AVG Vs PRISM Program ?

Have you ever heard about PRISM ?
I bet you did. It was all over the News, all over the World. Then it just wasn’t. It’s how that kind of topics are handled by Media these days – they live short, but intensive life, then they just die buried under the more ‘everyday’ and ‘heart trembling’ topics, like the tragic death of a cat who felt from 7’th floor or something as much important.

So, as a reminder – What is PRISM ?

PRISM is a clandestine mass electronic surveillance data mining program launched in 2007 by the National Security Agency (NSA), with participation from an unknown date by the British equivalent agency, GCHQ. PRISM is a government code name for a data-collection effort known officially by the SIGAD US-984XN. The PRISM program collects stored Internet communications based on demands made to Internet companies such as Google Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. The NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the Internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier, and to get data that is easier to handle, among other things.

Source: Wikipedia

Well, the PRISM is still out there. You’d wonder – is someone doing something about that ?
The answer is – YES. Not much, but it’s always ‘something’. And the ‘winner’ is…

Who would think that it’s an…  AVG.
That’s right, the same company that produce whole series of AntiVirus software, a while ago released privacy protection extension that is available for Google Chrome based browsers – it’s called AVG Privacy Fix.

It is similar (beside blocking AD Trackers and other sht, it also helps you manage and enforce some rules on social media sites, like Google+ and Facebook) to other privacy protection extension, such as Disconnect and Ghostery, but as only one of those, it actually report (and ONLY REPORT) that it has detected PRISM Program Partner, if you visit website of one of those.

Although it DOES NOT prevent the partners of PRISM from collecting data, reporting that you’re on such website is better than being silent about that.

So, big applause for ‘effort’, or rather – GratZz to AVG Team for coming up with the idea as first one. To be honest, I’d rather expect Ghostery to be first and Disconnect to follow up but, well… you have to give it to who owns it.

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