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A comment on Avast profits through sales of users’ web browsing habits.

Re:Avast profits through sales of users’ web browsing habits by excalibur on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @09:20AM (#21752622)
> But recently appointed chief executive Ondrej Vlcek tells Forbes there’s no privacy scandal here. All that user information that it sells cannot be traced back to individual users, he asserts.

Not that anyone here needs this pointed out, but there's zero chance of this being accurate.

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Re:Avast profits through sales of users’ web browsing habits by bilekas on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @09:26AM (#21752677)
Yeah mapping the individual user has turned out to be rather trivial. There have been numerous articles documenting this.. But apperantly, we privacy conscious folk are just tinfoil hat folk
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Re:Avast profits through sales of users’ web browsing habits by JoeAltmaier on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @09:25AM (#21752669)
Agreed. For every effort to anonymize data (just remove their name!) there's ten companys dedicated to tracking down and characterizing every individual.

The details are almost a fingerprint. Know enough (maybe 2 facts?) and you can start to re-identify that 'anonymized' data.

Just knowing a rural route code, and the factoid that an embedded development board was purchased there, and you have identified Me.

To really anonymize data, you cant publish any correlations between the stats. Which is most of the value of the stats.

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