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Tearing Apart a Hard-Sell Anti-Virus Ad
climenole writes "I came across an email sent by a security vendor, reminding me, no urging me with the liver-transplant sort of urgency, to renew my subscription to their product, lest my pixels perish. I spent a minute or two staring at the email, thinking about all the poor souls out there who do not have the comfort of being a geek and who may actually take the advertisement seriously." That led to this insightful deconstruction of these over-the-top ads, the kind that make it hard to keep straight the malware makers and the anti-malware makers.
Friend of mine has the most annoying product ever. Whenever it updates itself, it plays a recording of a voice saying "virus database updated". So we'll just be sitting there and hear that. Since a well-functioning anti-virus just does its thing without bugging the user for the most part, the ones that are for profit have to make themselves loudly obvious and play up the threat level (not to imply there isn't one of course).
I'm not convinced anti-viruses are any better than snake oil, really. Some like Norton are basically viri themselves, slowing your system to a crawl, and all they can do is look for fingerprints of known viri. Sure they can occasionally be bandaids on a sucking chest wound, but the main key to windows security is to not expect it, stay updated, avoid IE, and not run random programs strangers email you. Sure there might be a 0 day in your browser or mail client that causes something like a picture to execute code, but those aren't the main uses.
*gets off rantbox*
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
I don't get it ... he's complaining that an e-mail shouts "Danger Will Robbins!" because his AV subscription has expired? On Windows that's a situation to be concerned about. Of course, if he's switched security products or OS's then he doesn't care, but the vendor doesn't know that and he should out-out/unsubscribe to their notices.
I'm not defending the ugly "your computer may actually be on fire Right NOW!" type of add, but doesn't an expired AV subscription warrant some sort of urgency being conveyed in the message?
You seem to use the exact same hyperbole that you claim is so harmful. This is a needless article that is preaching to the choir.
Seriously, there are blatant scams advertised and you write an article about a product emphasizing its need.
Kill yourself.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Right up there with those assholes at Domain Registry of America.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
It's not any more ethically wrong than anything else. The REAL problem are those "YOU HAVE A VIRUS CLICK HERE" fake-windows webpages. Even if you know better sometimes finding a way out can be tricky because the fuckers have started opening "OK" boxes over where you'd normally click to close the window.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Tobacco causes cancer yet cigarette companies will still do whatever they can to flog their products to anyone who will buy them. It doesnt mean its right.
I enjoy tobacco and don't mind dying younger. They're not doing anything wrong by supplying what I ask of them. They might be abusing dimlows but that does not mean they're abusing me. What they are doing _is_ right. AV vendors on the other hand only have a business from abusing dimlows - anyone who knows anything about it will generally either use free AV or none at all.
You aren't the person AV expiration warnings are targets at then. You successfully ran a network connected Windows machine for years and only got one virus, so by definition you aren't the targeted audience.
If you must use windows, I totally fail to understand why you need to PAY to use anti-virus. There's plenty of free anti-virus software out there that is better than any of the racketeering paid-for versions. I would have thought every single reader of /. knows this.
/.? It seems more suited for some AOL support board.
Should this article be on
My previous post didn't take into account privilege-escalation attacks, of which there may be some undiscovered/unreported ones.
It's best to have multiple layers of defense.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
do you wish to assert that your dying young is not going to have some sort of social cost I have to pick up?
I question the dimbulb argument. I have a very nice IQ. No doubt I am a dimbulb here and there anyway. But tobacco has often been a big issue in my life. And I come out of an era where tobacco company out and out lies are well established. I wonder how I should process your remarks.
Lastly your argument would also support giving out smack on the street corner. Somehow, I suspect that you would find making that argument inconvenient.
What a hard man! Something tells me you'll feel differently when you actually *are* dying (and a typically horrible, drawn-out death it will be as well, if it's smoking-related).
Wanker.
Not having AV is just like having unprotected sex, she could be infecting other people all the time.
Keeping your comp clean is more like being a responsible adult in this community, get her a free AV, they are out there. ClamAV, AVG, etc.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last 10 years, you'll know that while malware in Windows can spread when the user inadvertently executes something (which Linux does protect you against), it also frequently spreads by tricking the user into thinking they want to execute it (which Linux can't protect against) or taking advantages of security holes (which Linux can't protect against).
It only pains me to see you've been modded +5.