
The Czech Cyber Billionaire Who Founded Avast - wyndham
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/07/12/the-czech-cyber-billionaire-who-built-a-fortune-on-free-software/
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xan92
Around 2003/04 was installing Avast/AVG on my friends desktops/PCs was a
wonderful freeware. I started working as a system administrator around 2007
when I did the same on a few office machines, I had noticed how they became
rogue, By infecting healthy machines with malware and prompting to buy paid
version for removal, I am not sure if anyone remembers this thing with Avast ?

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theklub
I remember something similar but it wasn't infecting them it was just giving
false positives and constantly popping up to upgrade. I can't remember which
software it was, it may have been avast.

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rasz
ZoneAlarm popup ~2004: "IP x.x.x.x is trying to HAXOR you!!1"

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assclown99
I worked at an ad network company for years (we basically put crappy add-ons
on poeple's machines that generate search revenue). All of these AV companies
basically extort money from crapware companies. if you pay them, you can get
unblocked.

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ChuckNorris89
Sounds fascinating. Please tell us more.

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NelsonMinar
At this point Avast is way worse than the malware it claims to protect you
from. I've been running Windows for years now with just Microsoft's built-in
malware protection and it's fine.

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fancyfish
Friendly reminder that free editions of Avast collect and sell[1] user
clickstream data to one of Avast's companies, Jumpshot[2][3]. This "panel"
includes 100m "online shoppers" and 20m app users, in total registering 5
billion clicks every day.

[1] [https://martechtoday.com/jumpshot-makes-public-some-
amazon-p...](https://martechtoday.com/jumpshot-makes-public-some-amazon-
purchasing-data-other-digital-consumer-insights-to-marketers-223352)

[2] [https://www.jumpshot.com/](https://www.jumpshot.com/)

[3] [https://press.avast.com/avast-software-acquires-jumpshot-
to-...](https://press.avast.com/avast-software-acquires-jumpshot-to-work-
magic-against-slow-pc-performance)

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thomasdd
Maybe just my point-of-view. But Czech-Slovak companies have strong influence
in antivirus software. With avast.com / avg.com / eset.com

...or does every country in world have their own AV software (local)giants?
I'am curious...

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ackbar03
I feel like the old soviet countries including russia now are all quite strong
in the cybersecurity space. I've heard its because of a combination of their
strong math/science education and poverty? I've always found it quite
intrigueing

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ChuckNorris89
I grew up in Eastern Europe and moved to Western Europe in my early 20s and
the difference is that in the East, STEM was very popular for kids in high
school and university as it offered access to engineering careers which were
the most lucrative considering how poor the economy was in the 90s, helping
kids of lower class background move upwards(just like in the US) and it would
also open doors later in life to emigrate to the West.

Now in Western Europe, due to socialism and high standard of living, kids
aren't that poor and tech salaries are not that much higher than any other
desk job so they have no interest to study STEM as it's seen as stressful
career path for boring lonely nerds and instead prefer to focus on social
sciences, being wantrepreneurs or Instagram influencers.

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rokalakt
Not sure, what western european countries pays as much for a tech job as for
any other desk job? Also i dont think it has something to do with skills, more
like with criminals creating virii and thus developing and understanding of
how security works.

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goatinaboat
Outside the SV bubble law, accounting, banking, medicine, general management
etc all pay higher than programming, with less stress, more job security and
higher prestige (if that matters to you).

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rokalakt
Not really. Devs in the uk earn far more than most of these jobs you
mentioned. Perhaps you are working with the wrong company.

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philjohn
There is quite a large difference between tech salaries depending on
nationality of the company, their approach to tech and location in the UK.

A Principal Software Engineer in the South East can make six figures easily,
the same in the midlands will be much less, and that's only 90 miles apart.

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notfromhere
That's a huge wage differential for a country the size of Michigan

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philjohn
Yes ... but remember as well we don't have the "commute many miles" mentality,
you tend to work _fairly_ local to where you live.

I might be an outlier, I live 55 miles away from work (1h15m commute each way)
so that I can have a higher salary, but much bigger house, better transport
links, good schools for the kids etc.

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slartibardfast0
wish AV vendors would stop MiTM attacks on HTTPs

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c16
This. I lost a lot of respect when Firefox complained that something was
wrong, and it turned out to be Avast doing a man in the middle attack to
'protect' me on https websites.

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techntoke
You really have to be careful what you check to install or enable when using
antivirus software. I think Windows 10 does a pretty good job without any
extra software, but there are people that still torrent movies and open EXE
files from whatever website they access. Sometimes teenagers or older people.
Who knows what they are putting on their computer, and I imagine a lot of it
is able to bypass standard AV products.

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tardo99
Antivirus software is basically a scam.

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paulpauper
ironically it injects crap into your computer so that you cannot uninstall it
fully, to prevent people from renewing the free trial.

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raverbashing
Though the "hard to uninstall" part is exactly so that malware can't uninstall
it easily.

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ticmasta
Back in the day when 3rd party antivirus on windows was a must, these guys
were the best price-performance trade-off. Then windows added defender as a
standard that was as good, with the added benefit of a shared best interest of
making windows run well; at the same time avast et al. moved to scummy
practices and FUD. Good riddance.

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a_c
AV is almost a cargo cult nowadays. Born for windows, now as a de facto must
have for corporate IT. Everyone use it. Either no IT bothers to question why
is it needed, or management hold beliefs from the 90s that AV is useful

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yyyk
There isn't a big difference between most AV and malware nowadays.

Both hog all your system resources, both send info about you to HQ, both
spread often piggybacking on other software, both are hard-to-impossible to
remove.

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viburnum
I had forgotten how bad it was back then, and why it was such a relief to
leave windows for Linux and mac.

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mac_was
'Baza wirusow zostala zaktualizowana' \- in every Polish home 10 years ago.

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julienreszka
It wasn't only in polish. We had this in French too. "La base virale VPS a été
mise a jour" [https://youtu.be/PMro9K5EM0s](https://youtu.be/PMro9K5EM0s)

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aaa189156189
maybe [https://imgur.com](https://imgur.com) ?

