Among the various products and services out there, we often find social media companies in trouble for collecting our data beyond necessity. However, recently we’ve come to find that the products supposed to protect us – anti-virus software – are also doing the very same.
In this specific case, it was Avast & AVG Security whose two browser extensions each have been found spying on users, namely Avast Online Security, Avast Safeprice, AVG Online Security and AVG SafePrice.
See: Clones of popular Adblockers caught ad frauding millions of Chrome users
This astonishing revelation came when cybersecurity researcher Wladimir Palant who is also the creator of the Adblock Plus extension published a blog post on 28 October detailing how Avast’s Online Security extension was collecting data about the websites one was visiting allowing them to build up records of your browsing history and behavior.
Since Avast acquired its arch-rival AVG not so long ago for $1.3 Billion, the latter also had identical extensions conveniently doing the same. In fact, we also saw a connection being drawn between one of Avast’s child company, Jumpstart and the data Avast collects from its extensions. Thomas Brewster from Forbes published an article on 9 Decem ..
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