Anti-Malware Maker Files Lawsuit Over Bad Review (csoonline.com) 163
itwbennett writes: In a lawsuit filed January 8, 2016, Enigma Software, maker of anti-malware software SpyHunter, accuses self-help portal Bleeping Computer of making 'false, disparaging, and defamatory statements.' At issue: a bad review posted by a user in September, 2014. The lawsuit also accuses Bleeping Computer of profiting from driving traffic to competitor Malwarebytes via affiliate links: 'Bleeping has a direct financial interest in driving traffic and sales to Malwarebytes and driving traffic and sales away from ESG.' Perhaps not helping matters, one of the first donations to a fund set up by Bleeping Computer to help with legal costs came from Malwarebytes.
Streisand effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Streisand effect? (Score:5, Funny)
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Are you one of Sarah Palin's speechwriters?
I know... funny thing is Sarah still thinks she does great speeches. Everyone else is like - is she still talking? Get the bitch off the stage! Even Fallon did a shot with poor old Trump in the background. You can see he'd be like - YOU'RE FIRED (BITCH)! if he could.
Re: Streisand effect? (Score:1)
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He's not just the president, He's a member.
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He's not just the president, He's a member.
I see what you did there. Kinda juvenile, but I still like it.
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That's cute. I like it but..
My original intent was something else. I forget that there is an international as well as a younger crowd here. The used to be these commercials and infomercials on TV in the US for the Hair club for men. It is a group that deals with going bald.
Anyways, at the end of the commercial they showed the narrator who has a full and healthy head of hair who then introduces himself as the president of the club. He goes on to say he is not only the president but a member too.
I guess it j
Re:Streisand effect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Libel/defamation isn't rooted in bias. It's knowingly false information being spread intentionally. You can have all the paid people you want saying how great you are and telling of the things legitimately wrong with your competitors and never have a problem.
They aren't in the business of being an unbiased reviewer. They're in the business of helping people get their infected computers cleaned up. And for that you need working tools.
Re:Streisand effect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed, filing suit just publicizes the fact that their software was found lacking by reviewers. This company is toast and well deserves to be. The only logical proof they can provide against claims of their softwares ineffectiveness a demonstration of its effectiveness.
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If they can show what you say, the will win the suit. The best defense against slander is the truth. Sounds like, according to you, they have a slam dunk case!! If that is the case I wish them the best and hope they recover the maximum damages possible.
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If they already know that the company is doomed they are not losing anything by the law suit and stand to gain. All they have to do is create another company and sell off to show a loss then rebrand the software and and bragg about how they improved it as the separate company.
Re:Streisand effect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I've never heard of "SpyHunter," but I'm pretty sure that this story is going to be one of the first things that pops up when anyone searches for it for now on. And no way would I ever, fucking ever, install software from a company suing over bad reviews. It just looks awful.
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Agreed.
The "Your computer may be at risk", "Download free scanner", and click to buy marketing is ripe with fraud. Those are the kind of links you stumble across at illegal streaming sites or p0wned and derelict websites.
Even if they (have no idea if they do) had clean hands and stellar reputation, they have chosen to market their product in a way that makes it indistinguishable from malware or hackerware. If they really were reputable, they should dress up like Russian mafia, and then go all litigatious
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Negative publicity often results in some places getting more sales. Especially because it helps boost SEO ratings.
Re:Streisand effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Streisand effect? (Score:1)
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Its sad that you can't have a opinion any more if it hurts someone's feelings. I see nothing wrong with Bleeping computer endorsing one anti virus over another.
I agree that dealing with any event that could hurt other's feeling situation seems to be out of hand. However, I don't see the cause of this situation as feeling hurt by others. I am seeing that the company is abusing the laws, and this kind of law suite is very popular right now.
The reason this type of company suing small companies or individuals is a win-win situation for the company in a sense of short-sight solution. A law suit is not cheap, so small companies or individuals would likely to take the re
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We Europeans are fine with this. There are thoughts that society is frankly better off without. Orthodoxy and conformity is safety.
You don't see this attitude as at all sinister in its implications? It's positively Orwellian.
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I live in Europe and I'm aware that there such things as "right opinions" and "wrong opinions". Expressing the latter may have life-altering consequences and some of those are actually illegal. We Europeans are fine with this. There are thoughts that society is frankly better off without. Orthodoxy and conformity is safety.
I really hope you're being sarcastic, but I can't be certain and therefore I am replying. There are certain types of speech that are banned because they are truly harmful. Violent threats, making false claims to incite panic, libel, and slander are illegal either through criminal or civil law. There are good reasons for such speech to not be legally protected.
However, the only speech that needs to be protected is that which someone finds offensive. Speech that isn't offensive doesn't need protection because
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That is why this isn't a slander or libelous suit per se. They seem to be using the fair advertising and unfair competition laws. You can tell from the wording 'false, disparaging, and defamatory statements' and the accusation that bleeping computers is involved in marketing a competing product.
In this there is a little more room to criticize truthful or truthful like statements. Papa John's was sued over their slogan fresher or better ingredients back in the late 90s because they showed a pizza hut pizza n
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I think in the Papa John's case, they argued that "better" is an objective claim as opposed to "best" which is subjective. At least when you're giving an example of what they are better than (Pizza Hut).
I decided to look it up. The ruling was overturned in an appeal. And that's why Papa Johns continues to use the slogan.
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Yeah, it was overturned but only because pizza hut couldn't show that the claim cost them business.
Either way, it showcases how commercial speech can be treated differently when your competing with one another.
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What's a "wrong opinion" here that can get you in trouble with the law? In the US, expressing an opinion may have life-altering consequences depending on what other people think of you. If you're in politics or the entertainment field, for example, your livelihood may depend on what other people think of you, and you may be out of a job if you offend too many people, but there's no legal enforcement.
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It's amazing how many people either don't or refuse to see the slippery slope this leads to....
Lawyers are malware (Score:1)
They just need to write code that will counter sue lawyers for being greedy little flaccid trolls.
Informative post (Score:5, Informative)
I did a quick search and found this entry [bleepingcomputer.com] on the Bleeping Computer forum.
If everything in that post is true, I fully understand why SpyHunter gets a bad review.
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Hey ESG (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not represent Bleeping, but I have used their forums and site many times. They are a reputable source for tools and procedures that actually work, as opposed to many supposed software solutions and 'help' sites that just serve to infect you further with their tripe.
So, as far as I am concerned you can fuck right off with your shitty product and attitude. You have now insured that no matter how good your product -may- become (and I doubt it really will), I will never recommend it to any clients and will actively promote against it. Good job. Now sue me.
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Have you not being paying attention for the last bunch of years? Because that's exactly what happens.
Tone of places have started suing for bad reviews ... they go all "wah wah" and out come the lawyers.
Bad reviews on yelp cause many businesses to sue.
What should happen is the courts say "OK, if you prove it was done with malicious intent, we will consider it, but otherwise STFU or we're going to impose stiff penalties".
But don't think you can't lawsuit yo
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Back in the day on download.com, I would go to download well-known, legitimate antivirus stuff, and the reviews were always crammed with "this installs a virus itself".
As these were often almost identical reviews across multiple products, I got the feeling they were by competitors, but of actual scamware, or by virus writers themselves.
Legitimate reviews are already laced with the problem people are much more likely to write a review to bitch about something than praise it, leaving everything everywhere wit
funny thing is... (Score:1)
I downloaded Any Video Converter and wound up with a copy of SpyHunter. A program I did not want. Downloaded on my computer without my consent. What does SpyHunter (supposedly) do? It supposedly stops people from downloading unwanted applications onto your computer. They suck.
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What does SpyHunter (supposedly) do?
Play the theme from Peter Gunn while you shoot enemy cars.
Not an original name for Software (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't had Spy Hunter [wikipedia.org] on a computer since my Commodore 64 days.
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There was an awesome port of this to Atari ST and Amiga in the early days; you used the new-to-most-people mouse to move around and accelerate/decelerate.
So many hours went into that in the mid 80s...
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I haven't had Spy Hunter [wikipedia.org] on a computer since my Commodore 64 days.
Seems like now is the time for you to download this awesome software!
Dear Enigma (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks to your anti-free speech actions, I will NEVER use your software and will recommend others avoid your products and services as well.
Not a "bad review" (Score:1)
Read the complaint. It's not about a "bad review by a user," but a repeated near-accusation that the product in question is suspect itself (not by using it and reviewing it, but by repeating things found elsewhere on the internet), by a BC moderator. Further, the moderator recommends people remove it and install another product instead, one that BC gets affiliate payments from.
Not saying its actionable, but the summary is quite misleading. It's worse than a bad review, and it'swritten by someone appointed t
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It may be libel if it harms Spyhunter, it's false, and the reviewer didn't care about the truth.
The financial incentive makes it plausible that the reviewer may have written it without caring about truth or falsehood, and printing unsubstantiated accusations does suggest that.
US libel laws are pretty demanding on a person claiming to be libeled, to avoid restricting free speech, but from your description this might well qualify.
Why is there still an "anti-malware" market? (Score:4, Interesting)
Didn't Windows Defender kill off the "anti-malware" market? Does anyone really still run things like "Symantec" or "McAfee"?
Re: Why is there still an "anti-malware" market? (Score:3)
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Didn't Windows Defender kill off the "anti-malware" market?
No, because Windows Defender sucks.
Does anyone really still run things like "Symantec" or "McAfee"?
Only naive new-computer buyers who get it pre-installed and roll with that because of the name-recognition. The rest of us run something that doesn't suck. Symantec/Norton and McAfee are bloated messes that bog down the computer and hardly catch anything. Defender is just a hidden useless product that also doesn't catch much of anything. There are plenty of worthwhile programs out there however that catch a lot and definitely do help to address this very real problem.
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I haven't had contact with Microsofts "anti-malware" for some time and apparently things have improved somewhat, but you could hardly do worse. Historically:
Windows Defender will at times not block malware that it detects (submit locally undetected sample, MS response is "definition included for 6+ months"). Submitting unknown (to MS) malware has at times resulted in it being flagged good. Heck, if a vendor of malware notified MS their "product" was being detected it was automatically removed from their det
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Didn't Windows Defender kill off the "anti-malware" market? Does anyone really still run things like "Symantec" or "McAfee"?
Windows Defender is the most useless piece of shit software since Windows ME
Malwarebytes FTW!!! (Score:2)
Spyhunter is terrible. Malwarebytes is the only Anti-malware program I use or recommend.
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Popular anti-malware software will become less effective over time, since all the malware writers out there will test against it.
Angry children. (Score:2)
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Where Is the Sin? (Score:2)
Truth is an affirmative defense to defamation (Score:2)
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You just proved that you were pretending to be someone other than APK when replying to that comment - http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]
Can't you just be honest and say that it's you? Why do you need to pretend that other people support you?
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Omnichad you'd say every ac = me & it's a good reply on correlation!
No, you literally linked to it and said it was you.
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You haven't denied it was you, either. Because it is. The reason you post as AC is that you've been banned from every forum you've ever signed up for for being a troll:
https://forums.techguy.org/thr... [techguy.org]
http://arstechnica.com/civis/v... [arstechnica.com]
I'm honestly don't feel like finding more right now, but you know they're out there.
I really have no problem with software that helps automate hosts file generation. What I and everyone in the world has a problem with is a person spamming forums with off-topic posts and atta
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This is the face of a troll:
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
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Why not spend time doing a program LIKE MINE
Why don't you spend more time doing that and less time trolling? There are better marketing plans, I assure you.
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You didn't answer anything with this post. But you are getting a lot more unstable. It typically takes you 3-5 more rants to get to this point, but this is the point where your babble becomes completely incomprehensible for the duration of the conversation.
I don't post as AC unless I've already used mod points on a thread, but if you think that I'm the only one who uses the word "untrustworthy" you are no more crazy than I already think you are.
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He also CALLED ME A PEDO (read the link) - that fool mmell apparently doesn't understand LIBEL law!
He implied it. That's not libel.
But please, go ahead and dox yourself by filing a publicly documented lawsuit.
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Oh. I guess you threaten to do that, but never follow through: http://www.thorschrock.com/200... [thorschrock.com]
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No, I'm not going to call your software malware. The only thing acting like malware is the way you treat Slashdot commenters.
The funny thing about the CA story is that you escalated it for no reason when they were willing to work with you on amicable terms. And in fact, they didn't lower the rating after you threatened to sue, they lowered the rating because you did what they would have asked you nicely to do in the first place:
lowered my ware to ZERO THREAT LEVELS/no threat after I passed all 21 of the removal questions they do after a false accusation & false positive
False positives are not malicious. You can't be surprised that a program that
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Please. It's you, APK. Do you want me to run your posts through linguistic analysis software? Because I won't. I don't care that much.
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So you say you only argue with facts. Is that why you have no argument against me saying it's you posting as your own faux supporters?
I wonder what your software development customers in Syracuse would think if they saw your Slashdot history.
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IF they did not, he told me I had a 250k lawsuit SURE WIN!
Lawyer's love to tell you that. It makes them money.
my ware is CLEAN & YOU NOW ADMIT IT loser!)
When did I say it was dirty? You keep trying to make this about your HOSTS file engine but I wasn't talking about it.
Nir is a nice guy who doesn't spam and doesn't troll. I even use his tools.
illogical ad hominem attacks on ME, but not disproving my points on hosts superiority on nearly every grounds conceivable! apk
That's because there's nothing wrong with your software. There's something wrong with you as a person. It's not ad hominem if you're the actual subject. It doesn't have to be that way. Just stop trolling.
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Funny they saw it like my attorney did & I passed their removal test for their BLATANT FALSE POSITIVE TOO, eh?
Funny, that sounds like you did what they would have asked you to in the first place with no lawyers involved. It has nothing to do with your threats.
You literally followed their false positive removal process as a normal person would and still claim that you won because you paid a lawyer to tell you to do it.
All of your name calling and chest puffing is really unnecessary. You say you argue with facts, and yet you spend most of your post ranting like a lunatic in all caps and bold and not staying on topi
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No tune change. You haven't said anything new. What do you think they do with other false positives? Not have them fill out a 21 question questionnaire? Or did they write that just for you? I think Occam's Razor says they already had a 21 question test in place for ALL false positives - even the ones who don't bring in a lawyer.
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APK, the fact still stands that you did so by following the normal false positive removal plan. The one that anyone can do without lawyers. You know, the 21 question test they just happened to have ready for you. Not a coincidence.
Call me or every anon coward posting in apk's defense him but we're telling the truth that you messed up and you'd have to prove we're him.
I don't have to prove you're you. Your alter ego just posts slightly more coherently. Maybe you should have that alter ego do all your posting. At least there's no bold or all caps.
But it sure was funny when you accused an AC of being me. "You'd have to prove" it's me. "Yo
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BOGUS DOWNMODS
Are you aware that the downmod was flagged as troll? Are you aware of what a troll is?
In Internet slang, a troll (/trol/, /trl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion,[3] often for their own amusement.
Which part of that definition are you saying was bogus on your downmod. Do you want me to break down the definition point by point with examples?
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You brought up to flop on your face
Sounds messy. Still don't know what it is.
You fail on Computer Associates + Thor
You didn't follow through and sue. You didn't even settle out of court. You just followed the standard false positive removal procedure. Because false positives are a valid part of the malware detection process and there's already a reasonable way to handle it.
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Listing ONLY “Peter Kowalski” not my full name, easily apparent in the program itself, as Alexander Peter Kowalski. Thus, I’d never find it online) & this would be part of the grunds I am suing on if need be for libelling me online since 2004. This is not an idle threat, it is a certainty. I am rather insulted & furious regarding this incident that has long been hidden from myself via what I feel are nefarious means.
This is libel, no questions asked.
False claims of libel are completely on-topic.
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Why not just log in [slashdot.org] instead of cheating your way around Slashdot's abuse system? Because you're an abuser!
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CA & Thor SCHMUCK (you I suspect omnichad)
Wait...I just now saw this. Now you think my account belongs to the Computer Associates guy? I could understand you thinking an AC or two, but to think that he would pick some random persona just to persecute you...
You know, I didn't realize that bipolar people could have persecutory/paranoid delusions. I thought that was just schizophrenia. I just read up on it: http://psycheducation.org/diag... [psycheducation.org]
It might be worth seeing a psychiatrist about your bipolar disorder. It might make a huge positive differenc
If you were libelled/slandered . . . (Score:2)
BTW, do you still use your hostfile manager when you download kiddie porn? Just askin'.
Re: Mmell & Coren22 did it to me on /. (Score:1)
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For which I take immense pride.
You see, I have a job. And a family. And I finished my degree in that time. And other things to occupy my time besides letting my mind rot on video games and Slashdot.
And I have curiosity, and a little free time now, so I thought I'd check out what was going on here. At least I'm willing to continue posting under my account.
TL;DR: I have a life; you don't.
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Jealous much?
Here, try this. It may help.http://www.wgu.edu/ [wgu.edu]
TL;DR: You're jealous; try getting off your butt and educating yourself.