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FTC bans antivirus giant Avast from selling its users' browsing data to advertisers
(techcrunch.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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How to stay private online without needing avast.
Use open source/offline apps. Only use others apps if you just have to.
If you're navigating websites or servers, where it is located mostly will influence the privacy. How you may ask?
Some countries have specific laws and restrictions what sites and apps can collect or even do. Figure out which ones align in your favor and use sites and servers located in those places.
Or: use linux and don't be a dumbass. I know, it sounds elitist, but I've been around a long, long time on the internet and I probably haven't used antivirus this millennia and the only problem I've ever had was one kodi addon mining bitcoin (inside a sandboxed environment).
Linux users keep saying you don't need antivirus on Linux and that Linux is more secure and safe. This intrigues me, as I'm moving to Linux, but I never hear any technical reasons as to why this would be. All I see is "there are no viruses because it's a small platform". That's not an argument for the security of the platform so I'm curious to know if there are any technical reasons Linux would be more secure. Every now and then I read about some malware for Linux, so they do definitely exist.
It's also a total lie. Do you know how many Linux servers there are in the world? It's a lot. Same for Android devices.
While these aren't quite the same, and thus not the same vulnerabilities as desktop Linux, they do provide some insights into the effectiveness of its security model.