Avast Antivirus Sold Users' Personal Data for 6 Years — Forbes

In the first half of 2019 alone, the company earned $20 million from this.

The company behind the Avast antivirus collected and sold personal data on users' online behavior. Around 400 million clients could have fallen victim to this kind of "monetization" since 2013. This is according to Forbes.

CEO Ondrej Vlcek said the company did sell information, but it was anonymized, so it could not be traced back to users. Vlcek said the Avast antivirus tracked users' online activity using browser extensions.

According to him, before the data reached the company's servers, everything that could identify a specific person was removed from the collected data. After such "sorting," the information was passed on to Jumpshot, 65% of which is owned by Avast.

This information can be used to determine the percentage of visitors who moved from one website to others. Investors used this service to assess the company's success. Many wanted to learn about the interest in their product online.

The Avast antivirus earns 5% of its total revenue from this service. For example, in the first half of 2019 the company earned $430 million, so revenue from selling data amounted to $20 million.

The data collection by the Avast antivirus was first reported by Adblock Plus founder Wladimir Palant. After his statement, Mozilla and Opera browsers removed the antivirus from their add-on stores. Palant also contacted Google, but has not yet received a response.