What happens if the company you hire to protect you against fraud and information theft is the one that helps deceive you?<\/p>\n
McAfee\u00a0is one of the two computer security companies that dominate the marketplace. The other computer security company is Norton. \u00a0The vast majority of business and personal computers have either\u00a0McAfee\u00a0or Norton software installed, which they expect will protect them against viruses and malicious software that can steal personal information and even financial information. The fear is for identity theft and financial theft.<\/p>\n
On the\u00a0McAfee\u00a0corporate website, in the \u2018About Us\u2019 section is written: \u00a0\u201cMcAfee\u00a0lives for the challenge of protecting and liberating our customers by staying ahead of the bad guys in our relentless search for safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hence the irony in\u00a0McAfee\u00a0being sued for using deceptive pop-up ads, one of the very threats thatMcAfee\u00a0software is supposed to eliminate. The class action lawsuit charges that\u00a0McAfee\u00a0is tricking customers into buying third-party services through a deceptive pop-up advertisement.\u00a0 The pop-up display, which looks like the rest of the\u00a0McAfee\u00a0website, appears after downloading\u00a0McAfee\u00a0software from McAfee\u2019s website. The pop-up even thanks customers for their purchase and asks them to click a \u2018Try it Now\u2019 button which guides them to unknowingly enrol in a subscription-based service offered byArpu, Inc., a third party.<\/p>\n
The degree to which\u00a0McAfee\u00a0either designed the process or allowed the process to integrate with its customer experience in itself seems to indicate that they intentionally meant to deceive consumers. \u00a0I had the opportunity to discuss one of these incidences with Dina, a\u00a0MetroActive\u00a0member. Dina had noticed a $4 a month fee appearing on her credit card statement with the reference \u201cTB\u00a0perfectspeed202-446-1821 DC\u201d. When Dina\u00a0googled\u00a0the telephone number she traced it to a\u00a0Arpu, Inc. and in the process also noticed many\u00a0online\u00a0posts by others who were deceived in the same way.<\/p>\n
On April 6, 2010 a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court, Northern District of California.<\/p>\n
The accusation made in the lawsuit is that\u00a0McAfee\u00a0disguises the purchase as just another step in the process of downloading the\u00a0McAfee\u00a0software. It points out that customers are unaware that they have just transmitted their credit card or debit card information to a third party,\u00a0Arpu\u00a0Inc. The information transmitted is the very information they trusted with\u00a0McAfee. The customers are unaware that they signed up for a service that charges an automatic renewal fee. Furthermore, that fee is hard to detect on billing statements.\u00a0 In addition, in the lawsuit it is claimed that details about the terms of service are purposefully hidden in hard to read print and that customers are not able to cancel their service by calling\u00a0Arpu, Inc.<\/p>\n
If I didn\u2019t personally know Dina, the\u00a0MetroActive\u00a0member who is one of the individuals that is a victim to this scheme, I would have a tough time believing it.\u00a0 What makes the claims more credible is that Dina is a research doctor with many years of Canadian university education and has been published in several medical journals for her ground breaking research. If she can be deceived by this, then I figure most people can be deceived.<\/p>\n
After this, how can we trust that\u00a0McAfee\u00a0won\u2019t do something else with our information that we don\u2019t expect?<\/p>\n
This is the sort of corporate behaviour that motivated me to write \u201cThe Banker Who Saved His Soul\u201d. The book addresses these sorts of situations, their impact on individuals and our society and how to deal with them effectively.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What happens if the company you hire to protect you against fraud and information theft is the one that helps deceive you? McAfee\u00a0is one of the two computer security companies that dominate the marketplace. The other computer security company is Norton. \u00a0The vast majority of business and personal computers have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metroactive.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}