AOL’s Active Virus Shield Raises Some Privacy Concerns

Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes:

As William wrote earlier, AOL has released (free) Active Virus Shield, an anti-virus 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 anti-virus products. Hmm. Another nail in the AOL coffin, perhaps?

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[tags]security,aol,privacy,eula,active virus shield,kaspersky labs[/tags]