The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Thursday that it will ban antivirus giant Avast from selling consumers’ web browsing data to advertisers after Avast claimed its products would block its users from online tracking.
Avast also settled federal regulator charges for $16.5 million, which the FTC said would provide redress to Avast users whose sensitive browsing data was improperly sold to advertising giants and data brokers.
“Avast promised users that its products would protect the privacy of their browsing data, but delivered otherwise,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Office of Consumer Protection. announcement on Thursday. “Avast’s bait-and-switch monitoring tactics compromised consumer privacy and violated the law,” Levine said.
The FTC said Avast had been collecting customers’ Internet browsing habits for years, including their web searches and the websites they visited, using Avast’s browser extensions, which the antivirus giant claimed would “protect your privacy” by blocking online tracking cookies.
However, the FTC alleged that Avast sold consumer browsing data through its now-shuttered subsidiary, Jumpshot, to more than a hundred other companies, netting Avast tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
The regulator said the browsing data Jumpshot sold revealed consumers’ religious beliefs, health concerns, political leanings, their location and other sensitive information.
A joint investigation by Vice News and PCMag in January 2020 revealed that Jumpshot was selling highly sensitive web browsing data to companies including Google, Yelp, Microsoft, Home Depot and consulting giant McKinsey. The reports found that Jumpshot was also selling access to its users’ click data, including the specific web links its users clicked on.
At the time, Avast had more than 430 million active users worldwide. Jumpshot said it accessed data from 100 million devices.
Avast shut down its Jumpshot subsidiary days after the Vice-PCMag joint report.
Avast merged with Norton LifeLock in an $8.1 billion deal in 2021 and is now under parent company Gen Digital, which also owns the PC utility app CCleaner.
When reached for comment Thursday, Gen Digital spokesperson Jess Monney gave TechCrunch a statement, saying, “When Avast voluntarily shut down Jumpshot in 2020, it had stopped these practices. The operational provisions of the settlement are consistent with Avast’s current privacy and security programs.”
Avast’s statement said it disagreed with the government’s “allegations and characterization of the facts,” without specifying how or why, but that the company was “pleased to resolve this matter.”
