Malwarebytes Acquisition, Layoffs, and Business Split

[Corrine]

Recently, Malwarebytes announced the acquisition of Cyrus, described as "a disruptive innovator in online privacy solutions".

From the TechCrunch article, Malwarebytes lays off 100 employees ahead of business split:

Kleczynski said the layoffs were part of a plan to separate the company into two separate business units, but denied that it planned to sell any part of the business.

The split — which was not previously made public — will see Malwarebytes separate its consumer and corporate-facing business units. The consumer business will focus on tools such as identity protection and VPN, while the remaining business will focus on enterprise-facing software like managed and endpoint detection, Kleczynski tells TechCrunch.

Full details of the split have not yet been finalized but will be announced in the coming weeks.

 

[Digerati]

Cyrus Privacy Policy

So, unless users opt out, they will be collecting all sorts of personal information, sharing it with their partners who include Google, Meta, American Express and FIS, and using such information to send us targeted ads (spam?) hawking more products and services.

Great.

 

[Gary R]

Sadly Bill that's pretty much the case with almost every software you use these days.

Of course a great deal of what is collected is necessary to implement some of the software's features, and the more features that are added, the longer the list of collected data becomes.

It's one of the unfortunate consequences of people's apparent demand for more and more "interactivity" with their programs.

It's also a "cash cow" of course, and the cynical side of me expects that that's the true motivation for most of the data collection that goes on these days.

 

[Will]

Using some data for advertising is fairly standard - the most common example would be remarketing. E.g. you've previously expressed interest in product X, so we'll show you ads for product X.

Their privacy policy stating they directly sell user data is more unusual - but I have seen it before across this type of company.

 

[Will]

It's one of the unfortunate consequences of people's apparent demand for more and more "interactivity" with their programs.

It's also a "cash cow" of course, and the cynical side of me expects that that's the true motivation for most of the data collection that goes on these days.

I'm not convinced this is driven by the demand for more "interactivity" - e.g. some of the biggest sellers of data are companies like your ISP, Antivirus software, credit score companies etc.

A lot of them tend to be less well known / sometimes smaller companies, that just want more revenue streams.

 

[Digerati]

Sadly Bill that's pretty much the case with almost every software you use these days.

Yeah, I understand this. But what irritates me the most is security companies are supposed to be the good guys, on our side.

Cyrus | Personal Cybersecurity | Identity Theft Protection

Cyrus was acquired by Malwarebytes to take your privacy and security to the next level!

Yeah right.

These companies out and out lie. Look at Firefox and their claims,

Get the browser that protects what’s important
No shady privacy policies or back doors for advertisers. Just a lightning fast browser that doesn’t sell you out.

Well, maybe they are telling the truth. Why sneak in a back door when you can boldly storm through the front door? When you got an extra 14 minutes, see: How Mozilla Ruined Firefox

 

[Gary R]

But what irritates me the most is security companies are supposed to be the good guys, on our side.

Yes, couldn't agree more. Data collection has become a disease that is out of control, and little or nothing is being done to curtail it.

The EU has the GDPR of course, but it's questionable as to just how effective it really is .... Data protection in the EU