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.

Comments

So you know they're there

[calmofthestorm]

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*

McAfee is for noobs

[kaptink]

McAfee is for those who have no idea and therefore the warnings make perfect sense. Ethically wrong, sure. Its been made up by the marketing department with the sole purpose of getting the likely clueless user to cough up. And that i'm sure they do. 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. What do you think about Microsofts 'Windows Genuine Advantage' program? It does absolutely nothing for the user but certainly helps Microsoft make a lot more money. Yet its pushed as giving some sort of advantage.

Takes one to know one.

[cacba]

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.