Free my ass! Avast charges money for that service. Hell they make you subscribe to use any service outside basic virus scan. So customers paid to have their data stolen and sold.
Comment on Avast fined $16.5 million for ‘privacy’ software that actually sold users’ browsing data
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
If the software is free, but not open source, it’s harvesting your data. How else do you think these companies stay in business?
Fredselfish@lemmy.world 8 months ago
CustodialTeapot@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I dislike this sentiment. Just because something is FOSS or open source, doesn’t mean it’s not harvesting your data or doing something nefarious.
Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
kinda wrong sentiment to get from the statement. statement is only saying if
if free and NOT open source > data harvest
it doesn’t necessarily imply that
if free and open source > doesnt data harvest
at all. its just you have the ability to find out via code of they do or not. thats more or less in the boat of logical paradoxes you can make.
Contend6248@feddit.de 8 months ago
A good example would be Yuzu (the Switch emulator), it was open source and collected so much telemetry that Nintendo might go after their users.
Chocrates@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I don’t know about Yuzu’s data collection but they were destroyed because they existed.
lemmyingly@lemm.ee 8 months ago
So companies like Proton and BitWarden are harvesting your data with their free tiers?
russjr08@bitforged.space 8 months ago
I haven’t looked into Proton, but BitWarden is open source both server side and client side.
N2Narkosis@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Proton is open source as well. Free tiers are supplemented by subscribers. proton.me/support/proton-plans#proton-free
the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
If you pay tho they’re also harvesting your data. And if you don’t use your service they make a ghost profile and harvest that data.
prole@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
The only way to fully prevent it is to remove the profit-motive altogether.
the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Sounds fun!
GreatDong3000@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Yeah I love it when people say “if you don’t pay you are the product” as if paying for youtube premium, google one, reddit premium or spotify will stop them from harvesting your data haha that’s how naive we were back when we thought data was collected only for ads.