I have two questions, please.
Firstly, where does that “Read more” link lead to?
Secondly, why are customers with IP addresses outside the United States seeing that?
Thank you.
Firstly, where does that "Read more" link lead to?as i understand clicking a button on a avast pop up send you to a avast website with more info
I used various search tools on the various Avast websites I knew about – maybe that CEO blog is on the same server – anyway, I tried to find it and could not.
http://www.avast.com/en-us/search.php?query=Gov%3A+data-mining
http://www.avast.com/en-us/search.php?query=The+Congressional+Bipartisan+Privacy+Caucus
Run a Google search and all sorts of stuff comes up, but not exactly like the wording you see in that screen shot.
Might there be other Avast blogs besides that CEO blog?
It would seem, Pondus, that we both have to rethink our assumptions, because Avast now sends customers from that virus definition update notice/popup to the website of The Washington Post in the United States.
Doesn’t it seem that there should be some law that covers this? I mean, in the EU?
We have a company using a very important product information popup that contains a link to a third-party site, BUT there isn’t anything in that snippet about the link stating you will be sent to a third-party website. I just can’t believe the EU, with their strick cookie law, didn’t think of this before it has been done.
And this follows right on the heels of that political survey, which we are informed was just for fun, but have yet to be informed how far our IP address remained attached with the data packet created when we did the survey. That question would have to be answered by an Avast employee.
So would the other question in this thread – why include people outside the United States in that special data-mining “political” popup?
And if you are inclined to argue that the piece about data-mining is tech news, then you should look closely at how The Washington Post tagged it.
I would have thought that you having privacy concerns would have been happy to have more information on data-mining and privacy.
One thing you can be sure of that this data-mining isn’t limited to the US, as has been said in other posts on related things, you aren’t forced to click anything (I haven’t bothered to check it, not that curious).
I believe it is a good policy for a company like this one to indicate in a link provided in the manner that link is provide to inform your customer that the link will send them to a third-party website. I think that it is respectful. I think it might be mandated by law, but if it isn’t I think I will start to ask some questions eslewhere why it isn’t mandated by law in the EU.
We are referring to a product update popup.
Do you think we will start seeing this behaviour from Java, Adobe, Windows, or any other company that you have authorized to be providing product update popups on your computer? The product update popup becoming a window for advertisements?
You really want the EU to start mandating the Internet, boy what a can of worms that would open.
If you really don’t like it you can always opt out completely and find another AV that suits your requirements.
You’ve got a point there, DavidR.
But I think that we should not only ask all laws related to consumer protection on the Internet be scrapped, but all laws related to wire tapping of your phone service, electrical system, even trucks driving by your house and recording conversations inside your home.
Yep, all those laws are such a nuisance.
Maybe it would be even better to simply scrap all consumer protection laws and let the corporations have a free reign to do whatever they want. Those pesky auto safety standards should go. Bus, train, aircraft safety laws just stifle free enterprise.
Heck, why license those drivers, pilots? Heh, hospitals could make a bundle of cash if licensing for doctors was scrapped.
Just think, law enforcement and law makers could focus on better ways to get bribes and things. Who cares about safeguarding the public?
Yep, that opens all sorts of doors for making money!
Hi all,
I would like to clarify most of your questions and concerns here.
We are now doing this activity to inform our users about interesting/important security news. The US election survey was an exception. The article is either on our blog or on external website. You’re right that in the notice could be mentioned the source of the article if it’s outside of avast. We don’t send any cookies to the websites and we do not store IP addresses.
The reason for this activity to warn our users if some major problem occurs (LinkedIn passwords stolen etc…) and to educate them.
We don’t sell this space to any of the websites we redirect to. They don’t even know about our activity.
Also we target different regions with different news. So the reason that you saw the Gov mining news outside US, was probably caused by the fact that in US was running the US election survey.
Hope this helps you understand what we do.
Martin
I, for one, really do appreciate reassurances from Avast employees on some of these concerns some of us have posted.
Here it seems to be just me, but in that other US Election survey thread there are a few folks a tad bit disturbed about some aspects of that business.
Nevertheless, I would like to question something you wrote, MartinZ, about folks in the US receiving that survey – the election survey. It wasn’t just those in the US. You see my IP address, or get your admin to tell you, and you’ll see I am quite some distance from the US folks and I had that election survey show up in one of my virus definition update popups.
And that popup shown in the OP of this thread was for the 121109-0 virus definition update, some days after the election and that was outside the US, so the survey business had run its course. Was finished. Not quite sure how that figures with what you offerred in your post, MartinZ.
But I suspect I am seeming to be too nitpickin’, yes? I suppose folks don’t take too kindly to that.
BUT – and a BIG BUT! – It is really good that you employee folks there may give some consideration to letting us know when a link embedded in the virus definition update popup will take us outside the safety of Avast’s server(s). I think that is sort of a very basic courtesy folks – the customer folks – would appreciate. Even very small font might be okay, so it doesn’t take up too much space.
Thank you for your attention to this thread, MartinZ.
Hi ManyQs,
we don’t target just based on IP. It’s a combination of various factors and IP is just one of them. And it never will be perfect targeting ;-).
Martin