Avast won't sell data to Jumpshot anymore

Avast will stop selling user data to its subsidiary Jumpshot, the company announced Thursday. 

"As CEO of Avast, I feel personally responsible and I would like to apologize to all concerned," Ondrej Vlcek wrote in a blog post. "Protecting people is Avast’s top priority and must be embedded in everything we do in our business and in our products. Anything to the contrary is unacceptable."

He continues, "For these reasons, I – together with our board of directors – have decided to terminate the Jumpshot data collection and wind down Jumpshot’s operations, with immediate effect."

The decision follows a joint investigation from PCMag and VICE's Motherboard into the way Avast's free anti-virus software was harvesting user data and how that supposedly anonymized data could be linked back to specific users.  Read more...