Active Virus Shield: What's In It For AOL?

The purpose of this thread is for discussion on how AOL might profit from AVS, the future of AVS, etc.

I have been using AVS for a month or so now. I have relied on free antivirus programs for many years now and have used them all at some time or another. After a month with AVS I am just so blown away with how amazing this program is that I cannot believe that it is free. We certainly must thank Kaspersky for creating such a great program with many innovative features and AOL for bringing this to us for free.

In my opinion, it just seems too good to be true.

The questions that I have for discussion are:

How does AOL profit from this? Or how can they profit in the future?

- I would assume that they would be losing money from this. They would have to be paying Kaspersky money to license the software and certainly because it would put a huge load on Kaspersky's update servers as AVS becomes more popular. They don't advertise deals or upgrades to Kaspersky products, otherwise that could earn them a certain amount of money from each sale. They don't advertise any of their own services. I just can't understand how they would be making any profit from AVS at this time and it makes me wonder why they are going through the effort to do this whole thing.

Do you think AOL will start advertising through AVS?

- There has been some talk of possible advertising in the future as the EULA mentions, but who knows when or if that will happen. The EULA goes into detail about pop-up advertising and so on. I have a feeling that they may start advertising once AVS becomes more popular. If it got advertised on download.com and so on as this great free antivirus, similar to how ZoneAlarm gained it's popularity over the years it could have hundreds of thousands of users or more; wouldn't that be the time to start advertising through it. I certainly hope that advertising never happens with AVS. I would personally stop using it at that point, I wouldn't even bother trying to find ways around the advertising.

I have no other thoughts at this time towards this discussion. I just happen to really like AVS and am trying to get an understanding as to why AOL makes this happen for us and wondering how long it will last. If AOL realized over time that they were losing money and had no real ways for good profit, they could get rid of AVS at anytime according to the EULA. I really hope that doesn't happen.

Cheers,
Dave

 

Well how does it advertise itself? It has AOL logo on it right? Well you see?
It has "Powered by Kaspersky" too! It's advertising Kaspersky as well.

 

You are right, and I agree with that. They both get recognition of company names.

But I was thinking more along the lines of how most free versions say "click here to upgrade to professional version" kind of advertising. The free ZoneAlarm is like that, same with AntiVir PE, and so on. AVS is very quiet, is what I am trying to say. And I like the fact that it is quiet like that, but I just hope that it lasts.

 

Well they care for their name more. Like: "What you have here?" It's AOL Active Virus Shield. And he says: "Uh, AOL?" Kewl. They offer it for free. And so AOL will automatically gain +1 point for this guy, most probably.

 

AOL surely wouldn't give it away if it took them money away
It's like ads you see while walking through the city, they don't profit solely from them but from having people know about them. Surely someone will try the full KAV just because (s)he found it good in AOL AVS.

 

I think AOL is trying to get some foothold on name brand distribution after losing big time in the Time Warner merger fiasco. They gave away all of those free "coasters" when they saturated mailboxes with their dialup service offers. I got one of my PCs for free and it was only free because you had to allow online ads to appear on the PC (until the company shut down later). I also bought some internet connection software that said that touted "Free Internet Service Forever!". After a few years, that was gone. All of these offers were advertiser based. I am sure that the ad gimmick will eventually rear its ugly head sometime in the not distant future for this free program. Any free program or service has to have some kind of underlying monetary bedrock in order for it to be offered for free indefinitely. Only those items that are created by a student or non-profit organization can be looked at as something without any strings attached IMHO.

 

Beware of those baring gifts!!! I bet they have a catch some where, such as "terms may change at anytime without notice".

 

Sorry for the off-topic post but if anyone cares, the latest mp1 patch is not for AVS. The latest version even after update is 6.0.0.308.

 

AOL, along with any other ISP, would benefit in seeing fewer PC compromised with malware (fewer spam zombies, less waste of bandwidth due to DDoS attacks and most importantly less work for their abuse department in trying to cope with all this). In addition, AOL do benefit from Internet shopping (due to their advertising and affiliate programs) so increasing customer confidence may result in more turnover there.

 

How? It seems to be a little on the fence as far as being ad/spyware itself.

Here's some snips...
http://news.com.com/AOL offers free antivirus software/2100-7355_3-6102917.html

" While AOL doesn't ask for money, Active Virus Shield users have to agree to let AOL and its partners deliver ads to them. "As a condition for your use of the software, you agree to receive promotions and periodic e-mail messages from us and our affiliates," according to the fine print in the license and user agreement of the software.

Active Virus Shield collects a host of information that may be used for marketing purposes, starting with the e-mail address required to download and run the product, according to the fine print. Other data collected include usage stats, responses to ads and details about the PC, according to the AOL agreement.

Alongside the antivirus software, AOL ships an Internet Explorer toolbar. The Microsoft toolbar includes an indicator for the PC's security status, a password manager, a pop-up blocker and a link to a Web site for more information on suspicious sites, the Web company said. It also includes an AOL Web search box, which can drive traffic to AOL Search."

 

I never ever used to get ad emails in the past, none whatsoever. Since submitting my email address so I could download the installation, i've had on average about 30 spam messages per day. And to top that AVS never installed on my system, after several attempts and cleanups. I should have known not to trust AOL!

 

Well, i have submitted several mailaddresses to then and never gotten any spam so it might be that you got you mail address nicked from somewhere else, if they really did this i think i would have noticed it on just one of the six addresses i've used!

 

Don I agree, I used two clean (new) test accounts and never got any spam after using AOL AVS.

 

Agreed. Have had AVS for some months now and have not received any e-mails from AOL. Actually, it is one of the least intrusive freebies I have used (for now).

 

Same here. Have AOL AVS on my wifes computer for a couple of months and no spam e mails yet.

Cheers

Jlo

 

My uncle has AVS and his computer is pretty good.

 

Lets sit back and think...does anyone really believe Kaspersky would make a deal with a company and allow its name to be associated with spam artist ?

Don't install the 'optional' AOL toolbar if you don't want the AOL extras

 

i signed up to avs and didnt get any spam from aol.
i dont know where my spam came from bu it wasnt aol.
lodore

 

True, but MP1 updated components that AVS doesn't have, that's why it's a "watered down" version of Kaspersky. As others have noted, I have not received a single email from AOL or any of it's affiliates since receiving my license for AVS. I think it's great, I'm a reseller for KAV but some clients can't afford or simply don't want to pay for KAV so I install AVS for them, same great detection rate and updates.

 

thats great for your customers!
lodore

 

umm its not the full version of Kaspersky, I believe they took some key features out, just a good antivirus scanner.

 

yes i know it has file av and mail av thou.
but no trusted zone.
lodore

 

And you can replace PDM with Cyberhawk. Works pretty much the same but it's also free unlike KAV PDM module which is not...

 

I have a history with AOL. So, I don't trust them.
I 've seen a lot of AOL stuff that is free at first eventually charge.
AOL usually gives away their "free stuff" to induce us to buy their other products. Often, they sucessfully make us buy them without even noticing.
Read this thread (http://forum.kaspersky.com/index.php?showtopic=26954&st=40) to see what a victim of AOL fraud says.
I am especially interested in the DRM story (his very last post) and I tried. Jee, he was right! A DRM file re-created while I was unaware!
You know, since a DRM file is a hidden one, they should warn it before they diddle the file, which, in fact, most online websites do.
This remind me of Sony's rootkit ploy and AOL's parent Time Warner also owns a major record company. Is this coincidence?
Now, how can you tell AOL doesn't implant hidden dubious stuff on AVS.?

 

The bottom line in AOl giving away AVS and the McAfee security suite. And now their whole AOL programs are also free. They are trying to change their image so they can draw in new advertisers. That is where they make their money. They are actually losing money on their dial up internet service.