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Dell To Techs: Don't Help Customers Remove Spyware
Alien54 writes "Well, more exactly, be advised that if you are giving a Dell for Xmas, not only will it probably come preloaded with spyware, but their tech support lines will refuse to tell users how to remove it, and will not give people advice on where to find some good tools to remove it. As seen in the latest newsletter from SpyWareInfo, Dell sent an internal memo to its tech support minions which says in part: 'NOTICE: Use of spyware removal software may conflict with user license agreements of other applications installed on your system. Please consult your user license agreements for further information. Dell does not endorse the use of spyware removal software and cannot provide support on these products.' This means we do not take callers to download.com or doxdesk.com, nor do we recommend spyware removal programs, nor do we advise callers on the use of spyware removal programs. This includes using phrases "We don't support the removal of spyware, but I use..."'" (Read on below.Update: 12/03 06:36 GMT by T : And for an update, too.)
"Now isn't that just nifty. Several folks in the antispyware/antivirus community have signed an open letter to Dell Inc. asking them to retract this possibly foolish and misguided policy. That letter is located at here." Update: 12/03 06:36 GMT Mike Healan, editor of spywareinfo.com, writes "The original posting is misleading.
Dell is absolutely not installing or preinstalling spyware and the
headline gives the impression that it is."
That excerpt from the memo says no such thing.
What it says is Dell are for some reason now very aware that they're at risk of getting sued if they advise people to do thinks that violate somebody's EULA.
fortune -o
Comcast does the same thing. Their software comes preloaded with spyware. Broadjump, I think it's called. It's been a while, but when I worked for them, we were not allowed to say anything regarding spyware or spyware removing, either. I find it quite amusing.
Having lived in the same city as Dell (in fact my church took over the building that used to house Michael Dell's synagogue...) for 10 years, and having known countless people who worked at Dell, and having worked (as a contractor) at Dell myself, I can confidentaly say there is likely one thing and one thing only going on here.
Dell is a leader in a very low margin business. They are virtually masterful at cutting costs. Their corporate buildings are made of prefab concrete, somewhere between ugly warehouse and office building, but just nice enough looking to be presentable and not look especially cheap. They expect their employees to work 60 hours a week and PRODUCE. Yet, they don't pay their employees a whole lot. They are the only major employer in the State of Texas, as far as I know, that has a policy of not paying out vacation time when you stop working there. When I worked there years and years ago, one of my duties was to order office supplies. The basic ball point pens were 3 cents each (due to a special deal with a supplier, I believe), and I was instructed not to order anything other than basic pens without a good reason. Dell also hires virtually all its workers as contractors first; if they are good enough, they may be hired on, but if not, there are no qualms about letting you go.
Fundamentally, if there is one characteristic that describes Dell, it's that they're cheap, cheap, CHEAP.
So, unless there is some evidence to support a different viewpoint, I'm quite certain that Dell is doing this only because they don't want those people to screw up their systems and call tech support back begging for help. Because that would cost more money.
And, to be fair, it's not as if Dell owes their customer help with some problem that is not Dell's fault anyway. If they did offer support for things like that, it might entice people to buy their products, but it would be just a perk.
In the open letter from the anti-spyware community, they say a representative from Dell informed them the response would be: "Call your ISP."
I work for tech support for a major US DSL provider, and we're not allowed to remove spyware...we are supposed to refer the customer to their manufacturer. We are not even allowed to recommend AdAware or Spybot S&D to a customer...do these companies even talk to each other about anything? Nobody seems to want to take responsibility for helping users rid themselves of this garbage.
Just to clarify, the posting for this story is misleading and incorrect. Dell is NOT bundling spyware. Whoever posted it didn't RTFA. I should know, I wrote that article. I've asked Timothy to update the headline.
FYI, you don't know how beautiful a feeling it is to have your site on the front page of Slashdot, AND have mod points at the same time. I was soooooo tempted......
Mike Healan
Editor
www.spywareinfo.com
Only on
Some of the most insidious spyware that people pick up in their day to day work on the internet has the potential to completely disable internet access using Internet Explorer if it is removed from the system.
Now, I'm not advocating spy-ware, or suggesting that these programs are at all righteous--the developers of that software should be hanged--but it doesn't change the fact that if a company like Dell were to recommend that their users download and install something like Adaware they are getting themselves into a whole mess of follow up problems with inept users.
Any software that can potentially shut down the browser that the vast majority of non-saavy computer users employ everyday probably shouldn't be endorsed by a company like Dell... they would be creating a ton of work for themselves trying to explain which pieces of spy-ware should be removed and quarantined, and which should be dealt with by other means. Also, once you've explained what should be removed, then you have to deal with how to remove the spy-ware that Adaware shouldn't touch. We're talking about lots of man hours, and educational phone calls with inept users.
I think we can all agree that it isn't Dell's job to educate every user that owns a Dell on how they should remove spyware that is potentially going to comprimise their internet access through IE. Most people are just incapable of that level of skill anyway. I know I wouldn't want to walk a sixty year old grandma through all that over the phone.
Let's be realistic.
"We're gonna need a bigger boat." - Jaws
probably to keep Gator and its ilk from suing the pants off of them
Gator got pissed that people were calling their product spyware, and instead of changing their product, they changed its name.
Gator is now known as Claria.
Tell a friend.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Excellent point. I work in a retail store as a repair tech, and we started running into new.net (the most sinister of all spyware for reasons that will become clear very soon) about 6 or 7 months ago. New.Net basically hijacks the TCP stack in Windows, and forcibly removing it with ad-aware will screw windows up to the point where it needs to be re-installed. Of course, our simple process now is to just manually uninstall new.net, then proceed with the normal ad-aware process.
Can you imagine the fun Dell's tech support would have trying to fix this? "um, oky, run this random program, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, make sure there isn't this other program."
I hope I don't sound like a troll... but it's fairly easy to read ntfs from DOS... it would naive to think he meant DOS 6.2 or something...
Look at www.ntfs.com, they offer a DOS boot disk capable of reading NTFS partitions, for free-as-in-beer