McAfee To Pay For PC Repairs After Patch Fiasco 212
Barence writes "McAfee has offered to pay for the PC repairs of consumers affected by last week's faulty antivirus update. The problematic patch falsely identified the SVCHOST.EXE Windows file as a virus, causing PCs running Windows XP SP3 to crash or enter endless reboot cycles. In a blog post addressed to 'Home or Home Office Consumers,' the company offered to reimburse PC repair expenses, though there was a notable caveat. 'If you have already incurred costs to repair your PC as a result of this issue, we're committed to reimbursing reasonable expenses,' the company said. 'Reasonable expenses' has yet to be formally defined."
Reasonable cost? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Reasonable cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
maybe you should put a Linux partition on all of the boxes with some remote access software?
Not actually trying to be a smart ass but if you could do that then it might have been possible to fix the issue remotely.
I am not sure since my office has a small network and we didn't have the problem. I would think that it should be possible to replace the missing file and disable the anti virus or maybe replace the definitions file remotely. Most modern Linux distros can mount NTFS partitions.
Of course right now the idea of light clients and Windows terminal services probably doesn't sound so bad!
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That's why Intel made Vpro.
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If you have a box running so you can use the VPro client software.
Actually VPro looks very cool. The question is how do you get it? Seems like it must be built into the system at the motherboard or bios level.
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> Actually VPro looks very cool. The question is how do you get it? Seems like it must be built into the system at the motherboard or bios level.
Yes, it is just like any other feature: you buy a PC that has it. My office PC for example has Intel AMT (nearly the same thing), but they wont tell me the password.
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Did you not so read the summary to miss the 'home or home office' part ?
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Completely impossible. Many AV vendors are now updating 2 or 3 times a day. Heck, Microsoft free AV gets updated daily and sometimes twice daily. Unless you skipped updates and only deployed every Monday update, you could possibly test but you would need a dedicated team to testing. What happens if some Javascript virus came out on Tuesday? Are you going to leave your users unprotected till next week? AV is unfortunately a system where sometimes you do have to pray and update. We do that at our job since we
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Okay I work at a small firm so we don't have the problems or the tools to deal with the problems that you would have dealing with a thousand PCs. But how do you just reimage a PC remotely when the OS will not even boot?
I can only assume that you can buy PCs that have some advanced management tools built into the BIOS.
"and as all campus data was kept on centralized servers then you should have lost no data,"
That would be nice and ideal but how hard is it to enforce in practice? I would think enforcing stric
Re:Reasonable cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would think enforcing strict policies like that on a university campus would be like herding cats. Yes for the Administration system it should be a piece of cake but what about systems in research labs?
Sometimes it's best to let the cats herd themselves.
I used to support a school full computers a few years ago. While a much smaller environment than a Uni, the faculty still talk to each other. One of the first things I did was set up imaging and easy network storage for the faculty. At first it was like herding cats - impossible to get them to take the time to make sure their important stuff was on the network storage. It took only two HD failures to change everyone's behavior. The first one, the teacher *wasn't* storing stuff on the network, and of course her tales of woe spread far and wide. I just made sure everyone knew why everything was lost.
The second, the teacher *was* storing everything on her network drive, and when her HD failed, she was up and running by her next break, with everything intact, and she spread her tales of joy far and wide. I just had to put in a little extra effort so that everyone knew why it was so easy. Mysteriously, everyone was suddenly making sure all of their important stuff ended up on their network drive.
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Okay I work at a small firm so we don't have the problems or the tools to deal with the problems that you would have dealing with a thousand PCs. But how do you just reimage a PC remotely when the OS will not even boot?
Well, even if you don't have PCs with remote management (which adds a fair bit to the cost), you can configure them to boot from the LAN first.
All you do then is set up your imaging system to reimage all the impacted PCs. Seeing as they're stuck in a reboot loop (that's what this update did), shouldn't take too long for them to get a new image.
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I work at a small development firm so 90% of the people at the firm are techs so we need very little in management.
My question is if it goes to boot from network first doesn't that take a while to time out and got into a regular boot?
Just wondering how much time that adds to the initial boot.
Over all I can see how this is really a life saver for a firm in this situation.
The fun of pushing 1000 images over the network is just too much for me to even think about but I can see the value.
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Depends on the remote imaging software - some integrates with your existing infrastructure.
Not that it matters much - IME a lot of people don't bother switching their PC off overnight anyway. I would seriously consider it - it's just a shame there's no standard way of reconfiguring boot options once the PC has booted.
Reimburse? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Exactly what I was thinking, that they would give you "free" extended coverage for the "life of the machine", which of course, is -3 days since they killed them.
2 year extension? (Score:3, Insightful)
A 2 year extension? What, so they can have 730 more days to do it again?
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I will believe it when I see it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe it will cost them a fortune. Or maybe they'll make everyone trying to file a claim jump through unreasonable hoops and end up paying almost nothing.
Extending a license for 2 years costs them NOTHING if the customer would have left.
And that's just for home users. There's still no word on other users (like school districts).
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They do deserve some credit. It will also be an example in the future when those higher-up than me make a statement like, "Why should we use this open source thing, who will pay when they mess-up?" I'll just be holding my head in my hands again then I guess because this plus support are the two biggest bullet points that kill open source year after year on projects.
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Not gonna be enough.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see how this even begins to approach the amount they are in for.. they are going about it the wrong way. In signing up to pay home/ home office users, they are automatically assuming guilt for themselves (as if anyone wasn't sure that they were guilty in the first place?)
First off, they are starting with home / home office users. This population will incur the highest cost per computer to fix - i.e. instead of paying 1 IT guy 30/hr to fix a bunch of computers in one place, this is one-at-a-time visits to Geek Squad (ugh) or whatever which will run 50+ per computer..
This is just opening the door for future corporate lawsuits - i.e. "Clearly they have said that they were the cause of this issue and are willing to refund some of their users to the tune of X for just ONE computer. My company lost 1000 computers, I want 1000x dollars, plus lost productivity."
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Do yourselves a favour and switch to ESET Smart Security.
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Good luck on that, it's not unusual for consumers to have completely different rights than corporations. Nor is it illegal for corporations to be nicer than they legally can be. Stuff like you describe is the reason why you ALL get shitty service in the US, because if one knowledgeable guy answers a question outside the script he'll call back more and demand that service or cry foul and sue or the next person who gets an average drone will cry foul and sue for discrimination or whatnot absurd reason. It's v
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First off, they are starting with home / home office users. This population will incur the highest cost per computer to fix - i.e. instead of paying 1 IT guy 30/hr to fix a bunch of computers in one place, this is one-at-a-time visits to Geek Squad (ugh) or whatever which will run 50+ per computer..
This is just opening the door for future corporate lawsuits - i.e. "Clearly they have said that they were the cause of this issue and are willing to refund some of their users to the tune of X for just ONE computer. My company lost 1000 computers, I want 1000x dollars, plus lost productivity."
Well, tough...
Don't wanna play the game, go home.
Kudos for them actually, for saying 'it's my fault'
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"I don't see how this even begins to approach the amount they are in for.."
It doesn't.
They are offering something that costs them nearly $0, in compensation for large-cost effort repairing machines broken by rogue software, which is precisely they were originally paid large-cost actual $$ to prevent.
Not getting more revenue is not at all the same thing as "paying for repairs". In "paying for repairs", they would transfer $ to the affected parties, and those parties could still buy a competing product and b
I was thinking this would be a boon for me... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking this would be a boon for me. I do in home and business support in my off hours, good spending money. However, due to my issues with McAfee, none of my regular clients use McAfee AV products.
So, if I had recommended McAfee to my clients, I would be a rich person now. Damn, doing the right things doesn't make as much money!
Re:I was thinking this would be a boon for me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh.... Doing the right thing almost always *ensures* you'll make less money -- at least in the world of computing.
I do on-site service too, and honestly, that's one reason I charge higher hourly rates than some of my competition. I've seen, first-hand, the way they leave a PC after they're supposedly done "cleaning up a spyware infection". Typically, they run a couple of their favorite programs on it, letting them run through and remove whatever they find, and they declare it "clean" - charging their fee and leaving.
I actually take the time out to test a system after I clean a virus/spyware issue, and if I see any evidence that, say, pop-up windows are still occasionally coming up in Internet Explorer, or error boxes are displaying from files that got deleted but not removed from the registry entries referencing them? I go back in and fix all of that. If I can't get it to where I'm satisfied it's 100% back to normal, I sometimes back up all their documents, bookmarks/favorites, Outlook email store, autocomplete files, photos, music, and whatever else - wipe the drive, and rebuild the whole machine.
Honestly, that stuff takes many HOURS to do right, and I can't really bill a person for all of the time that takes - so I just "cap" things at that point with what I think is a fair price, and "eat" the rest of it.
If I was less honest, I'd do what the other guys do and just do a quick, easy automated "once over" of things, take my money and run. Chances are good they'll call back and pay a second or third time to go back and mess with the remaining junk that was left behind anyway. And if not, at least I wasn't stuck putting in hours of unpaid work to do the job right....
But I dunno.... there's still something satisfying about knowing you did a job the best you could -- even if it usually goes relatively unappreciated.
What do you charge? (Score:2)
Since this has come out I've decided to charge my family and friends $1000/computer, which they can pay to me upon being reimbursed by McAfee.
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It's exactly because of this, and the "My P3 got fired, so I replaced it with a 16-core uberputer" that McAfee had to specify "reasonable".
Offtopic (Score:2, Interesting)
AV industry is just one big fuck up.
Instead of building a true behaviour based, sandbox'y style AV solutions, they peddle their ugly products and never exchange their virus signatures leading to a situation when no AV can detect all existing viruses, and no AV is even remotely future-proof in defeating unknown malware types.
And let this McAffee debacle become the next little step in embracing of open source OS'es by the corporate world.
I wonder.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously, by installing an AV product, you indicate a desire for it to perform certain operations on your system, and an acceptance of the fact that it will probably tank your I/O performance and so forth. And, in general, courts have generally accepted the notion that vendors are nominally, at best, liable for buggy software.
In this case, albeit unintentionally, McAfee ended up committing several hundred thousand hack attacks. Disabling thousands of computers, including plenty that would fall under the CFA's definition of "protected computers".
Thought experiment: If some punk kid had accidentally disabled some hundreds of thousands of computers(along the lines of that old accidental self-replicator worm, or something), what parts of the book would they be throwing at him right now? Are McAfee's actions just a desperate attempt to keep some of their burned customers, or do they fear something more serious here?
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I'm guessing he'd have to pay some form of restitution, just like what McAfee is doing.
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Make it a nifty screensaver with kittens and puppies and all that sort of crap so that people install it willingly. Tack on a standard disclaimer absolving the programmer of all responsibility to whatever happens to your computer.
In my opinion... (Score:2)
reasonable expenses shouldn't exceed the average cost that a data recovery business would charge. And it would be simple enough to see that the drive is okay, that all you need is to fix the missing files in question. If I had to guess, I'd say $99 max comes to mind.
I say the simplest option would be to provide some free service. Maybe a couple year's worth. This way they wouldn't have to write out a check to everyone. I'm not saying this isn't a bad thing that happened, but I'm just thinking of easy soluti
"Patch Fiasco" (Score:5, Funny)
or perhaps...
(Twelve bad guys lie dead or mortally wounded on the street, surrounded by astonished and bewildered townsfolk. One speaks up.)
- Who are you?
(the man lights a cigarette, drags it in and exhales, then adjust the brim of his hat.)
- My name... is Patch Fiasco. (turns around and starts walking away. music: mournful slide guitar)
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"Dr. Patch Fiasco?"
"Yeah, they started calling him that after he tried to cure his last cancer patient with the power of laughter. Turned out chemotherapy would've been a better choice."
ObAutomotiveAnalogy (Score:4, Insightful)
At this point, an offer to pay "reasonable" expenses is about as generous as Ford apologizing for selling a car airbag that deploys as soon as you sit in the seat. Plus, it's covered in broken glass and rusty nails. Also, lemon juice.
It's nice that they're taking responsibility and all, but a bodyguard who beats up his own client isn't really the sort of person that you give second chances to.
Reasonable expenses. (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on guys, I hate McAfee as much as you do but "reasonable expenses" makes perfect sense and it's not something you can easily quantify everywhere... but we all know how ridiculous some potential charges are or how some stupid customers are. I can see some stupid, stupid people thinking they need to go out and buy a new 500 dollar computer to fix this problem.
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I can see some stupid, stupid people thinking they need to go out and buy a new 500 dollar computer to fix this problem.
Replace "some stupid, stupid" with "a lot". There's a depressingly tremendous percentage of people who are convinced that the fix for a computer that's gotten slower over 2 years is a new computer. These are people with C2Ds with 2GB ram and 500GB hard drives.
Most people don't get the distinction between hardware and software. Most think that when the OS gets bogged down with craptons of spyware, the computer simply needs replacing; they just wear out over a few years. Dell obviously loves this, but it's tr
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I am a geek, and that is exactly what I want. I want to buy my computer and have it Just Work until it can't do what I need it to do anymore, then it'll be passed on to someone else with lesser computing demands or put
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The clear implication was "geeks who bitch out Apple for making an appliance". You clearly don't fall into that camp; neither do I. So one could easily deduce that the comment doesn't apply to the people it doesn't implicate.
It's a Slashdot comment, not a mathematical proof.
The lawyers..... (Score:2)
... Must just be licking their chops. Why?
1. They all but admitted they fracked up. They even used the word "faulty" in their post. What were they thinking?
2. Whatever their definition of "reasonable" is, it's not going to make everybody happy. That's sure to generate a few phone calls to lawyers.
Expect the the class action lawsuits to be filed shortly.
Great News (Score:2)
Get a bunch of fake receipts and retire.
What bug? (Score:3)
But svchost.exe *is* a virus; there just isn't a way to remove it. Almost as big a security breach as iexplore.exe.
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I find that this [debian.org] works wonders. Or, if you're not as hands-on, you may want this [ubuntu.com] instead.
I'm on McAfee's side... (Score:2)
I've been on McAfee's side for this whole thing. They have to get some props for being the first AV vendor to come right out and admit that Windows itself IS the virus.
However, apparently the general population doesn't agree.
Don't worry McAfee, I agree with you.
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And a fricking hard to miss bug!
It questions the entire quality control system.
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Didn't Google mark all websites as malware-infested about a year ago? All it takes is some engineer to mistype a single keystroke (a "*" in Google's case) and down the whole system comes.
Re:Definately an (Score:5, Insightful)
All it takes is some engineer to mistype a single keystroke (a "*" in Google's case) and down the whole system comes.
A single engineer to mistype a single keystroke + A director of quality that proposed/allowed a quality control methodology that didn't include a single check between the engineers coding and the public receiving a new version.
Laying blame on those who don't have a large scale responsibility is, very often*, wrong.
*: Yes, a dev could've set a logic bomb when suspecting he'd be fired. And even then most of the blame was on the one who lost control on the future firing info.
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A director of quality that proposed/allowed a quality control methodology that didn't include a single check between the engineers coding and the public receiving a new version.
ditto. too many times middle managers cut on qa costs to increase their bonus and then pass the blame of defects to developers
How about software prima donnas that think they are too good to make mistakes and say QA just gets in their way? I would say this is far more likely due to a software guy skirting the checks rather than there be no checks in place for an established company like McAfee
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How about software prima donnas that think they are too good to make mistakes and say QA just gets in their way? I would say this is far more likely due to a software guy skirting the checks rather than there be no checks in place for an established company like McAfee
Nope. Still wrong.
Who's the prima donna's boss and how did he let him have anything to do with the tests?
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You really think a large company like McAfee wouldn't have these controls in place? This is clearly a case of someone skirting the rules and not following process.
Re:Definately an (Score:4, Insightful)
or, it's just a case of statistics being a bitch. given the number of updates that have to be pushed through the system, it's only a matter of time before the process lets a faulty one through. that it was so egregious is, well, unfortunate.
"Unfortunate?" (Score:2)
or, it's just a case of statistics being a bitch. given the number of updates that have to be pushed through the system, it's only a matter of time before the process lets a faulty one through
"Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). The Svchost.exe file is located in the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder. At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services part of the registry to construct a list of services that it must load." A description of Svchost.exe in [microsoft.com]
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How about software prima donnas that think they are too good to make mistakes and say QA just gets in their way? I would say this is far more likely due to a software guy skirting the checks rather than there be no checks in place for an established company like McAfee
If a developer has the ability to skirt QA checks at all in any way QA is fundamentally broken. Who sets up a dev shop like that? Dev hands code to QA; QA hands code to production.
In any case, the most basic sort of automatic regression testing should have caught this (since it breaks the test machine on install). At any professional shop this would have been bounced on check-in, and never even made it as far as QA. And, again, software prima donna mindset doesn't matter - you check in, the BVT fails, t
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Someone set us up the patch...
(had to be said, and probably was, but it's monday, and I don't use McRapifee, so i felt compelled)
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Well, worst I've heard was placing a collection of magnets on the backup tape "drop slot".
Fortunately it was discovered on a minor file recovery, not a complete data loss.
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How do you know that it didn't go through some sort of QA? I can think of many reasons why QA potentially didn't catch it.
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What quality control system?
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And people wonder why I rarely use virus software. The damage caused by the AVS is often worse than the actual virii or spybots. Seeing a "Windows XP can't boot" message is pretty damn annoying. I ended-up having to install KDE Ubuntu Linux instead, and never did recover my lost files (just videos fortunately).
Re:Definately an (Score:5, Insightful)
Using the made-up "virii" as a plural for viruses makes you look like a retard.
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It's also more logical than the alternative. I'll never forgive the language for making us use commas inside quotes when obviously they belong outside.
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Only if you flunked Latin. "Virii" is not the plural of "virus" however you slice it--in fact, it's even more complicated than it looks as "virus" is in fact *not* a second-declension noun in spite of the "-us" ending. Stick with "viruses" and you won't look like a moron trying to look sophisticated.
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Thank you!
Re:Definately an (Score:5, Funny)
Virusesii, obviously.
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A hyperplural?
Re:Definitely an (Score:2)
As a grammar pedant myself, I lovingly craft a carefully formed response and kindly request that you stop being so pretentious and go with what the dictionary says.
Main Entry: virus
Pronunciation: \v-rs\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural viruses
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
His point is that instead of using a Latin form that is nonexistent, and wouldn't look like that even if it DID exist, you can use a perfectly good English (as in English, the language you're actually speaking) form that works, is correct, and doesn't make you look like a moron.
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Usually it's not the file losses that are the worst, but rather the privacy of the information stored in your computer. People spend much more time fighting off against unwarranted charges on their billing / credit card than fixing the problems caused by either a virus or an anti-virus..
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Or it gets the hose again...
Re:Definately an (Score:5, Insightful)
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The epic fail was the initial bug. This response however is exactly what McAfee should be doing.
Maybe so. But being familure with the lawyer thing, I smell a big fat Class Action (where of course the lawyers get paid big fat checks, and the consumers get a coupon).
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True, then again, accepting this payback probably excludes them from any other settlement. So a user has an option - get a refund for getting their computer fixed, or getting a coupon for a free 6 months of McAfee, but having to pay to fix their computer. The really dumb ones get a coupon and a broken computer.
Also, McAfee will probably hide
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Also, McAfee will probably hide behind the EULA for the class action, since the EULA probably also said they don't have to pay if they screw up your system anyhow.
Class action lawyers ignore EULAs because they are unenforcable. The EULA is a wish list that has very little actual meaning.
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Ignoring, of course, that this is only reimbursing the private-use of the program. As of now, the corporations who were affected quite severely financially (for following suggested security measures) are still out in the cold.
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That's great and all, but if I were a consumer, no matter how much they're compensating me, if I really had to make a serious choice of AV software, now I know that I'd probably never choose them. It doesn't matter how much compensation they provide; if something they make is going to disable my computer (which is essentially my life as I use it for all my work, including my thesis) then I'd never use it. The risk is too great and for something serious, you can't afford a flaw like this.
It's a shame, but no
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I don't like anti-virus software and wouldn't dream of using anything Like Mcafee or Norton, but how is it a fail if they're willing to admit guilt and even PAY for any damages incurred?
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Well... there's that "reasonable reimburses" bit and then only in conjunction with repairs to the PC. If, for instance, you/your company relies heavily on computers for production, billing, marketing, and/or customer interaction and those computers went tits up, you/your company would lose money, reputation, and/or customers from the getgo. So techs get scrambled and you have to dig into computer files to restore SVCHOST and disable McAfee.
But wait, if you're a small startup, maybe only self-employed, you
Ah yes. (Score:2)
Epic Fail (Score:5, Funny)
I have sigs turned off.
Well played, sir. (Score:2)
Well played.
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epic fail
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People still- *hurk* *gaaaaaaaasp*
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It IS kind of a win, as a result of this "fix", users couldn't exactly become infested with malware*, now could they?
*well, arguably a program that deletes svchost could be considered malware, maybe sometimes to save the village, you have to destroy it.
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Try that clamav an Debian, with SEL. It's worked great for a lot of people!!
Re:If ever there was justification to Pirate McAfe (Score:4, Informative)
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AVG burned us with proxies. Did you forget?
OK, I'll bite. Either I forgot or I never got the memo, what was/is the issue with AVG? I've been using it for years, and have installed it (with great success) on countless PCs for friends/family over the years.
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(And unfortunately the only browser that works with my ISP's web compression.)
What? It's the first time I've ever heard of an ISP that forces you to use a given browser. I assume your ISP has a proxy with deflate enabled ... but deflate is supported by virtually all browsers!
Care to explain a bit more? I believe you have material here to sue the fuck out of your ISP.
Why? (Score:2)
If you pirate the software, you get all the downsides and none of the upsides.
You certainly wouldn't be getting any pay-out from McAfee for someone to fix your machine after the "pirated" software crashed it.
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If you pirate the software, you get all the downsides and none of the upsides.
This is reversed for games, unfortunately.
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You must be remembering about the case where Windows Update would kill the system by updating some files, if some other files were infected by a virus (basically the virus relied on very specific features of certain versions of system libraries).
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You seem to under-estimate the scope of the problem caused by the definition update. The system REMOVED the svchost.exe file from the working system, which basically leaves you in an un-privileged state as an account user, and unable to access the network or any privileged program.
As such, the installer program wont run, so you CANNOT just un-install, even in safe mode.
Having said that, the time it takes to fix a system is an insignificant part of the actual cost to the corporation affected. ( We were
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There is a distinct other side to what you're talking about. First off, your entire rant appears to reference Symantec and McAffee. Reading it through that lens, I can completely agree, especially the consumer versions of each. Sometimes I've wondered if Vista, Norton 360, McAffee Internet Security, and Crysis were all in some kind of crazed competition to see which could slow down a user's machine the most. Like you and presumably a sizeable number of other Slashdotters, I've walked into a person's obvious
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One good thing about A/V software - since I started sharing the above rant with family members, especially the in-laws, the requests for tech support from me have gone way way down. I think that my anti-A/V views have gotten me labeled as some kind of tinfoil-hat-wearing nut who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near their computers.
Frankly, if they persist in using Windows and they are the sort of people who need to ask for tech support, you are some kind of nut if you honestly think the cure's worse than the disease.