F-Secure Gets Called Out On Mobile Virus FUD

from the are-your-BS-definitions-up-to-date? dept

Mon, Jul 24th 2006 9:56am — Carlo Longino

Finnish anti-virus firm F-Secure has developed quite a reputation -- not necessarily for their products, but because of the ridiculous amount of hype they've spun regarding the largely theoretical threat of mobile malware and viruses. Other vendors and smartphone OS developers have made fairly general comments that the actual threat has been overhyped, but now one of the company's rivals has called it out by name, claiming F-Secure has created a market for their product through their incessant fear-mongering. An F-Secure exec, unsurprisingly, denies the claim, but perhaps he hasn't been at the company long enough to remember the many various instances it's done exactly that. The truth remains that the risk of infection by a mobile virus is extremely low, while their potential for damage is limited by many factors. The F-Secure guy says he can't understand why anything they've done is bad for business, which is hardly surprising, really -- but creating a market that's based only on irrational fear your company whips up really isn't a great plan for long-term success.

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

16 Comments

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

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

marduk carovnik, 24 Jul 2006 @ 10:08am

F-Secure Gets Called Out On Mobile Virus FUD
Quote: but creating a market that's based only on irrational fear your company whips up really isn't a great plan for long-term success.

Hmm, it seems to work for Americas war on drugs.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jul 2006 @ 10:13am

Re: F-Secure Gets Called Out On Mobile Virus FUD
That last word is the key to the sentence.

There has been no success in the war on drugs. The problem gets worse every day | month | year.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sanguine Dream, 24 Jul 2006 @ 10:33am

Lawsuit?

Other vendors and smartphone OS developers have made fairly general comments that the actual threat has been overhyped, but now one of the company's rivals has called it out by name, claiming F-Secure has created a market for their product through their incessant fear-mongering. An F-Secure exec, unsurprisingly, denies the claim, but perhaps he hasn't been at the company long enough to remember the many various instances it's done exactly that.

So in about six months (or however long it takes them to realize they aren't making any money) F-Secure is gonna sue that rival that called them out.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Tashi, 24 Jul 2006 @ 10:58am

"F-Secure has created a market for their product through their incessant fear-mongering."

If I didn't know better I'd think they were part of Homeland Security.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Eric, 24 Jul 2006 @ 11:13am

F-Secure has a product?
Frankly, they didn't do a very good job at marketing, even with all this alleged fear-mongering. I thought they were just a security analyst company.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jul 2006 @ 11:15am

So the rival says they were overhyping the problem? How does that work? Buy our products, cause you don't really need them anyway?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
anonymous coward, 24 Jul 2006 @ 11:33am

f-secure is in FUD pre-school. how many hundreds of millions of dollars has halliburton made on Bush's whipped up threats of terrorist attacks?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jul 2006 @ 11:47am

"F-Secure has created a market for their product through their incessant fear-mongering."

If I didn't know better I'd think they were part of the global warming crowd.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jul 2006 @ 1:45pm

Re:
*** WARNING - BLATANT TROLL ***

The previous post was a blatant troll. Waste time replying at your own risk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
[ link to this | view in thread ]
heavyw8t, 24 Jul 2006 @ 5:27pm

This allegation has been circulating for years. Every new virus brings the charges that Norton or McAfee is creating them to seel more product.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
kurt, 24 Jul 2006 @ 8:24pm

read the end of the article
if you folks are just about done with your usual knee-jerk anti-anti-virus reactions you might want to take a close look at the end of the referenced article where the f-secure representative said mobile malware was not a big problem...

it's hard to take ca's claims that f-secure is making mobile malware out to be a huge risk when f-secure is quoted by the media as saying the opposite...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
jobe, 25 Jul 2006 @ 8:04am

I have looked somewhat into the problem of mobile security and there really are problems. I can't imagine these will disapear with new and more sophisticated models either :-). Allso i find it quite natural that phone manufacturers don't flash these issues openly. F-secure have developed budget antiviruses for a long time but what their mobile product does i don't know. Obviously enough that it's competitors don't trust it to die naturally though. IMHO this article is part of the real FUD attack.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Todd, 25 Jul 2006 @ 8:26am

America's "war on drugs" is a myth
After the US Army occupied Afghanistan, opium production soared to new heights. Likewise, after taking out Manuel Noriega in Panama, the flow of cocaine into the US increased substantially.

There are plenty of "drug lords" that contribute lots of money to US politicians and other government officials so that they look the other way and allow the flows of drugs to continue unabated.

It would take a lot of guts for any politician to try to do anything significant to go against these forces. The last one to seriously try was Robert F. Kennedy and we all know what happened to him.

Every once in a while the Feds need to make a big bust just to make the public think they are really trying to stem the flow. Most of the law enforcement activity is is aimed at users rather than the suppliers, which has little if any effect other than to put a lot of small dealers and users in prison.

By de-criminalizing drugs and treating them as we do alcohol, you would remove most of the profit and then the drug pushers would have to find something else to do.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
dita, 14 Aug 2006 @ 7:13am

free anti virus
If you have problem with virus brontok or decoil, you can download free anti virus here www.blanjo.com
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Le Blue Dude, 10 Apr 2007 @ 8:32pm

Huh
Oddly enough that's how Listerine got it's market. Before Listerine people did not care about bad breath.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Busana Muslim, 6 Oct 2009 @ 7:58am

Not surprising; big guys always fool us ....
[ link to this | view in thread ]