Avast, the cybersecurity software company, is facing a $16.5 million fine after it was caught storing and selling customer information without their consent. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the fine on Thursday and said that it’s banning Avast from selling user data for advertising purposes.
They definitely made more than that selling data what a fucking joke
F*C fines are just protection money payments.
$16.5 million is not even a slap on the wrist
A great business model actually
Five years ago, I posted on Reddit about how Avast had installed a browser without my consent and set it as default while I was out of town and away from my computer. That post has had comments added to it several times a year ever since, meaning that they’re still trying that nonsense. They stole my data without my consent by importing all of my browser data, and now it’s come out that they blatantly sold it without my consent as well.
I said it then, and I say it now: If you install something without my knowledge or consent, you’re a virus, plain and simple.
Cybersec company ❌
Advertisement/Data mining ✔️
Jesus Christ.
Remember when Google’s Motto was “Don’t be Evil” It was supposed to be a jab at Microsoft, but it feels like every year tech companies find news ways to just be fucking evil.
PS. Google kind of fails to live up to that motto too, I don’t even know if it’s still an official motto.
I don’t even know if it’s still an official motto.
It’s not
Corporations have no soul to damn and no body to incarcerate.
I’m all for crapping on large publicly traded companies but lumping Google in with companies that sell your data isn’t honest. Google does not and never has sold user data. They sure as hell use your data for their own ad network but they do not sell that data wholesale. Meta and other data brokers sell your data and this Avast company sells your data through a product they claimed stopped tracking. I’m not pro-Google but to compare their business model (which is very transparent about how it handles your data and how it’s never sold) to Avast’s business model (which is to completely lie to the end user while literally selling everything that user does) is not an honest comparison.
Do we know how much money they made on it? If it was more than $16.5 then it was still a good step on their balance sheet.
This stuff needs to be fined at the full income they made from the tool plus some penalty. Corporations only care about their balance sheets.
This is a careful reminder to be VERY SCEPTICAL about not only “anti-viruses” (like bro, Windows defender is good enough), but also browsers. There is a high probability that the company is either a data broker or fintech… looking at you, Opera.
And I’m sure that fine was as high or higher than the profit they made from the data… what, it wasn’t?!
This is fucking garbage.
When a company gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar, it’s not a punishment to put one of the cookies back.
Fines should be ten TIMES what the company made from their misbehaviour, not ten percent.
Is there a class action lawsuit?
They should be put out of business and those responsible jailed
I wonder what other uses there are to sell data that is not for advertising? My second thought goes to what is in place to stop a middleman from saying that they would not sell information for advertising purposes, but selling the data for “quality control of data acquisition” purposes. If you are getting a service for free, you are the product.
Political campaigns? A political candidate may want to know his opponent’s supporters and may think he can do a more targeted wooing. 1 may say it’s advertising too.
Also, he can send bots to the political discussions that folks participate in. The bots can start nasty political arguments.
A greedy religious figure may want to encourage more to join his religion. More members, more cash.
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And people still think they can trust password managers lmao
Yeah, those. Thanks for the example.
So is your problem with using a password manager at all, or just the companies/sources of them?
Any company trying to get my data, really, and my passwords are the most sensitive of my data. Even if I coded one myself, and kept it completely local, my passwords are all in one place if that device gets compromised.
I can remember my passwords, so why take the gamble?
Well, you do you, but I’m happier with complex unique password locked behind a 2FA open source self hosted encrypted vault than I am remembering a few passwords shared amongst services. I have 400+ entries in it, and if I get hit by a bus, my wife has access to it with her yubikey.
You do you as well, one of the amazing things about all the technology we have available to us lol.
Because by not using a password manager I guarantee you are duplicating passwords between services. This means the second a service you use is compromised, every single service you use with that same email/password combination is compromised. Even if every one of your passwords had a slight deviation malicious actors know people do this and will likely be able to write a program that attempts those deviations on other services. You’re effectively leaving your security up to weakest link in services you sign up for, and security is more often implemented poorly than implemented well.
By using a password manager you generate a 20+ character long password that is unique to each service you use. These passwords being random and unique to each service protects you from rainbow tables and other hash table based attacks. In the event Bitwarden or another password manager you use is breached anything they get will be worthless as long as your master password is not compromised (which should only ever exist in your head) due to the data being encrypted at rest.
It is a similar concept to using a secure, trusted middleman for processing payments instead of giving your credit card to every single site that asks for it.
Just curious, how do you know they’re secure? Like how do you know it’s only local and not being uploaded somewhere? I’m not about to tear through the code of open source password manager apps to make sure it’s “safe” when I can keep track of them myself, but yes, I do see your point about that not being as safe as them being completely randomly generated for each account
The great thing about open source is that anyone can read the code. Even if you don’t read every line yourself there are others who will. In popular projects it’s pretty much a guarantee any suspicious or malicious changes get caught almost immediately due to the visibility of everything.
As for local-only I trust Bitwarden and their encryption schemes enough that I use their cloud sync, but you can always self host it in a Docker container with no Internet access if you’re concerned about it.
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Why? What’s wrong with Keepass?
Who knows? I just keep track of my own passwords so when the rest of you find out I won’t be a part of it lol. Everyone on lemmy is so anti Google and anti Microsoft because of what they do with your data, that it’s actually hilarious that so many just freely give EVERY SINGLE PASSWORD for their accounts to password management apps, like nothing bad could ever come from it.
If you can keep track of your passwords yourself, why take such a massive gamble?
You’re smarter than the collective wisdom of the entire cybersecurity community, I see. Researchers who have been doing this for decades have nothing on you. People with peer-reviewed studies and bucketloads of data are like pawns in the face of your vast intellect. When FOSS password managers fall, you’ll be the only one left standing and the world will bow at your feet. Certainly you are the first person to have ever thought of this.
Be a sarcastic ass all you want, at least I can remember a password without relying on some random company lol. You keep giving all your passwords away though, no skin off my back
One password. Yes, that’s the problem. Thank you for so eloquently disassembling your own inane point.
I’m sorry you can’t even remember one. Maybe work on reading comprehension first. Have a great life!
You said “a password.” That’s one. I think my reading comprehension is just fine, but I admire your commitment to misunderstanding the point at every turn. It solidly explains why you’re against password managers when literally everyone who knows anything about Internet security is for them.
Oh, I can remember far more than one. But I can’t remember the 687 that I have currently stored in Bitwarden. Can you? Can you accurately and correctly remember six hundred and eighty-seven unique and distinct passwords? 687 unique and distinct passwords that are long and complex enough to be difficult to guess? Can you constantly monitor all 687 accounts for when they show up in data breaches? Can you recognize all 687 login screens for when they’re spoofed for a phishing attack? Remember, some of those are banks! You’ve probably given a couple of them your SSN! There are 687 potential land mines out there. Good luck!
That works great when you’re young, kid, bit when you get older, you’re going to be forgetting and resetting a lot of those passwords.
I don’t think anyone on lemmy is under 30 lol
