The DeliveryDemon thought that Micro$oft had grown out of the sort of stupidity that leads it to ignore the most basic security principles in favour of a hard sell. Not so.
A few days ago, Micro$oft spewed out a massive download of fixes for Win7. Hidden in the myriad bug fixes is a nasty little payload which throws up messages insisting that some perfectly respectable McAfee files are viruses. Having scared users with an irritating recurring false-positive security alert, Micro$oft then pops up message after message demanding that the user installs the Micro$oft antivirus product.
This is a recurrence of an old story. Micro$oft has used this trick in the past but recently it seemed to have learned a little sense. It’s clearly reverting to its old, discredited, behaviours.
Listen carefully, Micro$oft. Your hard sell tactics are making it abundantly clear that you’re not interested in distinguishing between respectable software and malware, just in scaring people into parting with money. This is remarkably similar to the behaviour of many of the scammers who lurk on the web.
Whether these false positives arise from poor software design, inadequate testing, or dishonest sales tactics doesn’t really matter. They irritate the hell out of your customers and seriously undermine your corporate credibility.
Get your act together, Micro$oft. PLEASE!
