AppAholic TechRant

Ok, for those of you who don’t know, I’ve just started at Bournemouth University. Lovely place. Went to use good ol portable apps, when I get a report of a trojan on my usb. Needless to say, the university foolishly chose Macafee, when they could of chosen Kaspersky! Anyway, so the exe it flagged was the ultra handy usb ejector app I reviewed a while ago. Clearly this isn’t a trojan!

Not only did it detect, but it also AUTO DELETED THE FREAKIN EXE! SERIOUSLY! One not so happy guy. So I marched over to the IT tech support desk, and told them how crap Macafee was, and how I’d hack the system to show how crap it was and then replace it with Kaspersky and then… ARG! (or rather told them it reported a false positive). They said there was nothing they could do. So naturally one would assume reporting the false positive to Macafee would be easy, right? WRONG! Now Lets find out why it should be spelt MaCRAPe

Ok, so I google “how to report a false positive macafee” and turn a blank. On the macafee website, blank. Free live support. Lets go! I entered the subject as “Reporting false positive”.

Lets give some transcript here to start with.

”
Me :Hi there, I’m a student at Bournemouth University, and when I put in my usb, it picked up a false trojan and deleted it. how can I resolve this issue?
Macafee: Do not worry.  We will do my best to help you resolve your issue.
”

Sounds fair enough, sounds like they will help. SURE! I made it clear that I was talking about the university computers, stating quite clearly that I don’t use Macafee. Guess what the “support guys” next question is… “in order to assist you with this issue, I would like to gather some basic information from your system regarding this issue.” WHAT THE HECK? Isn’t it perfectly clear that its got NOTING TO DO WITH MY COMPUTER! No worries, it gets worse!

“Macafee: Bournemouth University is running with McAfee enterprise edition McAfee” NOOOO! Really? Who would of guessed!? He continues to say, “You have to contact McAfee enterprise techncial support” (No, that’s not my spelling mistake either). Wait a second, I’m a student, and you have to sign in to contact the Enterprise support! Hum. Guess what, I cant do that. Making this clear to the “support”, he replies, “I will push you the link to contact them.” Something tells me this guy isn’t so clever. Can it get worse? Oh yeh!

It went back and fourth, me trying to explain that it had nothing to do with the version I had, I just wanted to know how to report a false positive! Gesh! Apparently, they could not support me as I was not a “registered customer”. When I asked if a FREE TRIAL VERSION counted, guess what, it did! So there’s the joke (ie MaCRAPe), and here’s the punch line.

”
Me : so you cant tell me how to report a false positive untill I install even free trial macafee?
Macafee: Yes.
“

Just to note, Kaspersky has a free support forum! How’s about that! Kaspersky is kicking your ass Macafee. No wonder people prefer Kaspersky! Just like me!

Tags: Crap, Kaspersky, macafee, MaCRAPe, portable apps, support, TRIAL, trojan, university, USB

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 10:06 am and is filed under Anti Virus, Firewall, Rant, Security, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.