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AVG can sell your browsing and search history to advertisers
- TAM_cmlx 11y agoAs a possible note of interest, I had to disable AVG in order to read this article.
- blumkvist 11y agoHow come?
- TAM_cmlx 11y agoOriginal link was to slashdot, I think. AVG said "Could be a Trojan Horse Host" and then gave me a cheerful green bar and said, "Threat has been successfully removed."
- tux3 11y agoThe same thing happened with the AVG slashdot article. I wouldn't be surprised if it was deliberate...
- beedogs 11y agoWhy on earth are you running AVG in the first place?
- outside1234 11y agoIf you aren't paying, you are the product.
- tzmudzin 11y agoSo how much did you pay for your GPL software? Or for posting your comment? Do you expect to pay with your privacy for those? For sure there's no free lunch, but I believe you're making it too easy for AVG. An antivirus is a piece of software one normally trusts. It's a shame if this trust is misused. And let's not deceive ourselves that users will attempt to understand fully the technical stuff behind the data privacy statement they put out. While trivial for an IT person, the jargon will not be understood by non-techies.
- throwaway13337 11y agoWe are almost certainly the product on HN - eyeballs of engineers interested in startups to advertise startup jobs to if not to subtly control the conversation in this area. This isn't an awful thing but it's absoultely true that we both are the product here.
- foolrush 11y agoIndeed. The “If you aren't paying you are the product” is an anachronistic and ignorant trope leveraged in fanfolk wars. It excuses those things that are paid for and are further monetised. Take for example your music purchases and a “You might like...” suggestion list; you have paid for the system, purchased music, and surprisingly your purchases are being tracked and further monetisation is attempted. Vast troves of interaction data is accumulated and analysed ad infinitum[1]. Free lunches _do_ exist as well, as anyone with a good friend or child will attest to. The slogans of hypercapitalism are rampant, none of which do justice to the complexities of context. [1] Yes Apple is included in this, as we know from the extensive market research revealed via the Samsung lawsuit and the fact that Ping no longer exists.
- lqdc13 11y agoThose aren't free lunches though. They are paying with future reciprocity.
- jgome 11y agoIf the only thing your parents cared about when you were a child was their own future... your family must be terrible. I'm sorry for you. Some people really do things selflessly, and/or in term of social welfare. Not everything is "money" or "our own future".
- ninkendo 11y agoWas that first line necessary?
- skarap 11y agoUnfortunately it doesn't work in the reverse direction. Nobody will stop AVG (or any other company) from selling their paying customers too for additional profit.
- DinkyG 11y agoJust finished uninstalling AVG...
- g0v 11y agoI recently switched from Bitdefender to AVG, and like you just uninstalled AVG. I'm not sure where to go from here.
- pdonis 11y ago> I'm not sure where to go from here. Linux.
- g0v 11y agoI work on an Ubuntu vm, the only reason I use Windows, really, is for games and likely just out of habit. I don't think it will be much longer until I actually make the switch.
- dijit 11y agoI wouldn't recommend pirating the games. if you don't, and you don't do webbrowsing from inside windows then I can't imagine the need for anti-virus. 90% of attacks are trojan horses (fake/embedded pirated software usually) and the remaining 9.9% is browser attacks. I doubt anyone is defeating your firewall/NAT box to get a direct connection to your windows machine, and even if they did they'd have to find a service they can exploit. :)
- jamiepenney 11y agoWhat are you using to run the VM? I've always had issues integrating the host and guest VM nicely in Windows - getting copy-paste working properly, resizing the window, etc.
- vetinari 11y agoBoth Vmware and VirtualBox work great - if you install the guest tools. For some extra polish when running Linux VMs under VirtualBox on Windows, set the virtualisation mode to kvm and use virtio network device.
- dang 11y agoUrl changed from http://slashdot.org/story/299691 http://slashdot.org/story/299691, which points to http://news.softpedia.com/news/avg-proudly-announces-it-will-sell-your-browsing-history-to-online-advertisers-492146.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/avg-proudly-announces-it-will..., neither of which are very informative. I found the Wired article by using the 'web' link we added last week to search on the title (which I had to modify a bit). If anyone can suggest a better URL, we'll change it again.
- ryanschneider 11y agoPersonally, I think if they a) are very upfront about this (clearly stated during install) and b) offer a paid alternative then I'd be fine with this. There's actually some synergy if they do things right: you were most likely infected by a site you visited (most likely a malicious ad), so if they also use this data to track sources (which isn't clear) then it could even make for a better product. Of course if they aren't being clear about the data-for-product swap then I'm not in favor.
- rhizome 11y agoPersonally, I think if they a) are very upfront about this (clearly stated during install) and b) offer a paid alternative then I'd be fine with this. To be sure, you don't really know if you'd be fine with this because it's never been tried, and probably won't, because no company dealing user information out the back door has ever given any indication that they are open to giving up even a shred of this business line.
- belorn 11y agoIt used to be that government would go after those for deceived people for money. Bait-and-switch is one of the oldest form of fraud there is and its fairly easy to do with 40 pages "policy" written in legalize.
- grrowl 11y agoWell, the government isn't being effective against the true criminals here (the virus developers), and anti-virus isn't free, and government isn't subsidising AV software. Something's gotta give.
- jupiter2 11y agoThe irony... a product that is suppose to protect you from malware becomes the very tool that engages in illegal and unconstitutional data-mining. There used to be a distinction between services offered on the web and apps running on the desktop (spyware, illegal). Windows 10 changed all that (along with lots of help from mobile OSes). It's (constitutional) criminal behavior (eula or not) and should be classified as such.
- pixl97 11y ago>There used to be a distinction between services offered on the web and apps running on the desktop (spyware, illegal). Windows 10 changed all that I don't think you've paid much attention, but that had changed long before Windows 10. This is just Microsofts big foray into that dark market. For years other companies have done the same thing.
- jupiter2 11y ago"I don't think you've paid much attention, but that had changed long before Windows 10." You basically repeated everything I just said. You see... I do pay attention. Along with "lots of help from mobile OSes", Microsoft's big push into embedding spyware into a Desktop OS has completely changed the game. It has given applications - running on user local machines - license to install spyware (which is still considered illegal under the law).
- ams6110 11y agoUnconstitutional?
- jupiter2 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy Granted this is a complicated issue but we shouldn't be so quick to disregard privacy rights we have fought (and died) so long for. When backdoors and spyware are embedded into a person's home computer and/or personal property (from a car to a mobile OS), we have also allowed illegal search and seizure.
- forcer 11y agoAVG has a long history of doing scammy things. Starting from pushing toolbars heavily, flagging software that is harmless but poses competition etc. They will never change. Unfortunately, most of the public is not knowledgeable enough to understand this. In Czech Republic many people see this company as a national pride. I have been dealing with that company for a while and certainly do not agree with my fellow countrymen.
- x0x0 11y agoThe thing that befuddles me is if someone came up to you on the street and handed you $100, you'd most likely refuse until you could figure out what the catch is. If someone offered you free movies or music on the internet, you'd either assume they were stolen or there was a catch. But when people download software that was both complex to build and intricate and expensive to maintain, they assume that there isn't a catch. I don't understand.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- forcer 11y agoI agree but one would expect that AV vendors have enough opportunities to make money without sacrificing their users and their reputation. Look at how many products AVG has. I think they should do just fine by converting free users to paid subscriptions. Couple of years ago most of their revenue came from toolbars. Since then they have converted their business model to push more for premium upsell. They do it well, I don't have problem with such a business model. Free users serve them well as free marketing force, they don't have to abuse them.
- cm2187 11y agolinux is free. What is the catch?
- x0x0 11y agoSignificant expertise is required to install, configure (sound, sleep, 3d accelerators, multiple monitors, printers, scanners, projectors), and maintain the os.
- Kenji 11y agoWho the hell uses an anti-virus in 2015? Those things slow down your PC by like 20% for almost no benefit at all. Just don't open suspicious executables (e.g. from torrents), keep your OS and tools up to date and lock your browser down when it comes to plugins and JS execution.
- tdicola 11y agoI'm not sure why you're being downvoted, it's very good advice for someone who is computer literate enough to not run things they don't trust. Keep your OS and software up to date, uninstall Flash, disable crap that automatically previews files, and stick to doing most of your computing in a good web browser.
- tacone 11y agoMaybe because you don't need to actually open an executable file to get infected. Even displaying an image in your web browser may do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrary_code_execution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrary_code_execution
- Asbostos 11y agoExactly. It's amazing how many people don't realize that this is all you need to do. Antivirus is only for people who don't follow those two rules. Well JS is fine as long as the browser is up to date. Normal people aren't going to be hit by zero-days.
- mtgx 11y ago> Normal people aren't going to be hit by zero-days. Normal people still use IE. There are definitely plenty of IE zero-days out there that have hit normal people. Mozilla also announced a month ago that an exploit using a FF zero-day was running in the wild.
- Kenji 11y agoWell, a couple of years ago I was hit by a drive-by virus. Just opening a website in (up to date) Firefox literally opened .exe files on my PC and infected the entire OS. I burnt my hands once - not again. This might be an anecdote to you but boy that scarred me - the idea that clicking a link could compromise my entire system like that. Even then - an antivirus program is unlikely to stop such an intrusion. It's just utterly ineffective, and I got viruses before despite having an anti-virus. Also, my anti-virus always deleted my hacktools and own programs which was a nuisance. Hence I don't use it anymore.
- ndesaulniers 11y agoA few Mozilla execs have left and gone there. * Gary Kovacs: Former Mozilla CEO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garykovacs https://www.linkedin.com/in/garykovacs * Harvey Anderson: Former Mozilla Chief Legal Counsel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harveyanderson https://www.linkedin.com/in/harveyanderson * Todd Simpson: Former Mozilla CIO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tgsimpson https://www.linkedin.com/in/tgsimpson * Rick Fant: Former Mozilla VP of Marketplace: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickfant https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickfant
- guelo 11y agoAnd interestingly Mozilla has started to get a whiff of scamminess. I wonder if things would be better if gay activists hadn't forced out Brendan Eich.
- dingdingdang 11y agoYup, now we all have to download and run extension "Disable Pocket" in order to not have third party commercial services embedded directly into freshly downloaded Firefox. Its soon time for me to give the Palemoon distribution another go, at least its maintainer seem principled.
- PebblesHD 11y agoI might have read that wrong but did you just blame 'gay activists' for existing problems with Firefox that not only existed and were planned for release before he was ousted but had nothing to do with his direct control anyway?
- hvis 11y agoIt would be a lot more suspicious if you showed the reverse flow of personnel. The above just indicates that some people might start to prefer, over time, a cushier job at a less-scrupulous corporation.
- redml 11y agothey lost that sweet google deal and im guessing they're getting less from their deal with yahoo
- bedhead 11y agoThere is no shortage of scammy software companies like AVG, but what always cracked me up about AVG was their logo. Do you think it's a coincidence that it bears a strong resemblance to the Windows logo?? Why might that be, hmmmm? Maybe so a bunch of unsophisticated users get the impression it's a real product somehow related to Microsoft? The company is a joke like all the other toolbar companies. I wrote to a number of financial journalists at the WSJ a few years ago begging them to write an expose on these firms and Google's compliance in allowing them to exist. No one ever wrote me back.
- Stratoscope 11y agoI hate antivirus software with a passion. I've wasted too many weeks of my life hacking around bugs that antivirus programs introduced into my customers' systems. A couple I've dealt with in the last six months: McAfee Antivirus causes applications built with Unity 4 to fail when they call WWW.LoadFromCacheOrDownload() on a large asset bundle. This API call downloads a temp file and then renames the file to move it into the cache. But McAfee also opens the file for a virus scan. For a large file, the virus scan may not complete before Unity tries to rename the file, so the rename fails and you never get the asset bundle. For one client I fixed this by patching Unity's .exe file to add a retry loop on the rename call. Unity 5 also works around this issue with the same retry loop. AVG Antivirus causes updates to fail for applications that use wyUpdate. wyUpdate calls the CreateMutex() function in the Windows API to make sure another updater instance isn't already running. Bizarrely, when AVG is installed, CreateMutex() returns the wrong value, so wyUpdate thinks another instance is running and bails out. No updates for you! Going back a few years, I tried NOD32 after some friends recommended it. It seemed fine, except the Alt+Tab key no longer worked. It was a known bug, unfixed for some time. About 5-6 years ago, McAfee had a known bug - unfixed for nearly a year - than under some circumstances it would erase the entire hard drive. This was the ultimate in virus protection!
- userbinator 11y agoFalse positives are the other dark side of AV; here's AVG detecting completely innocuous "Hello World" programs as potential threats: http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/67634/ http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/67634/ https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mingwusers/kFrCqECTY_Y https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mingwusers/kFrCqECTY_Y Along the same lines, it's rather common that keygens/cracks/patches are detected as false positives too: http://underlore.com/anti-virus-community-creates-false-positives-for-fun-and-profit/ http://underlore.com/anti-virus-community-creates-false-posi...
- kbenson 11y agoMaybe the Ken Thompson Hack[1] is alive in the wild, or AVG just believes it is. ;) 1: Reflections on Trusting Trust: https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html
- silveira 11y agoAntivirus was one of the main original reasons I left Windows and started to lean to Free Software. In one hand I had the virus, in the other I had the antivirus, both options were terrible.
- nadams 11y agoWhen AVG was first launched it was a great AV product. Now, like most services have gone the evil direction. It became pretty obvious they went downhill after directing people who want the free version to buy their other products. I've been uninstalling AVG and replacing it with Microsoft Security Essentials. I know a lot people will be upset over that because [their favorite AV] catches X% more viruses and malware than MSE. But you know what - MSE is light, made by the same company who made the OS, and catches most of the common viruses.
- mattmanser 11y agoLast time I looked MSE had fallen way behind everyone else. I could be completely wrong now.
- imglorp 11y agoThis may be an unpopular theory, but I believe an insecure system was in MS's best interest. This would explain their weak tools and poor security.
- simplexion 11y agoWhat? We use System Center Endpoint Protection which is just MSE for Business. It works really well.
- zero-rated 11y agoHasn't most free software been doing this all along? I assumed they already were.
- tempestn 11y agoAVG is clearly circling the drain at this point and doing anything and everything to squeeze out as much revenue as possible before the music stops. Another example is AVG Secure Search, which is effectively malware snuck in with AVG installs. I recently spent a good many hours trying to get it off of my wife's computer, since it doesn't have an uninstaller and the removal tool they provide on their website doesn't work (or at least didn't on her machine). In fact, in researching the issue I came across multiple cases where it not only didn't work, it also deleted people's bookmarks. The program also appears to use common malware techniques to prevent manual removal. And of course, this kind of thing has been going on for years, and the company gives no impression of caring. It really seems like they're now using their experience with malware to... create malware.
- hakzer 11y agoAnd PCI compliance still requires antivirus ;(. What a crock.
- sokoloff 11y agoOr a compensating control.
- kuyan 11y agoIs there any "good" antivirus? I personally don't use any antivirus software, but I usually install Microsoft Security Essentials for not-quite-tech-savvy family members.
- bby 11y agoFuck AVG.
- ddmf 11y agoWent to look at the story with my AVG 'protected' laptop and couldn't view it because the website may be a trojan!