AVG Blogs | View from the Top

We need a compromise between data privacy and mobile app developers

Mobile World Congress is an exciting event for anyone with even a passing interest in technology, so I’ve been in my element for the past couple of days. There’s a fantastic, energetic vibe around the place with so many new products on display and innovations being talked about, and you get a real sense that [...]

Why I’m pleased to be at Mobile World Congress

Today, as I’m sure many of you are already aware, marks the first day of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It’s always an exciting event, but this year’s is especially so as AVG has a larger presence here than ever before, reflecting both our own focus on mobile and the sector’s exponential growth. As you’ll note [...]

MEF Global Privacy Survey outlines challenges and opportunities

I am really pleased that AVG sponsored the MEF Global Privacy Survey 2013 which was released today (21 February, 2013). The report, which looks at consumer attitudes towards privacy in mobile apps around the world, really packs a punch for all those who have a stake in the future of this market and delivers a stark [...]

Digital Work Life shines spotlight on workplace privacy

Last week, I wrote about Facebook’s new Graph Search tool and the potential implications it could have on your personal privacy. This week, I want to talk about personal privacy once more, but this time with the focus on how it’s affecting the way we work and interact with our colleagues. The reason is we’ve [...]

Facebook Graph Search underlines the need to take control of your own privacy

Facebook famously achieved a billion users towards the tail end of last year, a staggeringly huge number that’s still growing, even if recent reports suggest some regional drops. And last week, it unveiled its latest gift to those users: Graph Search. I won’t delve into the ins and outs of how Graph Search works – [...]

Does the Internet of Things mean we have less control over our own privacy?

Last week, the world’s technology media descended on Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. As my colleague Tony Anscombe described last year, CES is like Disneyland for gadget fans, with vast halls packed full of innovations. It’s my kind of place, although like Disneyland, two or three days there is enough. I didn’t [...]

Resolving to take control of your digital life in 2013

Welcome to 2013! OK, that may be a few days late, but for many of us this week marks the real start of the New Year: a full new working week and, if you go in for resolutions, time to turn your positive intentions into action, be it at home, work or school. Unsurprisingly, I [...]

Take Control of Your Digital Destiny

After many years of using blogs, social communities and media at large to help educate the public on how to protect privacy in an increasingly digital world, I’m excited to announce the availability of our new book, Wide Open Privacy: Strategies for the Digital Life (IT-Harvest), on Amazon.com. The book, which I wrote alongside Siobhan [...]

AVG and Facebook partnership for peace of mind

AVG has just announced a new partnership with Facebook to help protect the world’s largest global online community from the latest security threats (16.10.2012). Having just reached one billion members, Facebook is big. Providing each and every one of those members protection from phishing attacks, malicious apps, and other threats? That’s big, too. Very big. [...]

Introducing the AVG 2013 suite of products

Friends, when AVG Technologies first formed more than 20 years ago, online security was about protecting early internet and computer users from viruses. Today, it’s about much more than that. As more of our personal information is digitized and stored on the web, and as more personal gadgets and mobile devices are used to [...]

Let’s Disrupt the Zero Sum of e-Commerce

The security industry’s recent turmoil sends a message: e-commerce is in urgent need of innovation. Earlier this year, marketing oracle Clayton Christenson went mainstream when the New Yorker published an essay on his breakthrough principle of “disruptive technologies,” the creation of new upstarts that disrupt high-end incumbent companies. And disruption is precisely what e-commerce demands [...]

Wide Open Privacy: Strategies for a Digital Life

Friends, I’m proud and excited to announce the publication of a new book, Wide Open Privacy: Strategies for the Digital Life (IT-Harvest), which I wrote with my colleague, AVG’s Chief Policy Officer Siobhan MacDermott. The book, which advises today’s consumers on how to be more proactive in protecting and maintaining control over their digital [...]

Customer Service Today Means Serving All Customers

I remember a time when customer service meant serving all customers. It meant calling a company and getting a real, live person on the phone. That person was knowledgeable. That person was courteous. That person made dealing with the company a positive experience. Customer service meant being able to get help before and after [...]

Twitter outage underscores web’s fragility

As many coffee-loving, daily affirmation-quoting users were well aware, Twitter suffered outages yesterday that left many wondering: What happened? Where do I complain about my morning commute now? As InformationWeek reported today, Twitter blamed the two-hour outage on a “cascading bug.” But, the hacking group UGNazi refuted this, saying it took Twitter down with a [...]

Introducing AVG Family Safety for Windows Phone and Major iOS Update

Today AVG unveiled AVG Family Safety® for Windows® Phone in addition to a major update to AVG Family Safety for iOS®. Our AVG Family Safety for mobile is a free web browser app that helps moms and dads protect their kids from any harmful content they might encounter while surfing on the iPhone, iPad, [...]

UPDATED: On “Do Not Track”: We Applaud You, Microsoft, But…

Updated: 22 June 2012 Last week Microsoft announced it would set its Internet Explorer 10 browser to Do Not Track (DNT) by default. Privacy groups cheered. Advertisers jeered. The government, for its part—specifically the United States Federal Trade Commission, the purpose of which is to protect consumers—essentially said Microsoft’s move was “yet another step [...]

Dear Government and Industry: Give Privacy Control to the People

AVG has recently issued a white paper on mobile privacy, which I wrote alongside our chief policy officer Siobhan MacDermott. I encourage you to read it (it’s attached to this blog post). Clocking in at a little over three pages, the paper addresses an issue that can no longer be ignored. Of course, watchdog groups, [...]

AVG: One million Facebook fans and counting

On 24 April 2012, at exactly 4:09am ET (13:09 CET), AVG hit an important milestone for any company in the age of social media: we attracted our one millionth Facebook fan. I’d like to congratulate each and every one of our Facebook community members and AVG employees for this tremendous accomplishment. One million fans. Not [...]

After Global Payments Breach, Is Anyone Safe?

It turns out the credit card processor everyone depends on isn’t so dependable. Global Payments, who makes it possible for you to put everything from pizza to iPads on plastic, confirmed that hackers stole customer data from 1.5 million North American credit card accounts. And yes, that includes the credit cards in your wallet [...]

AVG to Put Privacy Back in User Hands with “Do Not Track” Feature

AVG has always been at the vanguard of consumer protection. We were founded in 1991 when the world first began to hear of AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe. As these online services brought the Internet to households everywhere, they also brought new security risks to your doorstep—risks AVG has been working to protect you from [...]