August 19th, 2006
AOL’s Active Virus Shield Raises Some Privacy Concerns
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
As William wrote earlier, AOL has released (free) Active Virus Shield, an antivirus application powered by Kaspersky Labs, considered one of the top AV firms. Thing is, as nice as free is, some of the EULA has privacy advocates upset.
Although security experts, including Howes, say that Active Virus Shield does not behave in a malicious fashion or serve up unwanted ads, some are concerned that the product’s end-user license agreement (EULA) would allow AOL to send spam or serve up adware at some point in the future. “If it actually does any of the things stated in the EULA, we would actually flag it as spyware,” said Christina Olson, a project manager at Stopbadware.org.
The Active Virus Shield agreement gives AOL much broader rights to collect information and then to share that information with third parties than typical EULAs, observers said. Source: ComputerWorld
We Say: Ironically, Active Virus Shield’s security toolbar is based on a product, known as the Softomate toolbar, that is flagged as adware by Kaspersky’s own antivirus products. Hmm. Another nail in the AOL coffin, perhaps?
David Johnston says:
I’ve installed Active Virus Shield on a few computers and can say that, at least for now, it’s not doing anything nefarious. I used a soon-to-be-gone email address to register the software (it does not process registrations from temporary email address sites such as Mailinator) so I’m not worried about it getting spammed, though I’ve received no additional spam to that address since registering either. Anyway, thanks for the heads-up. I’ll be sure and keep an eye on it
August 19th, 2006 at 7:50 am
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