2020
Liquidation of the company
On January 30, 2020 Avast announced closing and the subsequent liquidation of Jumpshot company through which the producer of antiviruses sold data of hundreds of millions of clients. It will lead to reduction of hundreds of jobs, however Avast promises "to smooth as much as possible for them effects of this solution".
 | The main task of Avast — to ensure safety of the users in network and to provide control over their confidentiality — the CEO of Avast Ondrej Vlcek says. — Any actions which threaten trust of users are unacceptable for Avast. The privacy of our users is for us the major priority therefore we decided to act quickly. We decided to close Jumpshot after it became obvious that some users call in question compliance of providing data of Jumpshot with our mission and the principles which are for us fundamental. |  |
Jumpshot completely will pay bills of the suppliers regularly for the provided products and services. Also Jumpshot will timely notify the clients on the termination of provision of services of data transmission.
Despite liquidation of Jumpshot, other products Avast it will not concern, and users, allegedly, will not see any changes.
According to the statement of Avast, the Jumpshot company worked "strictly within the law" and according to the General regulations on data protection (GDPR), however specialists and clients were all the same confused by the fact of sale of history of browsers of users to the third parties.
On January 30, 2020 the stocks Avast fell in price by 9% after the statement for Jumpshot closing. For a week of quotation sank for 25% because of scandal over collecting and sale of these clients of Avast.[1]
Exposure in collecting and sale of these users
At the end of January, 2020 became that Avast collects and sells to large corporations detailed data on activity of the users on the Internet. For this business the producer of antiviruses founded Jumpshot subsidiary company.
Journalists of PCMag and Motherboard made own investigations which showed that Avast collects large volumes of data, including browser stories, information on watching separate videos on YouTube, location of users at any moment and also complete the history of clicks. For example, it is possible to look into what online stores the person as traveled around them on what he was delayed before made purchase in some specific shop came. "Buyers" could purchase the information about cliques of users on the different websites.
Among those who buy data of clients of Avast the following companies appear: Google, Yelp, Microsoft, McKinsey, PepsiCo, Sephora, Home Depot, Conde Nast and Intuit.
The reporters making investigation claim that thanks to cooperation with these and other Avast companies earned millions of dollars. So, in 2019. the Omnicom company paid Avast of $2.07 million for access to these data.
Avast claims that Jumpshot does not obtain "the personal identification information, including a user name, the e-mail address or a contact information", and clients can always refuse providing the data.
Jumpshot offers the clients access to the user traffic from 100 million devices, including computers and phones. Thus, clients of the company (from large brands to online stores) could analyze as where users buy.
Outputs of researchers are based on the analysis of leaks, contracts and other documents of the company.[2]
Notes
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