system]

@Pindakaas post:18

Oh , and 1 last really paranoid question ,

WebRep , it collects the domains u visit , but it does not collect passwords or usernames & other info you enter on that website right ? ( unlikely but i want to ask )

oh it sure does ;D … see, you don’t have to worry as long as web rep is running, because from now on, your passwords, credit card number (s) will be retrieved from Avast servers, very handy … the suite is now an all in one tool 8)