AVG responds to malware allegations, claims to be only getting in early

CTO of AVG, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, denies tricking, tracking users.

AVG have posted a lengthy response to the complaints and allegations which have arisen after the release of their AVG Mobilation virus-scanning app.

The product has been accused of being at best ineffectual and at worst spyware, stealing information and tracking users without their permission or knowledge.

CTO of AVG, Yuval Ben-Itzhak claimed they were just responding early to potential threats, just as they did on Android, where their product is currently discovering hundreds of thousands of viruses.

(as) …Android grew in popularity so would the threats against the platform.

Today our security software scans 594,892,025 SMS’s a month, finding 783,963 of them as bad/spam, we also scan over 157 million App packages a month and find 225,034 are infected with malware.

AVG believes that the Windows Phone 7 OS will continue to increase in popularity and, as it does, it will become a high value target for thieves and hackers.

Regarding the ineffectualness of the product he claimed as a new product there was always room to grow, and criticism is natural.

Lastly, responding to the most egregious accusation of tracking users and stealing their data, he claimed “All of the data we collect is used solely to offer users an exceptional security service with state-of-the-art GPS tracking”.

Of note however is that the product does not seem to offer any tracking service to the end user at all, especially in its description, and one wonders how users are meant to access this data.

Overall the response appears to be as weak as the software, and we would be surprised to see this product return to Marketplace anytime soon.

Read his full post here.