Slashdot Mirror
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."
<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>
They still have a free version but they just don't advertise it.
A wise man once said, "Where is my other quotation mark?
Were the people technically defrauded? They did agree to the service via EULA after all...
That's the nature of fraud. Theft is when you take something that belongs to someone else without their permission. Fraud is when you trick someone into agreeing that you can have something. Some cases are very clear cut when the poor frail old lady is tricked into signing away everything she had, some are more mundane like this. There are a LOT of grey areas but getting someone to 'agree' to terms they haven't read or haven't understood is a common tool of fraud.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
There are plenty of free alternatives out there, I personally prefer AVG. Here is an article laying the free options out for you.
Precisely where it is now.
The typical EULA either denies certain rights to the user, or requires the user to do something, or establishes a potentially unwanted continuing obligation. Since the user is giving something up, this requires some sort of contract. Whether, and under what conditions, a EULA constitutes a valid contract is still heavily debated, and will be until either Congress does something about it (most EULAs cross state boundaries), or there's enough generally accepted case law.
The GPL does not deny you any rights you already had, or obligate you to do something. It establishes conditions on how you can do certain things that would otherwise be illegal. The user is giving nothing up, but if the user wants to do something beyond use the software, the user must comply with the license. This does not require any sort of contract.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes