Avast apologizes for selling user data and shuts down its marketing analytics subsidiary Jumpshot with immediate effect

Avast has been facing growing criticism following an investigation by Motherboard and PCMag that revealed the company’s free antivirus software was harvesting user data and selling it onto marketers. In a bid to appease users, Avast published a blog post explaining why it was collecting user data, and announced that going forward this collection would be opt-in, but that the company would continue to sell the data via its analytics subsidiary Jumpshot. Throughout the post the security firm insisted that collected data was fully "de-identified", despite the fact that Motherboard and PCMag’s investigation showed how it could be linked back to… [Continue Reading]