Re: Gosh, I remember when Avast was free
I dropped it when I got spooked by Avast secretly inserting a proxy-SSL service in front of my 'NNTP' client, then finding out that it pretty much did that for everything SSL. Only NNTP was rarely used so little tested and this threw some exceptions.
First thought was: "Why the f*ck would they do that!?" to scan for viruses obviously, but, what else could they do with that proxy?
Then I figured that Avast was perhaps much *too* nice, polished and even well-maintained for a free piece of proprietary software. 'Someone' was maybe paying big money for the capability of building hashes of all the files on all computers on the planet and, for example, monitoring which hashes moves over SSL to where and likely having access to getting copies of the traffic going over SSL.
'Someone' rolling in that kind of unquestioned, permanent, funding would be someone with interest in the communication gathering. Like the NSA or just maybe the CIA.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
