AVG Can Sell Your Browsing Activity to Ad Companies

AVG has updated its Privacy Policy in a bid to make the free version more profitable and will now collect “non-personal data” which can be sold to third parties. This is an extraordinary revelation and not what you would expect to see from a company supposedly trying to protect your privacy and security. The changes will come into effect on the 15th October and an AVG spokesperson said they are planning to adopt an opt-out data scheme:

“Those users who do not want us to use non-personal data in this way will be able to turn it off, without any decrease in the functionality our apps will provide,”

“While AVG has not utilized data models to date, we may, in the future, provided that it is anonymous, non-personal data, and we are confident that our users have sufficient information and control to make an informed choice.”

According to AVG, this move is designed to be as transparent as possible and clearly outline how individual’s data is sold onto third parties. Despite this, I highly doubt AVG’s free users are happy about this sudden declaration and will probably transfer to another free alternative such as Avast. Perhaps, an opt-in measure would have been a better PR exercise but AVG are well-within the amount of people agreeing to that would be minimal.

How do you feel about companies selling your browsing data?

Thank you Wired for providing us with this information.