Anti-virus Software Now Classified as Virus According to New Standard.
McAfee, Norton Subject to Criminal Prosecution.
According to a new definition of computer viruses released by the FCC, many anti-virus software applications are now considered computer viruses themselves and the companies responsible for developing them are liable to criminal prosecution.
The new standard defines a computer virus as "any software application which installs itself without the computer user's permission, or makes it difficult for the user to remove, short of extreme measures such as re-formatting (excluding operating systems), and also severly limits the functionality of the computer or other software applications already running on the computer." According to FCC officials, many commercial products, such as AOL and AIM, now qualify as viruses. But most ironically is the inclusion of McAfee VirusScan and Norton Anti-Virus on the list of viruses.
"What qualifies McAfee VirusScan as a virus is the manner in which it makes it next to impossible for the user to shut it off once it has been loaded onto a computer and also how it prevents most other applications from working properly once it has been installed," said Dr. Dean Villalpando of the FCC's computer virus investigation unit. "For instance with most programs, to exit, all you need to do is click the 'X' button, or the menu option. With VirusScan, the user must not only click the 'Disable' menu option and also close the software, but he must then press Ctrl+Alt+Del to open the task manager and shut down all processes associated with VirusScan to completely close it."
McAfee does also violate the installation without user's permission clause of the virus definition, according to Dr. Villalpando. "No matter how many times the user deletes or moves the Start Menu Program Group icons, whenever the user installs an update to the software, the icons are replaced. It's very difficult to equate 'Update my virus definitions' with 'Install icons in my Start Menu.'"
As for damaged or destroyed functionality of the computer or other applications, "the list goes on and on" says Dr. Villalpando. "From the way that the auto-update feature prevents the Windows Scheduled Tasks from running to the way the out-bound e-mail scanning prevents large e-mail attachments from being sent with Microsoft Outlook, to the way the inbound e-mail scanning prevents Outlook, Lotus, and other e-mail client programs from downloading e-mail, a computer running McAfee VirusScan has only about three quarters the functionality of any other computer."
Maurice Topete, a spokesman for McAfee said that the next version of VirusScan would add virus definition patterns for all the software that meets the new computer virus definition. "In McAfee VirusScan version 10, it will basically just scan for itself and delete itself. We expect users to notice no difference in functionality."
I forgot to work in the fact that if you click on the "Options" for McAfee VirusScan (this is the only way to turn off the outbound e-mail scanning), it pops up an error message and displays a blank options dialog. Yes, I've tried re-installing. So essentially, you can't change any options for VirusScan.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and there's also how whenever a virus comes in on an e-mail, McAfee will immediately delete it (which sometimes interrupts Outlook) and then ask if you want to scan your entire computer... even if you already are scanning your entire computer. It also doesn't care how many consecutive times you click "No". So if you get 15 virus e-mails, it will pop up 15 requests, one right after the other.
And there's the fact that whenever you send an e-mail, it pops up a window to let you know that it's scanning your e-mail. But it never pops up the window right away. It always waits a few seconds, to give you time to start doing something else. And of course, the window has to take control from whatever you're doing, such as typing another e-mail.
In short, McAfee = Evil.