I've been using Malwarebyes which is reputed to be pretty good.
1). I've liked it thus far despite a rather confusing menu system for adding 'allowed' sites.
Those user limitations are there for our protection but I do find it deliberately limiting in a way.
Some political websites have been blocked. Better to be safe...
2). I have also experienced a lot of random disconnections while gaming.
(Other factors are also suspect: Such as base internet speed, server kicked, software, intrusions, etc)
When I went to renew Malwarebytes, their webpage did not display correctly without googlescript.
Same with Bitdefender.
(I use NoScript and have Google/Facebook/Twitter/etc/etc blocked as much as possible.)
In the past, I was accidentally allowed core access to the FB account of a person on a shared group mailing list. That happened several times. I saw enough to make me a bit cautious of all the cross-linked social networking and automatic "likes" and automatic "Hey Bob likes X,Y,Z" references. Steam allows users to see quite a bit about other people/strangers for instance. I don't like it.
My internet profile is not there for someone else to make money off of without my consent.
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A few clicks of research led me to the following document.
I'd always been under the assumption that A.V. companies share threat data with other companies in consortium,
but did not share customer data with 3rd parties.
(Perhaps my spidey senses are tingling a bit too hard and I do not know the industry....)
https://www.malwarebytes.com/pdf/guides/thirdpartylicensesupplement.pdf
Google and its wholly owned subsidiaries may retain and use, subject to the terms of its privacy policy (located at
www.google.com/privacy.html),
information collected in Your use of the Service. Google will not share Your Customer Data or any Third Party's Customer Data with any third parties unless Google (i) has Your consent for any Customer Data or any Third Party's consent for the Third Party's Customer Data; (ii) concludes that it is required by law or has a good faith belief that access,
preservation or disclosure of Customer Data is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public; or (iii)
provides Customer Data in certain limited circumstances to third parties to carry out tasks on Google's behalf (e.g., billing or data storage) with strict restrictions that prevent the data from being used or shared
except as directed by Google. When this is done, it is subject to agreements that
oblige those parties to process Customer Data only on Google's instructions and in compliance with this Agreement and
appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
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So my first question is if Anti-Virus companies are legally allowed to share customer internet usage?