Author Topic: Secure Browser automatically loads bookmarks configuration and passwords  (Read 2568 times)

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Offline Carlos_V8

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  • Posts: 5
...from another browsers without authorization.

just installed antivirus in a brand new windows machine, and then received a message from my script about securities issues in my browser, and bam! it was secure browser loading stuff without asking.

is this a normal behavior?

About security browser got some questions:

-it got an integrated VPN, what are these VPN policies about data?
-how is this browser better compared with Edge/Brave?

Offline Libor Šlechta

  • Browser QA Team
  • Avast team
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Hello Carlos_V8,

Could you please clarify “message from my script” what script did report this issue?

Here are answers to your questions:

The browser is able to import the data you mentioned during installation. From your description it seems you accepted installation of the Secure Browser during AV installation, there is 1 screen where Secure Browser is offered. I looked at the offer screen and it is missing the option to install the browser without importing data. I forwarded this feedback to product manager responsible for this area, so thank you for raising this topic.

For the built-in VPN. We have a no log policy meaning that we do not collect any information about browsing history or viewed content. We do track some servicing data on the server side. For example, the amount of transferred traffic but this data is not connected to the users. During experiments we may track some servicing info about the VPN usage on client side, for example connect and disconnect events. We also collect some general browser usage data like browser crashes, runs, installs and uninstalls to help decisions during development. If you are interested in learning more about our privacy policies you can read: https://www.avast.com/products-policy#securebrowser and https://www.avast.com/vpn-policy#pc .

And the comparison of Secure Browser to the mentioned competition. All of the browsers are based on the open source Chromium project.
In Secure Browser our main focus is on developing security and privacy features.
One of our biggest assets is our phishing and malware detection. We have a project in Secure Browser that is focusing on enhancing the detection by using our own implementation of scanners that are looking for malicious content in visited pages. That is why in recent independent test our browser performed best in Phishing detection among competition: https://blog.avast.com/en/secure-browser/avast-secure-browser-scores-top-position-in-anti-phishing-protection-test-by-av-comparatives . The project is still in progress and we expect to improve the detection even further.
Next important distinction is the VPN that you mentioned. It is does not use standard protocol as other VPN but it uses Mimic protocol (short summary can be found on our FAQ page https://support.avast.com/en-us/article/secure-browser-faq#pc under “What is Mimic Protocol?”).
And there is more in the Secure browser worth exploring. For example “Web cam guard”, “Privacy guard”, “Bank mode”.