avast firefox extension could not be verified

It also claims that storing the data shouldn’t be a concern because of anonymization.Avast founders Eduard Kučera (left) and Pavel Baudiš (right) in 2016 with their spouses, who run the non-profit Avast Foundation for community developmentĪvast Software s.r.o.

Avast Software SRO, which owns both the Avast and AVG brands, admits collecting user data, but says that it is necessary to provide the advertised services. According to him, the Avast/ AVG Online Security extension and the Avast/ AVG Secure Browser were transmitting data that allowed the company to reconstructing the entire web-browsing history and browsing behavior of users.Īccording to Palant, “The amount of data being sent goes far beyond what’s necessary for the extension to function, especially if you compare to competing solutions such as Google Safe Browsing”. Google’s crackdown comes more than two weeks after Mozilla and Opera pulled the controversial add-ons from their respective repositories following a detailed report from AdBlock developer, Wladimir Palant, who claimed that the extensions were basically spyware masquerading as security software. The aforementioned add-ons, which were available on Firefox, Chrome and Opera, are still being used by millions of users globally, which isn’t surprising, given that Avast and AVG together have around 400 million users around the world. Beebom has verified that none of the aforementioned extensions are available on the Chrome web-store any more, but we cannot independently confirm when they were removed from the platform.

Avast firefox extension could not be verified