McAfee Uses Web Beacons That Can Be Used To Track Users, Serve Advertising

An anonymous reader writes: A test of seven OEM laptops running Windows has shown consistent privacy and security issues, including an interesting revelation that the McAfee Antivirus running on six of them is using web beacons to serve ads and possibly even track users online. The seven laptops – Lenovo Flex 3, Lenovo G50-80 (UK version), HP Envy, HP Stream x360 (Microsoft Signature Edition), HP Stream (UK version), Acer Aspire F15 (UK version), and Dell Inspiron 14 (Canada version) – have been tested by the security research team of Duo Security by simply sniffing the traffic sent from and to them once they have been taken out of the box, plugged in, and connected to a network.

Comments

AVs are back to being actively harmful

[sinij]

Unhappy with being merely ineffective, AV products are back to being actively harmful for the user.

And people wonder why I run Linux

[AntronArgaiv]

At this point, my favorite reply is "Look, it doesn't suck any worse than Windows."

And.. no antivirus, no unexpected updates changing system configuration, no "defective by design" security issues, and on and on.

Linux isn't perfect, but it does 95% of what I need to do, and I have a VirtualBox VM with XP loaded to do the rest. And with Microsoft and friends (like McAffee) shooting themselves in the foot every chance they get, Linux is becoming a better choice every day.

Re:Seems to be more and more

[invictusvoyd]

skim through the source code to make sure there's no shit like this to be found.

Seriously?

WIPE

[Anonymous Coward]

And thats why if i buy hardware (phone/laptop/tablet/pc) the very first thing i do is WIPE it. Not uninstall , WIPE !!!! ;)

Re:Anybody still...

[castionsosa]

It is one of the few AV products that runs on Linux, Solaris, and AIX. Not that LPARs or LDOMs will be getting viruses anytime soon, but it is necessary for making the legal eagles happy and checking the "all machines, logical and physical, have AV running on them" box.

It is far easier to just toss McAfee on there than to try to explain or write exceptions to an auditor.

Re:Seems to be more and more

[Frosty Piss]

However, using Open Source enables a bunch of eyes to review the code.

That something can happen doesn't mean it does happen. In fact, very little Open Source other than high profile code, gets "reviewed" by anyone knowledgeable enough to know what they are looking at, other than the authors themselves.