Avast has sold user data to technical and business giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Pepsi, Mainboard and PCMag reported. Avast has an antivirus program.
The company has taken the details from its antivirus software and handed it over for millions of dollars to its parent firm Jumpshot.
While Avast users agreed to this information sharing, Jumpshot did not sell the data. They did not know.
A wide list of companies such as Expedia, Intuit, Keurig, Condé Nast, Loreal and more were found in the investigation.
One thing that concerns all of this situation is that the data leak contains incredibly sensitive information such as user searches for Google, location searches for Google Maps, business activities on company pages LinkedIn, YouTube visits to videos and even visits to porn sites.
Omnicom paid Jumpshot $2,075,000 for access to data in 2019, according to Motherboard and PCMag.
Apparently, the data is anonymous and does not include personal information however, experts suggest that it will be possible to figure out certain details about users.
This article originally published on Engadget.
