Zone Alarm "Marketing Trick" .. Is it the right way?

Amen.....

But of course, such ideas are "bright ideas by very smart people"

 

I must say;
A really crappy way of doing business.

 

I am surprised that ZoneAlarm actually still sells. They got to be loosing money on that product. It is not even being anywhere near competitive.

This is a sign of desperation.

 

It is deceptive marketing, it's carefully crafted wording. Word for word there telling the truth, but if not carefully read and interpreted right, it could easily mean something else, easily. It sounds like ZoneAlarm is in trouble to rely on that type of marking . For one, You could say that for any system, even if its just been bought.

You could also say,
I could be in danger of being shot in a drive-by shooting
I could get a tax audit
I could be dead when I fall asleep tonight and not wake up

 

As you all can see in my signature of security apps. I have Z.A. free firewall so i was troubled to see this marketing stunt pulled. It does come off looking somewhat like a rougue program to say the least. :/

I have seen other legitimate security apps. use similar marketing techniques that turn me off right away. PC Tools (which I am trying out the 2011 version right now) had that scanner thingy one could quickly download and it would catch all sort of "infections" though they seemed to be mostly tracking cookies. Also, it would only clean like 5-6 of them and you would have to pay for it to clean up rest which I thought was pretty crappy. Some people would get scared and pay for the service, but others would get turned off even more! I did wonder if it would find the same infections again if you redid the scan after paying for it? ;-) Is Prevx the same way or do they also offer removal in their trial now?? I can think of others too...

 

Wow, the link provided by AvinashR shows the Z.A. forum members going off the hook there! (which they should be btw) That's prolly the most posts Z.A. has gotten there (and here also) in awhile besides questions/complaints about bug fixes, etc. :/ Unfortunate...

ZoneAlarm has the VirusTotal table of the trojan caught by them also and not by otehr well known security vendors. I had a question then about VirusTotal: I always though that if you are entering a file for it to analyse and there are very few "hits" from the list of vendors then it may be a sign of a possible false positive. Am I looking at this wrong then?? Do few positives actually may mean that otehr vendors have maybe just not identified the malware yet or does it just depend? Of course one can't always even go by VirusTotal but it gives a pretty good indication if something is malacious.... Thanks guys

 

Hello,


That kind of sales pitch is not only confined to ZoneAlarm [ CheckPoint ]. I've seen it with many other software companies out there [ e.g. PC Tools, Avira, Sandboxie, etc. to name a few ]





Carlos

 

No more Zone Alarm on my computer...

 

seems like ZA has become a danger itself huh? well i can not say no more ZA but for sure i am disappointed

 

Good stuff Avinash ! I believe this is same avinash , Register is pointing to http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/20/zonealarm_scareware_flap/ !

 

Good thing I ditched ZA and other useless third-party firewalls a long time ago!

One of the people on the ZA board summarized it well, it's all about trust, and now that trust is lost.

 

Hi Subratam, Fortunately, i am not the same Avinash.. I have reported this case much earlier than everybody else. They are just following Wilders and our thread ..

I am managing Technonxt .. and soon i will be transferring my blog to a dedicated website.

 

It seems that everybody is protesting against this rogue marketing tactics. I am sure ZoneAlarm have learned something from this.. Hope they'll be more cautious from now onwards..

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/21/zonealarm_defends_controversial_malware_warning/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/21/check_point_pop_up_row_climb_down/

I guess it was a pretty busy day over at ZoneAlarm, what with two big PR statements that happen to be complete U-turns of each other.....

(Interesting that the "ad" got pulled as soon as the internet news media got hold of this.....)

 

This shows that "Consumer/Customer is King" ...

 

I rather prefer the term "perception is king".......but ok