CaptainSticks: I have a Business, Mr Computer Nerd in which I have repaired hundreds of computers in the couple years. I use comodo free firewall on wipe and reloads because it is best. However, I must say that I absolutely agree with OP. And if someone were to make a post like I am about to (for instance criticising Skid Steers that I designed for the last several years) I would thank them profusely because of the opportunity for understanding where I can improve in the eyes of the CUSTOMER. Even if they were obviously offended by something that they felt was not okay (referring to ‘opt-in’ installation dialogues).
Let me open my reply by saying that the fact is that to listen to and respond to such criticisms by giving the customer what they want / need is what is going to increase market share for Comodo. By not responding to the feelings of customers and especially those of us who are business owners whos livelihood depends largely on recommending / pushing quality products, market share is going to be reduced exponentially. Reduction in market shareis a STEEP slope that requires MUCH work and MUCH time to recover. So when someone spends as much time as him or I to let you know about something that is very upsetting to us, it would behoove Comodo representatives to take note if they care about the concepts mentioned in this paragraph.
I have at least 10 customers that have bought the full features of Comodo since my company starting almost 2 years ago. I also have had [shadow=red,left]several[/shadow] (more than 15) customers complain over the past year or two. The complaints are always, ‘What is this ‘Comodo Dragon’ and ‘Geek Buddy’ stuff?’ And then most always they follow that up with, ‘I don’t want that on my computer’. Then came privdog. Just this morning I got a call from a customer who told me that he needed me to uninstall some “malware” (his word, not mine) called ‘privdog’, that “won’t install”. As was alluded to in this post already, the update process opts in privdog after the first update. This occurs even though I specifically 'opted-out of privdog in the initial installation. What follows is a picture of the window after restarting the computer on updating Comodo Firewall.
Even if I felt it is ‘okay’ to put ‘opt-in’ services into installations, Comodo has been doing much more recently that is MUCH more intrusive in my opinion by effectively hiding the opt-out option behind an ‘advanced install’ option setting in the installer. This is obviously by design as anybody with any experience in this kind of thing knows that 99% of the customer base is going to be afraid of touching anything called ‘advanced settings’ due to the fact that they don’t want to break anything and ‘advanced’ implies necessary understanding that a normal person wouldn’t have. Therefore most of the customer base just installs the ‘default’ installation ‘trusting’ Comodo to install the ‘right stuff’. Less than honest practices such as this will generate short-term monetary growth through the payments received by privdog, but in the long-term people will no longer trust Comodo and will ultimately turn elsewhere.
I could go on and explain how the same ‘less than honest practice’ is used by Comodo in the second ADDITIONAL ‘opt-in’ install of privdog, but hopefully you can accept that I can logically back up such a claim in the same fashion as mentioned in the prior paragraph.
As a proponent of Comodo Firewall I cannot push products that put unwanted programs onto my customers computers…especially after I set it up for them and then get a call later to the effect that “there is malware on my computer called privdog that I need off”. When a person says they don’t want privdog, they don’t want it and short term monetary gain by pushing the product on others is not going to benefit Comodo in the long run, but rather hurt it tremendously. Once the numbers start dropping, it is already too late (the slide down the slippery slope has already begun at that point), so I would correct it now by letting as many people know about this as possible.
The fact is that I and a huge portion of your customer base do not believe it is ‘okay’ to have opt-in services such as privdog in the installations. And to tell someone ‘then buy the full version’ is just another way to start the slippery slope. If you want to sell the best firewall for Windows then do it. Get a strong customer base by virtue of that fact and your market share will be ROCK SOLID and grow continually. If you want a quick fix to make your investors happy, then keep on the same track that you started the last year.
Lastly, I should say, allowing the option to check it (referring to ‘extra software’) if Comodo desires is fine, but opt-out is not. The reason it is not is because by it’s very nature it is set-up to install something that others have not asked for. That is why OP is upset. Whether it is ‘easy’ to ‘understand’ and ‘uncheck’ / ‘click’ a service is ‘irrelevant’. Your comment that “Seriously, I do not see what all the fuss is about.
I am pure and simply dumbfounded.” is quite offensive to say the least as it IMPLIES that I and others are stupid because we don’t ‘understand’ how to keep software off our system that we don’t want on there.
