While Avast claimed that data collection was a necessary part of the Online Security plugin, browser extensions from competing brands seemed to work fine without collecting and retaining such a large amount of personal information.

In October 2019, he posted the incriminating information to his blog with a detailed explanation of how he claims Avast was able to “transmit data that allows reconstructing your entire web browsing history and much of your browsing behavior.”Įssentially, Avast and AVG’s Online Security extensions were recording their users’ every click - documenting which websites were visited, when, and from where. Wladimir Palant - the founder of Adblock Plus - was the first person to sound the alarm about Avast’s predatory practices. Here’s How Avast Allegedly Spied on Its Users for the Last 7 Years At the end of the day, any company that faces such severe allegations has lost our faith and cannot receive our seal of approval. The SafetyDetectives team has carefully considered our decision to scrub Avast from our website over the next several weeks. Three months later, Avast shut down a subsidiary company, Jumpshot, in the wake of investigative reports documenting the sale of personal data from around 100 million users, all gained through improper user surveillance. The Avast Online Security browser extension was deleted from Mozilla, Chrome, and Opera marketplaces in December 2019 after claims that it was gathering a suspicious amount of user data - not only every website visited, but also user location, search history, age, gender, social media identities, and even personal shipping information. Why? Because Avast - which also owns AVG - has been caught in a firestorm of controversy over the last several months regarding serious allegations of unethical business practices. Well, after a lot of consideration and back and forth between departments, we’ve decided to finally remove them from all of our lists.

Our readers have been messaging us and asking why we’re still ranking Avast and AVG on our website, despite them being caught up in a serious scandal.

Why Ethical Violations by Antivirus Companies Are Especially Serious.

US Senators and Investigative Journalists Held Avast Accountable.

Here’s How Avast Allegedly Spied on Its Users for the Last 7 Years.

Avast online security slow