With great power comes great responsibility. This means your antivirus software could collect and process an awful lot of your personal data if it wanted to. It might even automatically take suspicious files it finds on your computer and upload them to a database for further analysis. It keeps an eye on the programs you open to ensure you’re not accidentally executing malicious software, and it monitors your web traffic to stop you accessing dodgy websites that might try to steal your login credentials. To provide you with the protection you need to keep your system safe, your antivirus software needs to know a lot about you. Selling your data to third-party advertisers

Here are five ways antivirus software may interfere with your privacy. Whether they intercept web traffic, sell browser history data, or allow backdoor access to government agencies, many antivirus products are guilty of jeopardizing the very thing they are designed to protect: your data. While the antivirus industry is ostensibly on the side of good, many antivirus products behave in a way that infringes on users’ privacy. However, antivirus products are not immune to privacy problems. As malware continues to become more sophisticated and prolific ( more than 350,000 malware samples are released every single day), home users and business owners alike need to have protection in place to stop these modern digital threats.

It goes without saying that reliable antivirus software plays a crucial role in IT security.

This guide tracks privacy issues with antivirus software and is periodically updated with new information.

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