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Security Firms Fined Over Never-Ending Subscriptions
Barence writes "'Security firms Symantec and McAfee have both agreed to pay $375,000 to US authorities after they automatically renewed consumers' subscriptions without their consent.' The two companies were reported to the New York Attorney General after people complained that their credit cards were being charged without their consent. The investigators found that information about the auto-renewals was hidden at the bottom of long web pages or buried in the EULA."
$375,000? That's petty change compared to how much they made out of it.
Anybody who is Anti-Symantec is objectively Pro-Virus.
Security firms Symantec and McAfee have both agreed to pay $375,000 to US authorities
And how much are they going to pay to the people they defrauded?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You know, I can't think of a single subscription service I have that _doesn't_ auto-renew. In fact, I would be quite annoyed if I had to explicitly tell them "Yes, please, I want the Internet / satellite TV / newspaper tomorrow as well".
Is there anyone surprised that if you sign up for a subscription, that it keeps going?
It's not immediately clear if the companies will be governed by the same rules in the UK.
The charge-back form from your bank, will most likely have this scenario as one of the generic reasons for issuing a charge back.
I caught sneaky virgin media dipping in for an extra month (before they turned super evil), but the money was back in my account within a few weeks.
They'll get a charge back fee for sure; though the companies size probably makes them immune from having their card processing facility revoked, for excessive charge backs. Shame.
I wonder if this means they will also begin cracking down on people promoting rebills (crap online products that start with an initial buy in price of $2 but then charge you another $60 after a month). Which they try to claim they're legal because they bury it 4 pages in on the Terms and Conditions page which is link to in fine print on the bottom of the sales page.
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dept. of defective business models. Also the customer relations from hell.
Ordinarily, I would have expected a small army of people saying "It was in the contract. If people are too dumb to read the whole thing before they agree to it, they deserve whatever they get."
They seem to be pretty thin on the ground, though.
What is the government going to do with this money? It seems to me they should pay it back to the consumers who were ripped off. But we all know they are just going to put it into the general fund and spend it on some pet project or political pay back to one of their cronies. Thanks government, you've helped to keep us safer by taking money from one bad guy and giving it to another.
A newspaper is not a self-renewing subscription. I'm sending a check for X dollars for X issues, after which they send me a bill and I pay for another X issues.
When people buy a piece of software, they expect they bought a piece of software. If it has an auto-renewing maintenance subscription, this should be very clear, not buried deep in a EULA as the summary states.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Where users expect reasonable terms only to later find many that are quite unreasonable.
If you agree with the those charges, then logically you should NEVER by something from Symantec and McAfee. If you do business with abusers, expect to be abused.
Antivirus companies: The world's only legitimate malware vendors.
<rant>About two years ago, I noticed this after I actually went to their website AND called to cancel prior to renewal. It still renewed, and the "customer service" rep had the balls to tell me that they couldn't refund my money when I called about it. I took that one as far up the food chain as I could - including writing an email to the president or whatever, and got the "immediate" response that they wouldn't auto-renew NEXT time. It took approximately 3 months to get my money back. ONLY because I had documented my cancellation with workers numbers and crap. I figure they owe me about $600 in time. </rant>
Really??? Something such as auto-renewal charging is not EULA material. Most users have been brainwashed into clicking yes through these things. Sounds like I should make 40 page EULA on my next app that states "LULz if accepted you agree to the additional BS fee of 1 million dollars". I don't see why they couldn't do anything as mentioned here as per magazine/utilities models. (Yes utilities have auto renew but all that I've come across force you to sign up and hit at least 3 "Are you sure you want to turn this on buttons") Really this just comes across as a petty way to get a few more bucks out of people.
The did what they told the customers they would do (IANAL, but whether or not the customer read the EULA is not up to Symantec, but when the customer agreed to that EULA, they were giving consent for Symantec to charge their card on a recurring basis), and now they are getting fined for it? That seems slightly out of whack to me...
In a court of law, clicking OK on a EULA does not carry the same weight as signing a contract.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
The main source linked from the article shows that they grossed over $1.2m in this this scheme --- not bad.
Customers will also be allowed to apply for refunds for up to 60 days after being charged.
It's getting to the point where law enforcement really needs to handle PC security. We have strict laws on what a car needs to go on the road, we really need equivalent rules about what a PC needs to connect to the Internet. I'd put something like Symantec or Mcafee as the equivalent of auto insurance, in terms of the damage it prevents to other computers on the internet. And like auto insurance, it needs to be mandatory (in addition to keeping things up to date against security threats, much like cars must keep up to safety and pollution standards.)
Since it is MS then it has to be wrong?
Nothing like taking pages from the porno industry M.O. Beautiful.
I run my own home computer repair company (but don't have enough bandwidth to post my URL here). I give all my customers the free versions of AVG, Avast, or Clamwin, depending on their needs/preferences. Usually throw on Spybot and show them how to use the Immunize feature as well. My advice to them is to never, EVER pay for Antivirus/Antispyware software ever again. It's doesn't prevent infections and they end up just having to pay someone to fix it for them anyway. The free stuff is plenty good enough for notifying them when an infection has occurred. My customers thank me for my honesty, for saving them money, and I get plenty more business than I ever would shelling out subscriptions to crap like this.
I hate to be an "I told you so..."
No I don't. I told all my family and friends, geek and non-geek alike, to opt-out of bundleware, especially Symantec and MacAfee. There are a number of free offerings out there that are less annoying, just as or more effective, and by that are less likely to steal from you.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
There are plenty of free alternatives out there, I personally prefer AVG. Here is an article laying the free options out for you.
sadly, some government departments institutionalise this ("all PCs must have anti-virus") which led to a spate of pointless "virus scanner" programs for gnu/linux with virus-signatures from the 1980's.
If mail is going through your Linux box, wouldn't you want to run ClamAV on the attachments?
Those "Free" versions (AVG, Avast, maybe others) are often restricted in the fine print so that you can do no commercial activity whatsoever on your computer. It's ambiguously enough stated that even just using a remote access program to access your computer at your job to do work from home might be violating the EULA. Granted, it's not likely that they'll actually catch you, but the point still remains that if you do anything that might be construed as generating income now or in the future, you might be a fly in their web.
Not an issue as much with ClamWin, but ClamWin has no real-time scanner, which despite the parent post's assertion, do sometimes stop infections before they happen (not always, it's true, but enough of the time that it's definitely worth having anti-virus software of some sort). The On-access scanner isn't *required*, but most users will not remember to manually scan stuff 100 percent of the time. The On-access scanners, will provide much more consistent protection against infection than a manual scanner, for most users.
Personally, I've been using the AVG Free edition, and if I need to upgrade to a 'commercial use' license in the future, AVG seems to have slightly better prices than most of the others out there.
Here in the Netherlands automatic renewal of subscriptions to anything is standard. You have to call or write to the organization to stop your subscription by the next renewal period. This is extremely annoying and tedious of course. I'm so glad I have an American provider for my websites and email! Every year I get an email from them, in which they ask me in a friendly way to renew my subscription. That's the way I like it!
-- Cheers!
Cici's pizza food sucks and they are braking the CC rules with that $1 fee
I would never recommend Spybot. From experience (on multiple installs), using the immunise function can corrupt your font registry entry and leave the entire of windows in italics. On another rant, Reccuring services I understand, It's when they don't give the consumer an option to cancel that gets frustrating. Having to wade through customer service whenever you decide you no longer need your holiday subscription really doesn't seem efficient. xbox live . @relguj9, Mine NEVER expires.
Users shouldn't need anti virus software.
Our operating systems and the software that runs on it should not be susceptible to viruses.
Microsoft and Apple and whoever else should be paying for our annual anti-virus license costs.
As for Linux viruses - you get what you pay for...
I can't comment on the quality of Cici's food, but I must say that $1 goes overboard. PayPal would ding me for 47 cents on a $5.99 payment [$0.30 plus (2.9% * payment_size)], and a large business probably gets better rates. [Paypal almost certainly has the leverage to be paying much less than 2.9%, that's where their profit comes from. :)]
So while I approve of (in principle) extending the credit card charge to customers *, Cici's is definitely ripping people off with the amount of the charge.
*
Hiding costs like CC transaction fees seems like a bad idea, especially if they can easily be avoided.
Maybe if the customer had to pay the fees, they'd consider using another payment method. If the merchant can't or doesn't pass the fees along, it becomes a Not My Problem(TM)-type situation. The credit card companies obviously don't like that possibility, so I suspect that's why they stress "can't pass the fees along" in their merchant contracts. (There are antitrust issues here, and with the credit card merchant fees in general)
Although I don't have a citation handy, I suspect that in some areas, it's written into the relevant law that the fees can't be passed along - although shielding the public from shenanigans like Cici's is a good idea, the credit card company lobbyists want such laws for the reasons mentioned earlier.
On small sales, the flat-rate portion of the fee is a big deal. On low-margin sales, the percentage charge is important, so no wonder the end-merchants want to do something about it
Selling online, credit card/PayPal are a different issues, because it avoids the aggravation, cost and time-delay of mailed in payments. As such, for physical stores, it's a different story.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
It may or may not be illegal, but I suspect it goes against the contracts with the credit card companies in some form.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
http://xkcd.com/501/
Norton and McAfee have a reputation for charging a lot more for auto renewal of their old products compared to installing a new version instead. My mom has a Dell that had McAfee originally installed and it would renew at $50 per year. That is insane when you consider the equivalent product in a new version was $40 for a 3-user license at Wal-mart.
I don't care for Norton products since they tend to be bloated and provide poor protection.
I Cater to the Needs of Stupid People. - from a coffee mug Christmas gift
I hadn't used Symantec for about 10 months then this renewal charge appeared on my Mastercard bill. I called Mastercard and explained that I never authorized this charge and they said no problem. It was taken off. Then about 2 months later it re-appeared and another call to Mastercard and the jist of the conversation was that I had originally purchased a Symantec product and Symantec is a reputable company so they must be right! Go talk to them. After a few choice words about their customer service policy, I contacted Symantec and I had no problem reversing the charges. Only took about 3 months!
microsoft xbox live service did the same poo poo to me. anyone else? how many people make a class action suit?
The EULA said "_may_ include financial compensation" (emphasis mine) if you send an email to consideration@pcpitstop.com and it didn't even say how much, or what the terms were.
The sort of people who bother to read the EULA are also more likely to think "hmm yet more email address harvesting, fuck that." when they read that.
FWIW, Professor Charles C. Soludo in Nigeria also said you may get financial compensation if you send an email to him.
Good news for US consumers, hopefully the UK authorities will follow suit and force banks to make repeat charges cancellable.
And after they're through with the anti-virus scams, they should go after the CC companies for similar behavior with charging for "features" like "wallet protection," that you can't get cancelled without a major obstacle course. Not only that, they've a new tactic-- rather than charging you monthly they charge you yearly so it's less likely you'll notice the offending charge on your cards, plus the "nonrefundable" charge is in advance...
These tactics should be punished SEVERELY. $375K hell, more like $375M.
Now all the idiot PC owners that bought their Dell will have their subscriptions not renewed and there will be a ton more of bot-controlled PCs. Remember- we on slashdot are the smarter users. For each one of US there are how many of "them"?