Named & Shamed
Keumars Afifi-Sabet puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-spouting companies and misbehaving software
SOFTWARE WARNING!
SUPERAntiSpyware’s barrage of offers
You can tell that SUPERAntiSpyware (www.superanti spyware.com) is confident in its ability to keep you safe by the way it rather desperately capitalises ‘SUPER’. This is no ordinary spyware protection, but SUPER protection. The logo and garish red-and-yellow colour scheme make us think of mosquito spray, which we guess helps to sell it as a powerful pest repellent.
But many users have complained online that it’s becoming almost as big a pest as the threats it aims to block, with endless adverts nagging you to upgrade to the paid-for version.
I braced myself when downloading the tool, but I still wasn’t prepared to be barraged with special offers at almost every click. The pop-ups were bad enough, but worse were the Chrome tabs it automatically opened, taking me to the checkout page for the $19.99 Pro version (see screenshot 1 ).
This onslaught was followed by adverts for a service called USTechSupport 2 . Clicking it opened another Chrome tab at the checkout page. I had never heard of USTechSupport, but I searched online and discovered that it’s owned by California firm RealDefense. This is the parent company of software makers Iolo, which – as you’ve probably guessed – also owns SUPERAntiSpyware.
It’s hard to escape the sense that the free version of this tool exists only as a way to promote paid-for upgrades. There’s nothing unusual about that. It’s a tactic we’ve seen many times. But I’ve rarely witnessed anything quite as horrendous. If this is SUPER software, then I’m Clark Kent.
WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT?
