To make this clear in advance, I do believe, that CIS is a good product, with some outstanding features.
But the recent actions, Comodo has taken, have, let’s say, damaged my trust, and far worse, damaged the trust my customers had in this product, and in me, since I had recommended it to them.
Misery has started with the invention of PrivDog, and the other sneaky installation options like Yahoo, GeekBuddy and so on, that ordinary users rarely really understand. Most every-day-users just start an installation, and click on “recommended installation” or whatever, almost never changing any default settings, because they fear to do something wrong.
And so it happened, that at around 50 customer PCs, where I had decided to recommend this product, and convinced the users to switch from almost any other security solution, changes were made to the system when CIS did its updates, that the user didn’t want.
Even worse, PrivDog suddenly displayed ads on internet sites, that did not have any ads before. All of a sudden, when printing out forms on formerly ad-free pages like account balance sheets at online banking sites, ads from Youtube, facebook, and so on, appeared on the right hand side of the page, rendering the printed version unusable, because the ads did overwrite the balances or numbers.
Even on my own site I found these ads, and I really know that I do not have any ads on my site, not one. So PrivDog obviously displays ads from various sources while browsing the web, and what is the worst here, it does not only allow or block items on the pages, it ADDS more ads to pages that didn’t have them before.
And, Melih, despite what you are saying, I DO NOT TRUST COMPANIES LIKE FACEBOOK, AND I DO NOT WANT THEIR ADS BEING DISPLAYED. Period. If I agree to see ads, I remove or switch off my adblocker. If I don’t want to see the ads, I turn it on. If I want to support certain companies, I disable the adblocker for them. Easy as that. I do not want someone to silently, sneaky, decide that for me.
And I do not trust ADTRUSTMEDIA. Trust is not being earned this way.
Removing PrivDog instantly solved all the issues.
Now… I know that PrivDog might be customized, and whatever, but I clearly have to state, that when I do install a security solution, and even one that raises such a high claim on itself like CIS is doing, it is an absolute NO-GO for me to find ads where there weren’t any before, especially from companies that I deeply mistrust, like facebook. Talking about security, or data protection, AND allowing facebook ads, is a contradiction already.
Ordinary users do not want to customize PrivDog, or any other addition, that a security software silently installed. They do, and I think, they have the right to, believe, that, what comes from their security application, is to be trusted, even with its default settings. Many users simply do not know, btw, how to customize an adblocker at all. They are just users, who browse the net, write some mails, and that’s it. Not everyone claims to be an expert, and not everyone even WANTS to be an expert.
They got an increased awareness of security issues meanwhile though, and therefore they install (or ask me to install) a security software, to take care of that, as carefree as possible, so that they can concentrate on what they want to do with their PC.
I already chose customers who have some basic understanding of PCs, because newbies are (still) hopelessly overcharged with CIS.
But even most of these advanced users that I had recommended using CIS, are not happy with this PrivDog ad issue, and all the other installation defaults. Most of them are self employed, and are focusing on their work, and do not want to constantly tame their security solution, and they also do not want to constantly pay me for correcting things that did run fine before a CIS update.
We have now switched to a different solution. Many problems are gone now (like blocking too many harmless files), some unwanted applications were found and removed by the new scanners, and speed of the PC has increased as well.
To make this clear again, they all had been pretty happy with CIS, despite the flaws, and believed that the superior protection was worth it, so the reason for the change clearly was the damaged trust of them, when things they did not want, had been silently installed on their machines, and had been activated.
I will also (for now) cancel my planned activities in selling CIS in my region. I have a quite good reputation here, in being someone who can be trusted. I have many years of experience with security software, and my recommendations are usually followed by my customers, or even new customers, almost 100%, and none has regretted my choices so far… the first real complaints I got were caused by CIS unwanted additions. This clearly showed me, I have to stop recommending CIS, to not damage my own reputation.
Long post, I know, sorry for that, but I really had to clearly state and let you know, how me, and, more important, my customers, are thinking about current CIS policy. After all, CIS raises the claim to want to protect as many users as possible. If you do not want to give it away for free anymore, charge for it. If the application is superior, people will gladly pay. They are already paying other companies for far inferior products. But I really advise you to stop this policy, and return to the core of security and trust.
You are definitely not “creating trust online” with this.
Cheers
Verilee