Since 1991, AVG has been at the vanguard of consumer protection. We’ve been working to protect you and your family from computerised security risks well before the online community had even heard of Yahoo!, and we already had a trusted AVG Free product by the time the dot com bubble burst all over the US stock markets in the year 2000.
With the release of today’s AVG 2012 Service Pack 1, we are excited to mark a new milestone in our online security journey. From today, AVG 2012 will let users decide how their activity is tracked online and put control of online privacy back in their hands.
How online companies gather and utilise user data and personally identifiable information (P.I.I) has long been of overwhelming concern for privacy crusaders and internet savvy consumers. Quite understandably, consumers do not expect or appreciate having their P.I.I or online behaviour shared between advertising companies looking for new ways to follow them around the internet.
If you’ve ever wondered how websites always seem to advertise stuff of personal interest to you, it’s not because you are the most important person in the world (although like me, you might think you are!). No, it’s because somewhere, somehow, the data you entered into a seemingly unrelated website has found its way to an online advertiser.
You might ask, so what? No doubt you’d rather be offered a product or service that is relevant to you rather than your 5 year old daughter, and many sites only collect your data in an attempt to offer you a better user experience. Unfortunately, we know that good intentions rarely count in cyberspace. The infamous Sony Playstation and Steam gaming community hacks of last year prove that data held online can never be considered completely safe. So, we firmly believe that every internet user should have the power to decide for themselves how or whether to be tracked.
The new feature, now included as standard in AVG Internet Security 2012, AVG Anti-Virus 2012 and AVG Free Edition 2012, works by detecting and blocking ad networks that we already know collect or store your data in ways that impact your online privacy. In addition, we are able report in real time when any site you are visting is attempting to collect your user data. How you proceed after that is completely up to you.
So what does the new Do Not Track feature look like?
AVG’s Do Not Track feature is installed as a Browser Helper Object for popular web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.
When browsing to a website you will notice an icon 
in your browser that shows how many websites and advertisers are collecting data about your activity. These are categorized under three types:
- Ad Networks
- Social Buttons
- Web Analytics
For each of the identified websites, Do Not Track provides additional information, such as:
- Data collection is anonymous
- Data collected contains personal identifiable information
- How the collected data is retained
- If the collected data is shared
Controlling how websites and companies treat your data and online privacy in cyberspace is fast becoming a core element of security software, and AVG is proud to be one of the first on board.
AVG Do Not Track is a part of the AVG Service Pack 1 update, which registered AVG users should get by default over the coming weeks. If you have not received this update and would like to update immediately, please visit this website. Skip to Step 2 and proceed to Update My AVG Product as described.
