Why I’m Suspicious of My Antivirus Program

Do you ever get the feeling that companies are willing to do anything to get your money?  If a company does their scheming and marketing correctly, you won’t pay much attention to it, but once you start noticing odd “coincidences,” it’s a little harder to put faith in their products or services.

Take your antivirus software, for instance.  Every year, that month prior to you renewing your antivirus subscription, do you suddenly start seeing more reports of viruses deleted, attempts to gain your data halted, and more pop-up websites blocked?

If you pay attention, you’ll find that right about when the company starts to send you notifications and emails about renewing their product, the antivirus software suddenly seems to be catching more and more evildoers trying to access your computer or device.

Also, if you wait until the very last day to renew or install a new program (as you should, because they start the day you install them rather than adding on to the length of service), you should pay VERY close attention to when your antivirus program is working (and not).

I found that during the last week or so of service, my antivirus program suddenly, out of nowhere, developed the habit of refusing to turn itself on during the first half-hour after the computer booted up.  Now this wouldn’t be a problem if you have a habit of working offline for the first hour, but most people start looking at emails, weather, news, and social media to start the day off.  So for the first hour, you computer is then vulnerable.  I wound up having to start it manually a couple of times that last week.

Now, you are probably wondering which program/service I use so that you can avoid buying that product, right?  Unfortunately, these kinds of things have happened with all of the name-brand products that our family has used.  (Norton, McAfee, Kapersky, and TrendMicro)  So there seems to be no getting away from the evilness that is Corporate Business at its finest.

So how do you decide which evil corporation to go with?

You decide to go with the one that least mucks up the other 11 months of your subscription.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a better answer than that.  Personally, I’ve gone with TrendMicro this time, but we shall see how it behaves during the next year.

How about you?  Do you have any products/services that you are suspicious of?