I think you should join that discussion (using a disposable e-mail address or alias) to post your response. But then that just might fan the flames over there while the author grins in having an even more active discussion. You want to defend yourself but instead the ignorants giggle and pee.
(Update: I see someone posted a link there to this thread.)
Although you try to make it evident regarding the usage policy, the problem is with lazy users. How many actually read the EULA presented to them during an installation? I recall 2 products that I aborted their installs because I didn't agree with the EULA. Most users don't the EULA. They're too lazy. Reading skills have waned. Maybe the EULAs should be animated and show cartoon characters explaining it, like in Jurassic Park (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMsJe3TymqY). Alas, anything longer than 8 seconds will get skipped (
http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/). It's obvious the author (and his immediate respondents) never read the EULA or anything in the install screens. Click, click, click is all they do. If you want to upset them or slow them down, just put a borderless Next button at the top middle of the screen instead of at the usual bottom right location. I've seen some EULA screens that, at least, require the user to scroll to the bottom of the EULA window before the Next button gets enabled.
"in the particular case of URL scanning, we do transfer the URL the user is visiting, together with additional metadata to the Avast cloud, which then does the necessary processing and synchronously returns the answer."
WOT (Web of Trust) and McAfee SiteAdvisor would have to do the same thing. After all, somehow they would have to see to where you visit to know what reputation to return to you. Yet one respondent to the article mentioned he would switch to WOT. Not a clue has he. By the way, if you ever bothered to join WOT and then looked at the comments on why some users rated a site the way they did, you'd realize that WOT is worthless. Too much retaliation and too many ignorant raters. Besides, you usually get a non-descript yellow alert (unrated site) because the vast majority of sites are not listed in their database. They have 10 million sites rated out of 1 billion for all of 1% coverage (
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/) and with ratings by inexpert users. It didn't take but a few days to drop WOT after seeing mostly yellow markers and reading inane comments by raters. The spam/scam/phish sites go dead in a few days as the cybercriminals are constantly rotating through new domains while trying to push traffic to them during their short lifespan. I've deemed web reputation as worthless. I don't install the one in Avast, either.
These boobs probably don't even know all the sites they visit are collecting similar information from them, like using Google Analytics. Someone tweaks their ears about Avast and since it's news to them then they're obviously ignorant about all the other sites collecting metrics on them. They want to revert to 1994 but forget how there wasn't much "web" back then. Someone every few years regurgitates the Flash cookie scare while totally ignorant of DOM storage in all web browsers. Searching the web for information has become a practiced art in knowing what to cull out as crap. Many aren't even datestamped so you can't determine their relevancy.
Ever see that commercial where the gal is waiting for her date to show up who is a French model because he said so on the Internet (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-pHe879l60). The sad part is there are a LOT of netizens just as dumb. The scammers love 'em.