[rmist]

> Avast was collecting the browsing data of its customers who had installed the company's browser plugin, which is designed to warn users of suspicious websites.

I have never really felt the need of antivirus plugins. Firefox's built in features (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m...) has always been good enough in my experience.

[m-p-3]

And you can also help flagging those pages or malicious files by either submitting a phishing report[1] or uploading a potentially malicious file[2]

[1]: https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?t...

[2]: https://www.virustotal.com/

[lucasmullens]

I doubt anyone's installing the Avast chrome extension voluntarily. It's mostly just people forgetting to uncheck a box when installing some software.

[roryokane]

No, Chrome and Firefox nowadays don’t allow extensions to be automatically installed and enabled. Any extensions running were specifically enabled by the user at some point.

I know this because I helped someone install McAfee antivirus a few days ago. Both Chrome and Firefox showed a small, non-modal popover on the next launch saying that an extension had tried to install itself. The popover contained two buttons, one for enabling the extension and one for keeping it disabled (Chrome) or uninstalling it (Firefox). If you never clicked inside the popover (as many alert-blind users might do), the extension would stay disabled.