In response to concerns and media reports, Trend Micro says that it has now removed the browser data collection code from its affected consumer products, and deleted any legacy data logs.īut it’s the company’s final statement which caught my eye the most: The discovery of the apps’ behaviour resulted in them being kicked out of the Mac App Store (for now at least). This was a one-time data collection, done for security purposes (to analyze whether a user had recently encountered adware or other threats, and thus to improve the product & service).” “ collected and uploaded a small snapshot of the browser history on a one-time basis, covering the 24 hours prior to installation. In its advisory, Trend Micro confirmed researchers’ findings that products such as Dr Cleaner, Dr Cleaner Pro, Dr Antivirus, Dr Unarchiver, Dr Battery, and Duplicate Finder were snaffling users’ browser history, although Trend was at pains to point out that the data collection only occurred once per installation, and did not contain the full browser history: Yeah, because we all know that users read the license agreement when they install software – right?
