Wed
Sep 5 2007
07:12 pm
Antivirus woes
By: onetahiti

We've been having trouble with two different antivirus companies.

1. Watch out for McAfee Antivirus! They turned on autorenewal for our three separate accounts under three email addresses, even though in each case we told them not to. We had canceled the accounts some time ago, but that did not deter McAfee from helpfully signing each of our computers up again.

Some years ago they had done the same thing to my mom down in Texas.

When I called today about this, "Rachel" in the Philippines at McAfee Customer Service said we were really canceled this time. Of course that's what we were told last time, too.

Guard your pocketbook around them! And read their emails even after you cancel.

We never set any subscription to renew automatically.

2. By the way, does anyone want up to 3 G-data AntiVirus Kit (AVK) licenses for PCs for free?

I bought 3 back in March after they were top-rated for antiviral effectiveness. I tried one of the licenses on two successive computers running Windows 2000 and XP. The only thing is, I could never get the data files to update. Maybe it was our satellite latency, who knows.

Their tech support was unhelpful and their sales department never answered my repeated requests for a refund. I never got around to even loading the other two licenses.

It is good stuff if you can get the updates. Just let me know.

Topics:

for local, verifiable, non-pirate, honest-type person(s)

Submitted by onetahiti on September 6, 2007 - 9:59pm.

Dear Anonymous at that temp. email address:

I don't think so. These are perfectly legal unused licenses, not to be passed around. They would be a gift from me to the recipient.

Let me amend my offer. If you are local and verifiable and truly interested in taking the licenses off my hands, and will keep the keys private, etc., respecting the intellectual property rights of the G-data folks, then... let me know. It would be even better if you were a nonprofit or using it for education.

-- OneTahiti, not the tiniest bit into piracy

We called McAfee on the phone to cancel

Submitted by onetahiti on October 24, 2007 - 4:52am.

But even that hasn't seemed to work well. Months later we are still getting renewal notices from them. :(

I used to like McAfee, years ago. But not anymore.

-- OneTahiti

Norton

Submitted by WhitesCreek on October 24, 2007 - 5:57am.

I picked up Norton when I had to buy a new laptop after spilling a glass of wine into the keyboard. (Hate to waste wine like that...)

I'm mixed. At work we use Trend Micro, which seems to have gotten its act together.

Norton and ZoneAlarm

Submitted by onetahiti on October 24, 2007 - 4:17pm.

I and some friends have had bad luck with Norton over the years, although I have not tried going back to it recently. Norton was so bad before that even though I used to get free (reviewer's) copies, I still wouldn't keep it loaded on any of my machines.

Here we have had an off-again, on-again relationship with ZoneAlarm, first on, then off, now on again. The ZoneAlarm suite has been working OK here for some months. It is terrible, however, if you set it to watch for viruses, etc., in email. Your system will slow down so far it will not be able to do anything at all. And it does slow things way down during updates and scans. But at least it seems to work. Do not set it to monitor instant messages and email, though!

-- OneTahiti

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