AVG collects browsing and search history from customers and possibly resells it
AVG says it can sell customers’ browsing and search history to keep its software free. The company behind the popular free security software writes that in its modified terms and conditions that will come into effect mid-next month.
AVG reports that it will be able to collect multiple customer data from October 15. These can largely be divided into two categories, namely data that can be used to discover the identity of customers and data that, on the other hand, is ‘anonymous’.
Some of the anonymous information says it can sell AVG for money, so that it can continue to offer its software for free. It’s about information about the providers that customers use, about the apps that the 200 million customers have installed and their browsing and search history.
The browsing and search history can also lead to the identity of a user. AVG says that it considers the information as personal data and therefore anonymizes the data before it sells the data. There are drawbacks to this approach, because the location of one individual user is private according to AVG, but that of several users in a dataset is not.
Incidentally, AVG informs you that the terms and conditions are not new in content and that they were already in force in previous products. Now it says that the browsing and search history can be resold, while previously it said that ‘the words you search for’ can be used for advertising purposes.
A spokesperson told Wired that AVG is not yet selling data such as browsing and search history, but that this may be the case in the future. If you do not want to participate in this, you can indicate this to the company. According to AVG, this is not at the expense of functionality.
AVG wants to create clarity for users with the new conditions, which are now on one web page. It is a well-known fact that many hardly read the terms and conditions of computer programs and related services, and still click on ‘accept’. Competitor F-Secure discovered that this way customers would even voluntarily give up their children and pets – if a supplier asked to do so.