What are cookies and anonymous identifiers?
When you visit AVG’s websites (including www.avg.com) or use our products, we may place small amounts of information on your device. This information includes small text files called “cookies” and other “anonymous identifiers” that may consist of a random string of characters that are used for the same purpose as a cookie.
What do cookies and other anonymous identifiers do?
We use many different types of cookies and anonymous identifiers, but in essence, these anonymous identifiers are used to make our sites and products work more productively for you, to personalize advertising and to enable certain website or product functionality.
As an example, cookies or other anonymous identifiers may be used to:
- Help you navigate between different pages on our sites efficiently.
- Remember your login details and preferences you have given to save you time and hassle.
- Measure how you use our products and services so that we may improve them and your browsing experience.
- Personalize advertising to make content more relevant to you.
You may find further information about cookies at the following website: www.allaboutcookies.org.
What kind of cookies do you use and what do they do?
The following table lists the cookies used on our sites and describes their purpose:
Cookie Group |
Purpose |
Technical cookies |
These cookies are necessary for proper functionality in certain areas of our sites, such as enabling the e-commerce part of our sites, offering you product and pricing combinations relevant for your region, allowing us to balance the load on our servers, recording user preference for cookies usage, etc. Cookies in this category comprise both session as well as persistent cookies. Our sites may not work well or at all without these cookies; therefore these cookies are always used, regardless of user preferences. Cookies in this category are always set by our sites and not third-party domains.
|
Analytics cookies |
These cookies are used to collect information about how you use our sites. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve our sites, make it more user-friendly and monitor that it is performing correctly. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form about your activity on our sites including the pages you visit and the webpage that referred you to our sites. Cookies in this category may be set by our sites or third-party domains. More information about certain of these cookies is available below in the anonymous identifier section.
|
3rd-party tracking cookies |
These cookies are used to collect information about how you use our sites and what keywords you used to arrive at our sites, which websites you have visited, as well as the way you reached our sites. We use this information to compile reports, to help us improve our sites, and generally to tailor product and service offerings to you. These cookies may be set either by our sites or third-party domains.
|
3rd-party integration cookies |
These cookies are used to integrate third-party functionality in our sites, such as YouTube™ videos, feedback forms or social media icons that allow you to share our content. Cookies in this category may be set by third parties and include, without limitation, cookies set by the following domains: YouTube.com, Twitter.com, Linkedin.com and Facebook.com. |
What other anonymous identifiers do you use and what do they do?
Our Android-based products may utilize the Google Advertising ID for certain purposes, including interest-based advertising and anonymous profile building.
Certain of our sites and products use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc.. Google Analytics makes use of cookies to help AVG analyze how users use our sites and products. The information generated by the cookie about your use of our sites and products (including your IP address) and collected through Google Analytics (“Google Analytics Data”) may be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. We will, when contractually permitted, require Google to truncate/anonymize the last octet of the IP address, including for users located in Member States of the European Union, as well as for other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in certain cases will the full IP address be sent to Google servers in the USA. Google will use the Google Analytics Data on behalf of AVG for the purpose of evaluating your use of our sites and products, compiling reports for AVG on our sites and product activity and providing other services to AVG relating to site and product activity and internet usage. Google may also use Google Analytics Data collected to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.
We currently use two Crash Reporting services on our mobile applications: Firebase Crash Reporting provided by Google and Fabric Crashlytics provided by Twitter, Inc. We use these Crash Reporting services to collect information about the devices that you use and your use of our applications (for example the timestamp of when you launched the application and when the crash occurred) which enables us to diagnose and resolve problems, to enhance your user experience and to improve the stability of our mobile applications. The data collected will be transmitted to and stored by Google (Firebase Crash Reporting) and by Twitter (Fabric Crashlytics) on servers globally.
How can I manage my cookies and third-party tracking and analytics preferences?
When you visit our sites or use our products, depending on where you are located, we may show you a notice which tells you how and why we use certain cookies and provide you the ability to opt out of certain cookie use (other than technical cookies necessary to provide our services). If you do not make any changes after you are presented this notice, we will assume that you consent to this use.
Please note that AVG does not respond to do-not-track signals. You may opt out of the use of certain cookies at any time by clicking here. If you choose to opt out, cookies (other than technical cookies) set by AVG from our sites will be deleted from your device. You may also disable cookies in your web browser preferences. Please note, however, that doing so may prevent you from using specific parts of websites on the Internet (including our sites) and/or may negatively impact your experience with our sites and services. If you use Google Chrome, AVG also offers the possibility to download its Crumble Chrome extension, a free plug-in that helps prevent cross-site cookie tracking. You also have the option to reset your Google Advertising ID or opt out of interest-based ads and anonymous profile building using the Advertising ID at any time by changing your preferences in your Android device. You may find out how by visiting https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6048248.
You can prevent Google’s collection and use of the Google Analytics Data by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available under https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
If you do wish to opt-out of data collection via Firebase Crash Reporting and Fabric Crashlytics, you can do so via the application settings in our mobile applications.
Certain of our products use the Flurry Analytics Platform. You can prevent Flurry's collection and use of data by Flurry by following Flurry's instructions at https://dev.flurry.com/secure/optOut.do.
Last updated 6 March 2017.