Blog for hpHosts, and whatever else I feel like writing about ....

Thursday 17 January 2013

Misleading marketing: SparkTrust has a go

Seems on the subject of misleading marketing, that SparkTrust is having a go at using misleading marketing methods.

First was the advert found on Google;


Let's start with this. Firstly, it's not a fix for the Windows Installer, and not "3 steps", and definitely not "highly recommended" (not by anyone other than SparkTrust anyway), as it claims, and finally - IT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING FREE!!

Then on to the page it leads you to;


See anywhere here where it mentions the fact it's not free? Oh hang on, it says "free download", so it must be free - WRONG. It's just the download that is free, NOT the software itself.

And to add insult to injury, just with previously mentioned software of its ilk, this one;

1. Once installed and launched, the software started scanning automatically, leaving the user no choice as far as seeing what was to be scanned, or the option of changing settings to for example, reduce F/P's, or stop it scanning areas it has no business scanning
2. Scanned the entire system in 10 seconds flat
3. Decided it had found 268 "problems" on a clean install of Windows 7 SP1 in those 10 seconds
4. Decided one of them was "critical" (absolute rubbish), and 2 were "serious" (absolute rubbish)
5. When going to have such issues "fixed", ONLY THEN, do you find out it is a demo, and you need to pay for the software
6. Finally, at no time, was an option provided for the user to create a log of such items found, so they could have the so-called "problems" verified by anyone.


In short, this is blatant scareware, and highly misleading marketing, bundled with unethical practices in the software itself.

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