Everytime the definitions get updated, the process “com.avast.ciqstatsend” tries to connect to “mciq.ff.avast.com” at port 80.
Given I unchecked the “Participate in the avast! community” and “Report program status to the avast! account” options, what is Avast trying to send? Does Avast still send anonymous or personal identifiable data even if those options are unchecked?
Also, Avast application connects to google-analytics.com everytime it’s opened, blocking that connection would affect in any way? It is possible to disable that tracking?
What functionality provide Web and Mail shield (a bit detailed explanation please)? In which way I get unprotected disabling them?
First of all I can assure you all the data this process sends serves only for statistical purposes. It never sends any user’s data, and nothing what would uncover user’s real identity.
The process sends some data when something important happens (e.g. update/install/uninstall/repair). When participation in the community is disabled, it only adds program and virus definition version and some event specific data (e.g. what avast component required repair).
If the participation is enabled, it sends few more data about the machine like Mac OS X version, system uptime, user’s locale, user ID (number only), kernel arch (32bit or 64bit) and similar data.