SoulAsylum:
Many many companies will tell its customers they do not sell customer data and do so openly. Avast, being owned by Norton since 2022, now has the FTC up its backside for doing just that. Browsing and other data. Lots of it too....
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ftc-to-ban-avast-from-sel...
Hi SoulAsylum:
That BleepingComputer article notes that Avast's Jumpshot subsidiary that collected and sold this data between 2014 and 2020 was shut down in 2020 after a joint public investigation by Motherboard and PCMag. That's about a year before Avast and NortonLifeLock merged to create parent company Gen Digital, so I'm guessing FTC fines were an expected liability that was already built into the cost of acquiring Avast.
While I'm happy to hear that the FTC finally imposed penalties on Avast for this fraudulent behavior, macrotrends reported <here> that Gen Digital's gross profit for the 12 months ending December 12, 2023 was 3.061 billion (3,061 million), so the FTC fine of 16.5 million is about 0.5% of their annual gross profit. As such, I have doubts that this FTC ruling will have any substantial impact on the way that NortonLifeLock conducts its business.
I listed some of the reasons why I stopped using Norton products in my 12-May-2022 reply in PC_confused's Internet Security vs 360, and I mentioned Jumpshot and my concerns about NortonLifeLock acquiring technology from companies like Avast who are known for their questionable business practices, as well as the amount of unnecessary bloat (e.g., Norton Smart Scan, Norton Software Updater, the discontinued Norton Crypto, etc.) developed by these companies that NortonLifeLock has been incorporating into their own antivirus products. I assume it's more profitable for Gen Digital to acquire new technology this way instead of investing that money in their own R&D department.
Interesting further is I find this on my main PC. Zero Avast products have ever been installed on this system. So the question begs, how is it there in the first place? and why!
As CeeBee's 23-Aug-2023 topic C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Norton\AvastScanDump.txt shows, if you have a NortonLifeLock product on your computer then you'll likely find traces of Avast-developed technology as well. Given the recent FTC ruling, I wouldn't be surprised to see NortonLifeLock change the company name in these files and folders from "Avast" to "Norton" to try to hide their association with Avast.
As the saying goes, "qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent " (He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas). 
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