AVG's New Privacy Policy Will Sell Customer Data to Advertisers - The UpStream

AVG's New Privacy Policy Will Sell Customer Data to Advertisers

posted Sunday Sep 20, 2015 by Nicholas DiMeo

With the sensitive topic of data privacy and protection being so prevalent as of late, would you ever expect an anti-virus and Internet security company to breach consumers' trust of said data and privacy? This week, we might have seen it all, as AVG is now in the hot seat for their latest privacy policy, which openly states that it will sell your information.

A new privacy policy will be enacted across all AVG products beginning October 15th. In it, AVG says that in order to support its free version of the insanely popular anti-virus, it will be mining, collecting and selling your data. AVG says not to worry though, as it will not sell personally identifiable info.

We collect non-personal data to make money from our free offerings so we can keep them free, including:

- Advertising ID associated with your device;

- Browsing and search history, including meta data;

- Internet service provider or mobile network you use to connect to our products; and

- Information regarding other applications you may have on your device and how they are used.

There are two important things to note here. First, I do commend AVG for proactively putting up a blog post before implementing the policy, allowing users to decide whether or not to use their service moving forward. The second thing to mention is merely a friendly reminder that whenever a product is free, almost every time it is because the end-user is a product for the company. This is the case here, as it is with Facebook and many other services that have no charge to the consumer on the web.

AVG did say that even though it won't sell your address, age, IP and the like, that the info may still be shared with its partners if they ask. The Czech-based company also said that things like credit card details will never be sold, but they might be leaked inside your browsing history that AVG will send to advertisers. Those two facts alone should be enough for anyone to deter from using these products, so long as those people are concerned with their data. Again, the policy goes into effect on October 15th, giving you enough time to uninstall any AVG-related product and replace it with something else, if you so choose.

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