Why I Am Now Seeking An Antivirus Program To Monitor My Antivirus Program
The FTC says my privacy protector was actually selling my data, forcing me to buy security software for my security software.
For years, I watched Avast sweep away malicious trackers and invasive cookies with the stern efficiency of a digital custodian. I slept well. My browsing history, I assumed, sat behind a wall of privacy. Then the Federal Trade Commission finalized an order showing that the software had been passing data through its subsidiary, Jumpshot, for sale to advertisers.
The FTC order bars the company from selling or licensing web-browsing data for advertising and requires a $16.5 million payment. The program that promised to stop third-party tracking had apparently become a third-party tracker with paperwork. It was like learning that the neighborhood-watch captain had been taking lawnmowers from driveways to finance a small but determined resale business.
That explained more than I wanted it to. Silas Vance, a self-appointed digital wellness coach, told me this morning that modern internet use now requires so many defensive programs that the software eventually forms a closed circle and starts watching itself. I am therefore shopping for an antivirus program to monitor my antivirus program. Preferably, it will not own a subsidiary named after a basketball move.
“If enough antivirus programs are busy monitoring one another, they become distracted.”
The situation requires attention. Yesterday, I caught my firewall exchanging what looked like suspicious glances with my password manager. My spam filter has begun asking unusually direct questions about my holiday plans. If software meant to protect my private browsing is selling my search history, then my calculator is probably sending basic arithmetic to a consortium of mathematics-textbook publishers.
Penelope Crumb, lead researcher at the Institute for Recursive Paranoia, says she runs seven competing security suites at once. “If enough antivirus programs monitor one another, they become distracted,” she told me. Her computer takes four days to start up. She considers this the only reliable route to complete digital privacy.
The FTC’s $16.5 million payment is intended as redress, although the value of betrayed digital trust remains hard to put on an invoice. For ten years, I assumed advertisers had merely guessed that I needed bulk discounts on orthopedic socks. Finding out that my protective software had assembled and sold that profile made the banner ads feel less targeted than personally supervised.
So I am handling cybersecurity myself now. I print every website I want to read and take it to a windowless basement. It is slower than trusting a browser extension to block trackers, but paper cannot create a subsidiary to monetize my reading habits. Until the Federal Trade Commission turns its attention to the stationery industry, this is the arrangement.