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Avast fined $16.5 million for ‘privacy’ software that actually sold users’ browsing data
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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If the software is free, but not open source, it's harvesting your data. How else do you think these companies stay in business?
I dislike this sentiment. Just because something is FOSS or open source, doesn't mean it's not harvesting your data or doing something nefarious.
A good example would be Yuzu (the Switch emulator), it was open source and collected so much telemetry that Nintendo might go after their users.
This might be fear tactic but it shows you that you aren't safe
I don't know about Yuzu's data collection but they were destroyed because they existed.