AVG antivirus company can now sell data of its customers

The other day, AVG, a major antivirus vendor, updated its own user agreement (you are reading the EULA, right?), Adding an item about the possibility of selling data collected from user PCs. Clearly, these are not credit card numbers or customer names, but information of a different kind: the history of site visits, information about installed applications, the names of wireless networks through which users access the network.

In other words, the updated user agreement gives the company the right to sell so-called non - personal user data. In addition to the above data, the company also considers non-personal a client's advertising identifier, the name of the provider that provides the user with access to the network, information about the use of applications on the user's computer . AVG may sell this data to third parties. The money, according to management, gives the company the right to make some of its products free for the user. Updated rules began to work from October 15.

How dangerous is it?

AVG claims that the data in question does not allow for the identification of a client. All data that can identify a specific user is anonymized. True, it became known a bit later that the antivirus vendor is also going to sell personal data that can be provided to companies that provide services on behalf of the company itself.
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For example, an email address may be provided to a reseller or distributor. Such actions allow partners to inform the client on behalf of AVG about new services, services or promotional offers.

Naturally, information security specialists and individual users have already given feedback on the actions of AVG, and this review can hardly be called positive. First, experts believe that anonymizing data is an extremely difficult task, at the level at which AVG is going to work. Even the history of surfing, without other data, already allows you to open the user's identity.

On the other hand, AVG representatives report that user data collection can be turned off if desired - the corresponding option is in the settings.

So, if you have not done this yet, it is probably worth doing right now.