Avast Drops iYogi Support Over Pushy Scare Tactics 100
An anonymous reader writes "Antivirus maker Avast is suspending its relationship with iYogi, a company it has relied upon for the past two years to provide live customer support for its products. The move comes just one day after an investigation into iYogi showed the company was using the relationship to push expensive and unnecessary support contracts onto Avast users. In a blog post, Avast's CEO wrote, 'We had initial reports of this behavior a few weeks ago and met with iYogi's senior executives to ensure the behavior was being corrected. Thus, we were shocked to find out about Mr. Krebs' experience. As a consequence, we have removed the iYogi support service from our website and shortly it will be removed from our products.'"
Re:Will iYogi sue Avast? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all. That was just the "mystery customer" call to confirm the shenanigans, after several users complained about it to Avast.
After RTFA (*gasp*), my interpretation is that iYogi is pretty much attempting customer fraud, by running bogus diagnostics and selling expensive solutions the customer does not need - and dare I say, probably won't fix anything besides the fake alerts. Over here in Canada/U.S., that's a serious offense that can land you in jail. I don't know how India's criminal code relates, but even from a purely business perspective, iYogi is still defrauding its client, Avast, as they are spending their client's time and money to convince users to fall for a fake diagnostic scam. That's a very good reason to terminate the contract, and then sue the company.
Now I guess the question becomes: how hard is it to sue an Indian company into the ground ?
Let me count the ways... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hand in glove (Score:2, Insightful)
I am aware of what options there are with the program, thanks. You (and the others here) seem to be missing the point: the NAGGING is UNNECESSARILY intrusive and, no, you can't set it so the nag popup won't popup; it ignores that setting for that particular notification.
Re:Anti-Virus money hole! (Score:4, Insightful)
I use all three operating systems on a daily basis. Here's my breakdown:
CentOS 6.2 as a host OS on my laptop
Win7 Ultimate as a VM guest on my laptop
OSX as a VM guest on my laptop
CentOS 5.8 on my server
Debian 5.0.9 and 6.0.4 on servers at work
Why is CentOS the host OS on my laptop? Because two of the four Macs at my workplace have had viruses and the Windows version of VMWare Workstation doesn't play a nicely with OSX guests as the Linux version does. That's right, I chose Windows or Linux over OSX for security reasons and chose Linux over Windows for performance reasons. Yes, that distills down to "I chose Windows over OSX for security reasons." and that is based entirely on my use of both systems, side by side, on a daily basis, for several years.
I remember trojans and viruses from the DOS days, as well. Ahh, the good ol' DOS days, when getting infected meant you executed something you shouldn't have. Wait... That still happens; that's how Macs get infected. That's how Linux installs get infected. That's the vast majority of how Windows installs get infected. Windows 7 defaults to "locked-down and secure", questions you if you try to do something stupid, and alerts you if an application tries to do something stupid (UAC); Linux, in general, will nag you if you try to do something stupid and alert you if an application tries to do something stupid (asking for root/your password); OSX halfheartedly does this, but in my experience it's trivial to bypass (wait for the user to authorize a legit application and piggyback on that authorization). Some Linux distros have similar functionality to OSX and allow the same exploit, and somehow this is considered "good enough" for a desktop system.
At any rate, all 3 systems ship in a secure state and all 3 can be made just as vulnerable to worms by exposing services to a network. OSX users who still believe they're immune are in for a rude awakening, very soon. This is where Linux and OSX users differ; Linux users are aware that exploits exist for every platform and know that countermeasures must be taken. It's one thing that Microsoft has finally started doing right, by the way, they've started driving the point home that your system is only as secure as how you use it; again, something Linux users have known from the start.
Mac fans will catch on some day, I hope.