Ahmad Kamran 
Yet another shocking news from the so-called ‘data privacy’ firms. Famous antivirus company Avast has been secretly spying on your computer.
Avast is a well known Antivirus software that is widely used across the world. Yesterday report from PCMag and Vice details that the company is secretly spying on your PC. They are selling your browsing data to the highest bidder using the technology called jumpshot.
Avast Free Antivirus – So called ‘Data privacy’
The document reveals that jumpshot sold information to many tech companies (usually highest bidder) that includes, IBM, Home Depot and others. However, so far the companies included in this scandal denied their involvement with jumpshot.
It has been reported in the past that many free-software companies secretly stole users’ data, and Avast is first on the list now. According to PCMag, the ‘de-identified‘ function of the software has been collecting data, which includes your identification.
This type of information is very useful to third party Ads based company. For example, when you visit a website, you click on a certain element or buy something. A piece of your invoice is saved on your computer.
Avast stole this information, and sell it to the highest bidder on the internet. Now the companies which buy this information run a specified targeted campaign on your computer. Which engages you to buy other related products.
How many people are affected?
More than 450 million people use the free version of Avast and this has been going on since 2015. Jumpshot claims to have over 100 million devices all around the world.
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If you want a quick solution to this, just uninstall Avast right away. Windows default antivirus works well right now, there’s no need to go for the premium version either.
Avast is for sure not the only company that sells user data. Famous tech giants like Facebook also was reported to sell user data to third-parties.
