Anti-Virus Company Sued for Scare Tactics

[Greg Tito]

Anti-Virus Company Sued for Scare Tactics

The makers of Norton Antivirus are accused of running fake scans and bullying customers into purchases.

We've all seen the messages pop up on our screen. "Malware detected!" "Your computer is infected!" "Download this software now or cybercriminals will invade your privacy, steal your identity and obliterate your soul!" These are the tactics of third-rate scams, designed to have you click on them and - ironically - install viruses and malware on your machine, but I've always wondered how somewhat "trusted" antivirus companies like Symantec and McAfee got away with using similar methods. A new lawsuit alleges Symantec's Norton Antivirus performs scans that don't actually scan your computer but still warn of non-existent dangers in order to get you to pay $29.99 to upgrade. Further, the plaintiff James Gross contends that even if you pay the fee, Symentec's applications don't really do anything to help your computer at all.

"The scareware does not conduct any actual diagnostic testing on the computer," reads Gross's complaint filed in Northern California. "Instead, Symantec intentionally designed its scareware to invariably report, in an extremely ominous manner, that harmful errors, privacy risks, and other computer problems exist on the user's PC, regardless of the real condition of the consumer's computer."

Gross said he bought the upgrade based on the prompt and afterwards hired IT experts to look at his machine. They told him that the scans almost always returned a negative report and that the software could not fix what it said it could. The complaint continues, "The scareware does not, and cannot, provide the benefits promised by Symantec. Accordingly, consumers are duped into purchasing software that does not function as advertised, and in fact, has very little (if any) utility."

Symantec responded to the lawsuit with the following statement:

[Symantec] does not believe the lawsuit has merit and will vigorously defend the case. The Norton and PC Tools solutions at issue are designed to improve the system performance of our customers' devices in terms of speed, maintain the health of their machines, and protect our customers' information. The optimization and privacy functions of these solutions fix registry errors, wipe computer usage, and shred deleted items. Some include additional functionality such as recovery tools to restore lost items. Several independent third parties have tested and reviewed these products very favorably, verifying the effectiveness of their functionality.

I've certainly been unimpressed with so-called security suites for a long while. Freeware alternatives such as AVG do the job just as well, and are devoid of such fear-mongering messages. Gross's claim that the antivirus programs don't do anything at all is pretty daring, but I wonder if there's not some merit to it. Part of me wants to believe that virus-makers and antivirus companies are more in cahoots than they'd like to admit.

Source: Forbes [http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/01/11/lawsuit-claims-symantec-scareware-warns-of-fake-threats-to-sell-upgrades/]

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[songnar]

Antivirus will not keep the stupid from viruses. It's all about the user. An analogy - cannot the President of the US still be shot with his secret service around?

 

[Fappy]

This is why I went Microsoft Security Essentials and never looked back. It's free and doesn't harass you. Nuff said.

 

[Montezuma's Lawyer]

This just recently happened to me, oddly, exactly 1 year after acquiring my computer, down to the day.

Odd, huh?

 

[Milo Windby]

I've been saying that Norton is nothing but a virus, glad to see that I finally have solid proof to back me up =D

 

[deth2munkies]

This is old as the hills...I saw this early last year...

Think it was a different plaintiff but same case.

 

[erbkaiser]

Good to see Norton Malware being taken on. Symantec has been releasing garbage for years now, when I was still doing desktop support we had so many cases of PCs being irreparably broken by Norton products you won't believe it.

 

[Kross]

I stumbled across this article years ago in regards to some of the alerts that "Personal Firewalls" shout at users to scare them, and the headaches it causes people trying to troubleshoot actual problems: http://samspade.org/d/firewalls.html

It's a shame to see Norton sliding down that direction with their antivirus as well.

 

[ActionDan]

AVG Free and Spybot Search & Destroy, the only combination you need.

 

[Jamash]

Irrespective of the merits of this case, it's basically going to boil down to the plaintiff's "I.T. experts" vs Symantec's I.T. experts.

I wonder if, when he was hired by the plaintiff, these "I.T. experts" were willing to put their professional reputation on the line in a costly court battle with a software giant such as Symantec... it's one thing to analyse someone's PC, but to have your analysis be the key opinion in a major court case is something different.

Unfortunately I see Symantec easily winning this just by attrition.

 

[Pebkio]

I don't use it... nor do I use AVG, or Registry Scan... or whatever other pervasive, do-nothing, ineffectual programs. I've got me and safe-mode, what more do I need?

 

[Epona]

I quit using Norton just after Windows 98 came out when I realized how much it slowed down my computer. I didn't use any anti-virus for many years until recently when Microsoft Security Suite came out.

 

[McShizzle]

I hope he wins. Norton Anti-virus/Symantec have been junk for as long as they've been in business. Nothing but resource sucking bloatware and annoyance. Their bussiness model has always been to have their shite bundled with new machines and tricking those that don't know any better into continually paying for it. I've been a PC gamer since 1992 and I've never used their crap, nor will I ever start.

 

[ShaneGunWolf]

Thankfully, McAfee's never done me wrong. I'll just stick to my current software.

 

[gigastar]

Antivirus will not keep the stupid from viruses. It's all about the user. An analogy - cannot the President of the US still be shot with his secret service around?

Yes, he could, and then the gunman would be shot and pissed on (by democrats) without a second thought, but i digress from why im actually posting.

I, personally, dont use any form of social networking, unless you count Steam, i never answer any emails that arent confirmations from places like Steam, Paypal, Amazon. My net ventures dont go much beyond a manga hosting site, a anime streaming site, the Escapist, 3 flash gaming sites, the US Capcom-unity blog and the various Wiki's.

And yet when my Norton antivirus that my mother adamantly insisted that i install on my laptop gives its monthly report, it always says that its deleted a dozen or so malwares that made its way onto my system and monitored hundreds of attacks on my local network.

And i just looked at my history list at the time of posting, top of the list are 18 items all of them the exact same thing happening all at once.

For comparison purposes, my previous laptop which ran without Norton for 2 years before expiring from a molten charger system, had only caught one virus that actually did anything. And i was able to take it out on my own.

 

[draythefingerless]

you mean to imply that anti virus companies have something to do with constant threatening viruses popping up all the time in order to keep themselves in business? NAWWWW, SURELY YOU JEST!

 

[ckam]

That's why Norton is a weird doctor person that everyone hates.

 

[Zouriz]

I use Vipre myself. It is a pretty good cheap anti virus program. I use that and Malwarebytes, and that seems to protect my computer all right. However, that doesn't mean you should let your guard down. Watch out for Java based virus. They use Java to install themselves on your computer. Some mimic updates(I got one once that looked like a Malwarebytes update!) to trick you into installing them. I recommend deleting Java's temporary files often, or not let Java keep temporary files at all.

Anyway, so basically the claim is saying that Norton doesn't really do anything is interesting, and it doesn't surprise me that Symantec might try something like that to trick people into buying their software. I always thought Norton wasn't that great of a program. Way too expensive and needs too much memory. My parents install a newer version of Norton on their old computer and it slowed their computer to an almost useless level. That was years ago, but after that I gave up on Norton and looked for something else.

 

[gunner1905]

That's why Norton is a weird doctor person that everyone hates.

Dr Spaceman?
OT: just use mse and cut down on your porn