Your antivirus software is watching you. A recent study shows that popular antivirus applications like Avast assign your computer a unique identifier and send a list of all web addresses you visit to the manufacturer. If the antivirus finds a suspicious document, it will send the document to the antivirus company. Yes, your antivirus company might have a list of web pages you've visited along with your sensitive personal documents!
http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/avc_datasending_2014_en.pdf (PDF Download) pretty charts comparing a variety of specific data reporting between vendors and products, https://www.bof.nl/live/wp-content/uploads/Letter-to-antivirus-companies-.pdf (PDF download) I believe this is the original open letter which led to the charts PDF
"According to a top-secret GCHQ warrant renewal request written in 2008 and published today by The Intercept, the British spy agency viewed Kaspersky software as an obstruction to its hacking operations and needed to reverse engineer it to find ways to neutralize the problem. Doing so required obtaining a warrant."
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2106783/project-camberdada.pdf (PDF Download) purports to be a top secret document outlining the interception to malware reporting to AV providers
So - how valuable is an AV program? Is your AV transmitting data to the NSA? Does your AV provide a "backdoor" into your computer?
Much has been said about the advisability of running an AV on *nix. Much has been said about the inherent security of *nix. Right now, I'm somewhat happy/relieved that I am NOT running any proprietary antivirus programs.
Disclaimer: I am reading a fascinating work of fiction, which postulates that your antivirus shares data with the NSA. Given that postulation, I went looking for information. I'll be more than happy to disclose the title and author in the comments section - just ask!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lentilla on Wednesday October 28 2015, @07:51AM
The only thing that would surprise me is if antivirus software was NOT tracking you.
Runaway1956 mentions a work of fiction in his submission, so I'll match it with one of mine! I've just finished re-reading Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress". Germane to this discussion and that book: TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!
Of course antivirus software is likely tracking you - and those that are not yet are ripe to be considered "incompletely monetised". This applies equally to "free" and paid-for antivirus. Paying for something in this era should be considered a "sticker price" at best - the old assumptions that "cash on the barrel-head" in exchange for a product are long gone. Now we pay the sticker price and companies continue to monetise our product long after the transaction has been completed.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2015, @11:54AM
Runaway1956 is a loud mouth closet queer.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2015, @12:54PM
Tell us how you really feel.