McAfee's shady business pratices.

From the latest LangaList:

"2) McAfee's Forced Upgrade?

Dennis Faas, who writes the "Infopackets" site and newsletter (
http://www.infopackets.com/ ), sent this along:

    This week, my hard drive suddenly became corrupt and I lost
    over 35 gigabytes of information. While I was lucky enough to
    salvage my most important files, the rescue operation took
    over 8 hours to complete.

    Did my firewall fail and allow hackers to gain control of my
    system? Was I missing the latest Windows fix from Microsoft's
    Windows Update web site? Did I forget to update my virus
    scanner?

    Uncertain what caused the corruption of my hard drive, I
    decided to double-check the three possibilities. I quickly
    moved down the list: my firewall was up to date; there were no
    new Windows updates from Microsoft. The only other option was
    to ensure that my McAfee virus scanner had the latest virus
    definitions (DAT). ...

When Dennis went to the McAfee site, what he found was surprising: Using
the normal update link, he was told that he had to upgrade his AV engine
to a newer version--- in other words, he had to buy a newer copy of
McAfee's software in order to use the latest anti-virus definitions. But
when he poked around the site, he found there still was a way just to
grab the definitions, and that they'd work fine with his current engine:
No upgrade was really needed after all. It appears that McAfee is simply
using strong-arm tactics to try to get people to upgrade, when there's
actually no technical requirement that they do so.

I'm summarizing here because Dennis' email was long; but if you want to
see his full letter, it's here:
http://www.langa.com/extras/mcafee.htm
It raises some very interesting questions about the way McAfee is doing
business..."

PeteNote - Simply one  
                                    more reason you'll never find anything McAfee on this computer.

 

As far I know McAfee VirusScan offers 'lifetime' updates for free. That means as long as VirusScan 4 technologie is used you can update the software for free. McAfee VirusScan 5 and 6 still based on VS 4 technic. This includes engine updates (SuperDAT) and signature updates (DAT).

Upgraded versions with new features (McAfee VirusScan 6) for example you have to pay for.

The update politic of McAfee was always a confusion.

wizard

 

**** '**, I say.  (Hope that didn't sound too unrude.)