Palant reported the excessive data collection to Mozilla, and received a polite "thank you" for his notification. All that is connected to a number of attributes allowing Avast to recognize you reliably, even a unique user identifier. Tracking tab and window identifiers as well as your actions allows Avast to create a nearly precise reconstruction of your browsing behavior: how many tabs you have open, what websites do you visit and when, how much time do you spend reading/watching the contents, what do you click there and when do you switch to another tab. The data collected here goes far beyond merely exposing the sites that you visit and your search history. If the above revelation didn't unnerve you, take a look at this assertion on Palant's blog page: According to a gHacks article, data was sent whenever a user opened a page or switched tabs, as well as every single click on a search page. Os and osVersion: Your operating system and exact version number (the latter only known to the extension if Avast Antivirus is installed).Īll of this information, and more, was transmitted to Avast and AVG servers. Chrome or Firefox) and version number of your browser. Plugin_guid: Seems to be another unique user identifier.īrowserType and browserVersion: Type (e.g. Userid: A unique user identifier generated by the extension. Locale: Your country code, which seems to be guessed from the browser locale. Visited: Whether you visited this page before. by entering the address directly, using a bookmark or clicking a link. Initiating_user_action windowEvent: How exactly you got to the page, e.g. WindowNum and tabNum: Identifier of the window and tab that the page loaded into. Referrer: Address of the page that you got here from, if any. Uri: The full address of the page you are on. Take a look at the information collected, as pointed out from Palant's blog: In late October, Wladimir Palant, the creator or AdBlock Plus discovered that these addons were collecting WAY, WAY, WAY more information than was necessary to perform their duties. They are Avast Online Security, AVG Online Security, Avast SafePrice, and AVG SafePrice. Well, for the past couple of years, Avast has made available four addons for Firefox. Mozilla Removes All Avast, AVG Firefox Extensions Over Snooping Claimsĭo you remember the free antivirus package AVG Free by Avast from back in your Windows days? Or, maybe you are aware of their current "antivirus" offerings for Linux. Google has not yet responded to a query from BleepingComputers with an answer of any kind. There is only speculation about why the web browsers work for some users, but not others. They could include lack of support for JavaScript or having JavaScript support turned off, having unsecure or unsupported extensions installed, the use of automated testing frameworks, or the browser is embedded in a different application. Clicking on the "Learn More" link reveals a number of reasons that Google provides for the possible block. Ironically, there are also several replies in the Reddit thread of other users who have had no problem using the aforementioned Linux web browsers.īleepingComputers, in their independent tests, were able to confirm - on multiple machines - the inability to log into Google services on both Falkon and Konqueror. The issue was reported on Reddit by u/onedoer. as if logging into any Google service is like logging into some kind of fortress of security and privacy. Google asserts that they "may not be secure". All but QuteBrowser are in the PCLinuxOS repository. These Linux web browsers include Falkon, Konqueror and QuteBrowser. In its "infinite" wisdom, Google has now blocked certain Linux web browsers from accessing its services, according to an article on BleepingComputer. Short Topix: Mozilla Removes Avast, AVG Firefox Extensions Over Snooping Claims
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