[ad_1]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said on Thursday it will ban antivirus giant Avast from selling consumers’ web browsing data to advertisers after Avast claimed its products would prevent its users from online tracking.
Avast also settled the federal regulator’s $16.5 million charges, which the FTC said would provide relief to Avast users whose sensitive browsing data was improperly sold to ad giants and data brokers.
“Avast promised users that its products would protect the privacy of their browsing data, but it did just the opposite,” said Samuel Levin, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. a statement on Thursday, “Avast’s bait-and-switch surveillance tactics compromised consumers’ privacy and broke the law,” Levin said.
The FTC said Avast collected customers’ online browsing habits for years, including their web searches and what websites they visited, using Avast’s own browser extension, which the antivirus giant claimed could prevent online tracking. “Will protect your privacy” by blocking cookies.
But the FTC alleged that Avast, through its now-defunct subsidiary Jumpshot, sold consumers’ browsing data to more than a hundred other companies, generating millions of dollars in revenue for Avast.
The regulator said the browsing data sold by Jumpshot revealed consumers’ religious beliefs, health concerns, political leanings, their location and other sensitive information.
A joint investigation by vice news And pcmag It was revealed in January 2020 that Jumpshot was selling highly sensitive web browsing data to companies including Google, Yelp, Microsoft, Home Depot, and consulting giant McKinsey. The report found that Jumpshot was also selling access to its users’ click data, including the specific web links its users were clicking.
At that time, Avast had more than 430 million active users worldwide. Jumpshot said it has access to data from 100 million devices.
Avast shuts down its Jumpshot subsidiary A few days after the joint Vice-PCMag report.
Avast to merge with Norton LifeLock in $8.1 billion deal in 2021 And now belongs to the parent company Zen Digital, which also Computer utility app CCleaner owns,
When contacted for comment on Thursday, General Digital representative Jess Mooney provided a statement to TechCrunch, saying: “When Avast voluntarily shut down JumpShot in 2020, it stopped these practices. Had given. The operational provisions of the settlement are consistent with Avast’s current privacy and security programs.”
Avast’s statement said it disagrees with the government’s “allegations and characterization of the facts,” without explaining how or why, but the company is “pleased to resolve this matter.”
[ad_2]
Thanks For Reading