Data Protection Authority Investigates Avast for Selling Users’ Browsing History

On Tuesday, the Czech data protection authority announced an investigation into antivirus company Avast, which was harvesting the browsing history of over 100 million users and then selling products based on that data to a slew of different companies including Google, Microsoft, and Home Depot

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3a8vjk/czech-data-protection-authority-investigation-avast-jumpshot


#Avast #Google #Microsoft #buy #browsing #history

Firefox Privacy - The Complete How-To Guide including a List of about:config customizations
via RestorePrivacy.com

For more info - click 👉🏻 #ff #FireFox #userJS - or here: t.me/NoGoolag/99 to learn about Mozilla-based Fennec browser

#internet #browsing #surfing #privacy #security #online #browser #tutorial #howTo

What private browsing does—and doesn’t—do to shield you from prying eyes online

Private browsing sounds like it’s keeping all your browsing and data private—but its name is misleading.

Many people look for more privacy when they browse the web by using their browsers in privacy-protecting modes, called “Private Browsing” in Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Apple Safari; “Incognito” in Google Chrome; and “InPrivate” in Microsoft Edge.
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These private browsing tools sound reassuring, and they’re popular. According to a 2017 survey, nearly half of American internet users have tried a private browsing mode, and most who have tried it use it regularly.

However, our research has found that many people who use private browsing have misconceptions about what protection they’re gaining. A common misconception is that these browser modes allow you to browse the web anonymously, surfing the web without websites identifying you, and without your internet service provider or your employer knowing what websites you visit. The tools actually provide much more limited protections.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90534809/what-private-browsing-does-and-doesnt-to-shield-you-from-prying-eyes-online

#browser #private #browsing #privacy

Tencent has been caught spying on your web browsing history with QQ Messenger

QQ Messenger, a popular Chinese instant messaging app by Tencent, was caught scraping web browser history with their desktop client. The discovery was made by Chinese internet users on the Q and A platforum Zhihu. Here is a Chinese language thread that documents the QQ Messenger web browsing history scraping investigation. Basically, all Chromium based web browsers store your internet history in an sqlite file in local storage. QQ Messenger would seek out this file and scrape the information, comparing it to a list of keywords and then phoning home if any matches were found.

After the spying revelation, Tencent quickly released a new version of QQ Messenger without the web history scraping functionality and claimed that the Chinese company was only previously looking at its millions of users’ web browsing history as a way of ”checking whether malicious programs were using certain websites to access QQ.”

This isn’t the first time Tencent has spied on users for the Chinese government

Since last year, QQ messenger has lost 6% of its active users – possibly because users have already started distrusting QQ and Tencent. Over the years, similar revelations about Tencent’s anti-privacy and weak security practices have come out especially in regards to QQ products. Back in 2016, the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab revealed that Tencent’s QQ Browser regularly sent personal information back to Tencent unencrypted. Furthermore, it became known that this overt lack of encryption was likely explicitly requested by “higher powers.”

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/tencent-has-been-caught-spying-on-your-web-browsing-history-with-qq-messenger/

#tencent #china #spying #browsing #history #qq #messenger #thinkabout #why
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