Music Industry Going With The Technological Solution

McAfee CEO On The Three Really Good Viruses

from the how-they-make-money dept

Mon, Oct 15th 2001 5:48pm — Mike Masnick

I've been saying for years that the virus companies overhype viruses because it makes them money. Here's McAfee's CEO basically admitting that. He talks about how well the company is doing, and says it's mostly because "we had three really good viruses" recently. There are conspiracy theories that the anti-virus firms actually write their own viruses, but I'm not ready to go that far. I will remind folks not to believe the hype you hear from the virus companies, though. You don't need anti-virus software to prevent viruses on your computer. Just be smart about what you do.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

4 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Paul, 16 Oct 2001 @ 11:13am

Virus Protection
I agree with Mike's comment that viruses can be avoided by "being smart about what you do"; however anti-virus software is good insurance just in case you happen to a have a momentary flash of "dumb" (some would call this a "blonde moment").
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike (profile), 16 Oct 2001 @ 12:00pm

Re: Virus Protection
Yeah, this is definitely true. I'm not saying you need to do away with virus protection all together, but many people seem to think that if they have virus protection, then they're safe. The fact is, you're a lot safer if you're just careful.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Alfred Arias, 26 Apr 2002 @ 1:35pm

CEO
Not only is your statement about anti-virus vendors making a profit by creating their own viruses absurd but you must know that CEO Srivats Sampath is not associated with Network Associates or McAfee. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the retail sector called McAfee.com. Network Associates owns a large percent of the stock in McAfee.com and is sepperate as a corporate provider of quality anti-virus products.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
dean, 1 May 2012 @ 9:43am

link
the stuff that the link in the article takes you to is gone
[ link to this | view in thread ]