One day George was browsing the web, when he encountered a popup that read:
"Your PC is infected with malware. Click here to install PC-Savior Anti-Malware, and perform a deep scan of your system."
George thought to himself, "I suppose my computer has been running slow at times," so he went ahead and clicked the link. PC-Savior installed itself on George's computer, then a window showed that a system scan was in progress. An hour later, the window showed,
"System scan complete. PC-Savior has cleaned 382 infections from your PC. Click OK."
"Wow," thought George, "that worked really well!" George grinned as a sense of victory swept over him. He clicked the OK button, which brought him to another screen which read:
"To maintain optimal PC health, we strongly recommend using our Scan Scheduler to run a weekly scan. Click Next to begin your free 30-day trial of PC-Savior Scan Scheduler."
"That makes sense," thought George. He clicked Next, and the window read, "Congratulations, you are protected!"
"Great!" thought George.
The weekly scan ran as scheduled over the next month. Each time, the scan results showed that dozens of infections had been cleaned out. This gave George both a heightened perception of his computer's vulnerability, and greater thankfulness for the ongoing protection he received from PC-Savior.
After 30 days, a window popped up:
"We hope you have enjoyed your free 30-day trial of the PC-Savior Scan Scheduler. To continue utilizing this service, and maintaining optimal PC health, please consider subscribing for $10.00/month. Enter credit card details below."
"Hmm," thought George. "Well, just imagine how terrible it would be if all those infections were still on my computer." George went ahead and entered his credit card details.
From then on, $10 was charged to George's credit card each month, and the weekly scans continued to run.
As time went on, George still felt that his computer wasn't running as well as it ought to. He had trouble running other programs, games, and viewing certain media. He began viewing his computer as inherently a piece of junk, being barely held together by PC-Savior. As his computer worsened, he turned more often to PC-Savior to run additional scans, and even purchase additional premium features such as the PC-Savior Malicious Site Blocker.
Occasionally PC-Savior would pop open a window that said,
"If you're happy with PC-Savior, please share it with your friends and family!"
Not wanting anyone to be without the important protection he had, George would enter the email addresses of people he knew. Several of them even signed up, and George felt a sense of pride over how many infections he'd surely saved them from.
A couple years later, George remembered his friend Wendy, who's really into computers. George figured Wendy definitely needed PC-Savior, so he entered Wendy's email address. The next day, George got a call from Wendy, who proceeded to tell George,
"I got your invitation to download PC-Savior. Did you do any research into that software before installing it? It's actually identified as trojan malware by several reputable sources. A trojan masquerades as legitimate software, while actually harming unsuspecting users."
George chuckled in disbelief. "Wendy, I've been using PC-Savior for two years now, and it has literally cleaned thousands of infections from my computer. My computer would be dead without it!"
Wendy replied, "I know it sounds pretty wild, but PC-Savior's scan results are actually fake. Nothing ever got cleaned. Not only that, but PC-Savior hogs a lot of your computer's CPU and memory, which hurts performance. Even worse, PC-Savior contains mechanisms for evading your computers built-in security features, such as quietly turning off your firewall. This actually exposes you to greater risk of infection. Did you have to pay for PC-Savior?"
"Well," said George, "I didn't have to, but I chose to subscribe to get better protection. Anyway, lots of programs cost money."
"But you're not getting what you paid for," replied Wendy. "You installed PC-Savior to protect yourself from malware, not realizing that PC-Savior is malware. There are actually several forums online where people discuss uninstalling PC-Savior. It's not very easy to do, you have to get deep into your computer's registry. But a lot of people have successfully uninstalled it, and most of them report significant improvements after doing so. Check out the forums sometime if you're interested, and I'd be happy to help."
George wasn't sure what to make of all this. The notion that he'd been duped for two years, and had himself duped other people, sounded pretty absurd, almost offensive. "Thanks, I might check it out sometime," said George. "But I've had a different experience with PC-Savior. I'm pretty happy with it."
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