If you purchased Avast’s antivirus software between 2014 and 2020, expect to receive some compensation: the antivirus provider is paying $16.5 million back to consumers for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients.
It took a while, but the Federal Trade Commission is ready to start sending payments to affected consumers after announcing a deal a year ago to settle the privacy violations.
“The FTC is emailing notices to 3,690,813 consumers who bought antivirus software from Avast between August 2014 and January 2020,” the Commission said in Monday’s announcement. “Consumers who are eligible to apply will get an email notice between now and March 7, 2025.”
The FTC also created a dedicated site to help affected users receive their compensation. Just don’t expect much in return. According to the math, a person will only receive $4.47 from the settlement if all affected consumers apply for the $16.5 million settlement fund.
The deadline to file the claim is on June 5. The FTC then expects to mail out payments some time next year.
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The FTC decided to crack down on Avast after an investigation from PCMag and Motherboard uncovered that Avast’s antivirus products could expose a user’s internet browsing history to third-party companies, despite promising to protect a consumer’s security.
To the public, Avast said it had been stripping out the personal details before supplying the browsing data through a subsidiary company called Jumpshot. However, internal documents showed that the browsing data could be used to link back to individual Avast users, especially when the information was combined with other data sources. The FTC’s own investigation later found that Avast’s subsidiary Jumpshot had been selling users’ browsing data from 2014 to January 2020 to “more than 100 customers,” including advertising firms.
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In response to the controversy, Avast terminated the browser harvesting and shut down Jumpshot. However the FTC decided to crack down further, alleging that Avast had violated US fair trade laws by failing to disclose to users that their browsing data could be sold to third-party companies. The resulting FTC order not only ordered the antivirus provider to pay $16.5 million, but also banned it from selling or licensing any web-browsing data for advertising purposes.
Avast also sold the data of its free users. But it looks like the FTC’s settlement fund is only geared toward customers who paid for Avast’s antivirus software.
Avast has since merged with NortonLifeLock to form a new security company called Gen. Under the FTC’s order, Avast had to delete all the data it harvested through the Jumpshot business.
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About Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
