Free Edition Re- License Registration

[EdBoyle]

Just been invited by Avast to relicense my free edition after 1 year, However, a read of their T&C at http://files.avast.com/files/legal/eula-avast-free.pdf seems to indicate that an agreement will allow them to gather any information from my PC 'THEY' consider 'potentially virus-related' and then share this information with 3rd parties... Is everyone happy with this?

In part it says,

"The Software automatically and from time to time may collect certain information, which may include personally identifiable information, from the computer on which it is installed, including:
8.1
URLs of visited websites that the Software identifies as potentially infected, together with the information on the nature of identified threats (e.g. viruses, Trojans, tracking cookies and any other forms of malware) and URLs of several sites visited before the infection was identified to ascertain the source of the infection;
8.2
Information and files (including executable files) on your computer identified by the Software as potentially infected, together with the information about the nature of identified threats;
8.3
Information about the sender and subject of emails identified by the Software as potentially infected, together with the information on the nature of identified threats;
8.4
Information contained in emails reported by you as spam or as incorrectly identified as spam by the Software;
8.5
Copies of the files identified by the Software as potentially infected or parts thereof may be automatically sent to AVAST for further examination and analysis;
8.6
Certain information about your computer hardware, software and/or network connection;
8.7
Certain information about the installation and operation of the Software and encountered errors or problems;
8.8
Statistical information about threats detected by the Software; and
8.9
If your version of the Software includes the Website reputation function, which provides information on reputation of web sites as potential sources of malware, and you set the Website reputation function to active, the Software may send AVAST the URLs of all websites you want to visit and the results of your web searches through search engines.

The information collected by the Software is generally not correlated with any other personal information related to you that AVAST may be processing such as information given by you to AVAST or its distributors or agents during the process of ordering and downloading the Software. Unless you have permitted otherwise, the information collected by the Software is used anonymously in aggregation with similar information from other users of the Software for analytical purposes to identify new viruses and threats and for improvement and development of the Software and for statistical purposes.

By using the Software you acknowledge and agree that AVAST or its distributors or agents may collect and use the information as described above. You are giving this consent on behalf of all users of all computers where the Software will be used under this license and you accept full responsibility for informing all users and acquiring their fully informed, free and valid consent with processing of their personal information by the Software as described above."
   

[DavidR]

These are the views of an avast user, I'm not an avast employee  -  If you aren't happy don't use it. I have been using avast for almost nine years not had any issues relating to this or previous T&Cs.

But now adays there has to be the legalise involved in T&Cs, if you get email indicated by you as S P A M, that 'may' Keyword that, may) contain personal information, but then again it may not. First to indicate something as spam you would have to have the avast Pro/AIS with the anti-spam module (and actually indicate an email as spam, which presumably hadn't been flagged by avast).

So the information passed would have to be sufficient to be able to subsequently detect that email type as spam.

Reporting of files considered infected are to a lessor degree likely to have any personal information involved in the same way as email (header information, etc.). Again the information passed would have to be sufficient to be able to subsequently detect that malware, etc.

[bob3160]

@EdBoyle,
I don't know if everyone is happy with it. It doesn't bother me personally.
Since you created this topic, you seem to have a problem with the wording.
You also have a choice. Accept and continue to use avast! to protect your computer or,
Reject and find another product.
I highly doubt that any other products Terms & Contract will be any less distasteful to your pallet.
If you find one, please let me know.