FTC bans antivirus giant Avast from selling its users' browsing data to advertisers : technology

[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 169 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I don't understand why companies who commit blatant fraud like this aren't required to disgorge all fraudulently earned money. If someone defrauds banks they get fined based on their earnings in a way that hurts. If someone defrauds consumers for "tens of millions of dollars" they are only fined $16M.

Well, actually I do understand, I just don't like it and don't like what it says about this country's priorities.

[–] Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

By New York state law you are, any "ill gotten gains" must be surrendered. And the fine accumulates interest during any appeals to boot. it's why Trump is getting his nearly half a billion dollar fine. I wish all fraud laws were that way though. I believe most are typically based on common law fraud, and usually there's some kind of flat fine and the the rest is based off provable damages to other parties, rather than the amount of profit.

[–] piecat@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

Yep. Things don't have to be this way.

[–] Uranium3006@kbin.social 148 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Sounds like avast is malware

[–] expr@programming.dev 19 points 7 months ago

Has been all along.

[–] Lev_Astov@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago

Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service you get from a large company, you aren't their customer, you're their product.

[–] PoliticallyIncorrect@lemmy.world 119 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

When the antivirus becomes the virus..

[–] diffcalculus@lemmy.world 61 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

🌎🧑‍🚀🔫🧑‍🚀

[–] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 7 months ago (1 children)

they always been

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 39 points 7 months ago

I remember a long time ago when Avast came highly recommended, at least back when I had gone looking for reviews. Back when antivirus was still more or less a necessity.

[–] SpeedLimit55@lemmy.world 68 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I haven’t heard anything about Avast in years, didn’t even know it still existed.

[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They're a giant I hear

[–] ryan213@lemmy.ca 11 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Wait, they're not common anymore? Lol It's what I use. Any suggestions for better ones?

[–] czech@low.faux.moe 63 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Microsoft defender, ublock origin and keep your computer up to date.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 27 points 7 months ago (4 children)

And practice Layer-8 security, i.e. don't be an idiot.

[–] Hyperreality@kbin.social 23 points 7 months ago

That's not really a choice you can make. Also idiots don't know they're idiots.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago

The whole don't be an idiot thing doesn't work well with most people. Most people just gøøg|€ everything and most likely don't have a clue when they're being sent to fake sites that will give them viruses. And some of them will even see macrohard defender essentially saying "Hey! You Fucked Up!" and ignore it because they surely know better than a computer.

I personally like to think that computer literacy right now is similar to back when people were just starting to push for everyone to be literate. Big difference is phones destroying that effort for computer literacy by oversimplifying everything.

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[–] BassTurd@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I haven't run anything other than free Windows defender since it was available I believe in Windows 7. Never had a virus or anything malicious. Don't download files that you don't know the source of. Don't click on mystery links. Don't visit insecure websites. And as mentioned, keep your system up to date and you'll be fine.

[–] pensivepangolin@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah people act like it’s so easy to get a virus but if you’re even remotely competent it’s pretty easy to avoid

[–] BassTurd@lemmy.world 19 points 7 months ago

I worked geek squad for years. The vast majority of malware was people downloading free games or free software and then not checking the custom install settings to uncheck the "install McAfee security scanner" or whatever toolbar and redirection it was at the time.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 5 points 7 months ago

Never had a virus or anything malicious.

That you know about.

Don't assume you are fine just because your antivirus doesn't alert you about viruses.

This goes for every AV, not just Defender.

That being said, I am also just using Defender snd it has worked well.

I used to run F-Secure, and I like it, but eh Defender is good enough.

[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.one 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But, im running linux….Thats all i do!

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[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 12 points 7 months ago

Defender + common sense usually works as long as youre not using it like a public library.

[–] ElderberryLow@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago

Bitdefender and Malwarebytes are good ones and rated well.

[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 38 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Oh, that's good now do Microsoft

[–] TheOSINTguy@sh.itjust.works 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Or google.

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

Or ... reddit.

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[–] TK420@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How the mighty have fallen

[–] FrankTheHealer@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

I remember when Avast was considered the least shit or at least, one of the less shit options for Antivirus. Pretty much seems all those antivirus products are just malware with marketing teams now.

[+] Rob@lemdro.id 20 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Or: use linux and don't be a dumbass. I know, it sounds elitist, but I've been around a long, long time on the internet and I probably haven't used antivirus this millennia and the only problem I've ever had was one kodi addon mining bitcoin (inside a sandboxed environment).

[–] Plopp@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago (12 children)

Linux users keep saying you don't need antivirus on Linux and that Linux is more secure and safe. This intrigues me, as I'm moving to Linux, but I never hear any technical reasons as to why this would be. All I see is "there are no viruses because it's a small platform". That's not an argument for the security of the platform so I'm curious to know if there are any technical reasons Linux would be more secure. Every now and then I read about some malware for Linux, so they do definitely exist.

[–] jyte@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Here is why :)

[–] redfox@infosec.pub 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Congratz, you found a really shitty malware.

I don't think that's lockbit quality.

[–] scoobford@lemmy.zip 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The underlying user/group systems are a little more secure, containerization is common and easy (flatpak, bubblewrap, and firejail), the attack surface is lower, the marketshare is smaller, and repositories are fundamentally superior. Of these, app repositories and the market share are by far the biggest factors.

Getting malware on Linux isn't totally unheard of, but it is extremely uncommon. I've never had any, nor has anyone I know. This guy isn't the first person I've heard of getting malware on Linux, but he is one of very, very few.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago

one added benefit of Linux: It doesn't - on a default installation - enable tons of services the user will probably never need. These services on Windows listen on the internet connection for incoming requests (e.g. remote desktop service), or are available locally for other exploits.

One of the reasons Windows "just works" (well...) is because literally EVERYTHING is preconfigured and activated on startup. That's also one of the reasons why the system is such a resource hogging piece of work...

It's a work of hours to manually go through system services and identify & disable everything you will not need.

[–] Nollij@sopuli.xyz 9 points 7 months ago

All I see is "there are no viruses because it's a small platform".

It's also a total lie. Do you know how many Linux servers there are in the world? It's a lot. Same for Android devices.

While these aren't quite the same, and thus not the same vulnerabilities as desktop Linux, they do provide some insights into the effectiveness of its security model.

[–] expr@programming.dev 6 points 7 months ago

It's not the case that viruses can't exist on Linux, it's just very improbable through normal usage. The key difference is that the overwhelming majority of software installed on Linux is through a package manager, which is a tool that downloads software from a maintained, trusted, and vetted repository of software. So instead of googling "Firefox download", clicking on (hopefully) the right link (and getting this right gets harder and harder with Google fucking up search results), and downloading the software from the website, you simply execute a command in your terminal like apt install firefox (for Debian-based systems, command can vary by distro you're using) and it pulls the software from a trusted repository. This alone eliminates the most common attack vectors, since usually Windows users get viruses by downloading random executables off the internet.

Generally, the way you get viruses on a Linux system are through finding/exploiting vulnerabilities in software which is very hard to pull off generally and are usually resolved fairly quickly once they're discovered (And of course, Linux is not unique in this respect, any computer can be target of such attacks).

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[–] Sacah@aussie.zone 9 points 7 months ago

I think it's the "don't be a dumbass" that's important, not the OS choice really. I haven't had a 3rd party virus scanner in at least a decade on Windows and have never had a virus or malware.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Oh boy, I sure do hope this happens to other companies that do it!

FakeSpot by Mozilla: sells browsing history to advertising partners

[–] kattenluik@feddit.nl 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Fakespot's entire thing seems to be being a cringy AI tool. I feel like whoever uses it should/would understand that this data is leaving their grasp.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Make sure to check your Firefox about:config for "shopping2023" or whatever flag they called it... Soon we'll all have Fakespot installed

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[+] Rob@lemdro.id 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] PraiseTheSoup@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I haven't used any antivirus on Windows since 2008, generally doing whatever I want and just not being stupid about it, and I've had no issues.

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[–] CyberDine@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

If you're gonna pay for Antivirus, shout out to ESET NOD32.

They have gotten a bit expensive though. I'm buying a 1 year sub for $10 on Black Friday.

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