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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."
Anybody who is Anti-Symantec is objectively Pro-Virus.
I don't deal with either, not because of this, but because they're products suck. I use F-Prot nowadays, cheap and simple, with a dead-dog simple LAN client. I wouldn't install Symantec's garbage on my worst enemy's computer, because I'm a bastard, but not a cruel bastard.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.)
PC Pitstop included a clause in one of its EULAs that promised anyone who read it, a "consideration" including money if they sent a note to an email address listed in the EULA. After four months and more than 3,000 downloads, one person finally wrote in. That person, by the way, got a check for $1,000 proving, at least for one person, that it really does pay to read EULAs.
http://www.pcpitstop.com/spycheck/eula.asp