Avast will shut down its marketing subsidiary Jumpshot following controversy over selling user data to third parties
Avast's CEO said the move is “absolutely the right thing to do.” — Avast is winding down its subsidiary Jumpshot following an explosive investigation into the sale …
What makes the story bigger than one product line is the dependency chain: Hitwise, a 24-year-old consumer insights firm, collapsed weeks later after allegations it had purchased sensitive user data from Jumpshot — evidence the shutdown didn't just end Avast's data business but took a buyer down with it. Four years on, the FTC's $16.5M settlement barring Avast from selling browsing data for ads confirmed the closure was damage control, not absolution.
First-order effects
Avast immediately loses the Jumpshot revenue stream and its named clients — Pepsi, Google, Microsoft among them — lose a source of clickstream data they had been buying since 2013.
Second-order effects
Data brokers dependent on Jumpshot's feed face the same exposure: Hitwise's shutdown within three weeks shows that a tainted supply chain can kill the downstream buyer, not just the seller.
Browser and add-on store gatekeepers like Mozilla and Opera, which had already removed Avast tools, are validated in treating telemetry-harvesting extensions as a category risk rather than a case-by-case call.
Third-order effects
The arc from press investigation to subsidiary shutdown to a four-years-later FTC order shows that winding down the operation doesn't extinguish liability — freemium security vendors' data monetization is now a regulatory target, and 'we shut it down' is no defense against misrepresentation charges.
The trend: Security vendors that treated user telemetry as a secondary revenue line are being pushed out of the data-brokerage business by a press-exposure-then-regulator sequence that now defines the sector's privacy risk.
New post from Avast CEO “For these reasons, I - together with our board of directors - have decided to terminate the Jumpshot data collection and wind down Jumpshot's operations, with immediate effect.” https://blog.avast.com/... cc @larakiara @josephfcox @swodinsky
The security and privacy of our users worldwide is Avast's priority. Read our blog post on Avast's commitment to responsible data use ➢ https://blog.avast.com/... https://twitter.com/...
After our investigation Avast has published a blog post defending its sale of users' browsing data, but adds it will “continue to consider how a trends analytics service aligns with our values as a cybersecurity and privacy company.” https://blog.avast.com/... https://twitter.com…
Avast is shutting down analytics firm Jumpshot over selling web tracking data to brands https://press.avast.com/.... Cannes parent co Ascential also says that it's selling back its 35% stake after valuing Jumpshot at $173 million in July: https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
Avast will no longer sell the data on “every click, every visit, every sale” that they plundered from unsuspecting users of their antivirus program. CEO is sorry for “hurt feelings” and thankful for “feedback” 🤯. Sunshine journalism works. Pressure works. https://blog.avast.com/.…
Here's the latest on the AVAST saga. There is an elephant in the room in cybersecurity industry, and that is transparency about telemetry. My feeling - don't sell the data, and be transparent as possible about usage. https://twitter.com/...
That's a good reaction, but this should never happen. (tl;dr Avast Antivirus was selling data including user mouse clicks to third parties for $$$). Between Avast, CCleaner and Kaspersky, I have less and less trust towards any closed source software. https://twitter.com/...
Avast decides to shut down Jumpshot, which is pretty much the only thing they could do https://blog.avast.com/... Pro-tip: if your company has grown pretty large, hire some privacy expert(s) to assess the privacy impact of the various things you do, before @josephfcox finds out
It's a serious reversal from Avast. It has even bought back the 35% share of Jumpshot (its data selling subsidiary) it sold to Ascential in order to shut it down... It's ditching tens of millions of yearly revenue in the process. https://twitter.com/...
After stock drops by 20% on privacy violation news, the company reacts by shutting down their subsidiary that was selling the usage data. https://twitter.com/...
So, Avast claims it will stop selling user data and their CEO states ‘I feel personally responsible’. Anyway, if they didn't already, the Czech DPA must urgently start an investigation about Avast's past and future data practices. https://www.forbes.com/...