CyberDefender Threatens Consumer Advocate With Defamation Claim

from the hello-ms.-streisand dept

Allen Harkleroad alerts us to the news that a company called CyberDefender is a bit upset at Harkleroad's recent stories that pointed out that two brands, advertising heavily about cleaning up your computer (MyCleanPC and DoubleMySpeed), appear to be connected to CyberDefender, despite attempts to hide the connection. He then highlighted some complaints against all three brands. CyberDefender responded by sending a legal threat letter, claiming defamation, and demanding the removal of the original posts.

Now, as is typical in such letters, the lawyers don't actually state what is defamatory. However, the press release they point to concerning another website that was forced to "apologize" for calling MyCleanPC a "fake antispyware program," does make it clear that MyCleanPC is, in fact, a product of CyberDefender. So, that's clearly not the defamatory part. Everything else in the post is pretty much opinion. The only potential issue I can see is what he claims at the end of the post: "Like I said, same old scam, same old company," which is similar to the title of the post as well. I could see how the company might be claiming that the use of the term "scam" is defamatory -- and, you would think that before making that claim, Harkleroad would back it up with a bit more detail beyond just a link to a Google search page listing complaints. That said, as you start to dig through the complaints, I'm finding a pattern with a fair number of them (though certainly not all) "removed" for some reason or another.

I have no idea if any of these products/companies are really a "scam," but I would imagine that trying to silence a consumer advocate for talking about their products might attract more attention from people who might start investigating how well their products work. If the products really do have problems, I would imagine that those problems are about to get a lot more attention.

Filed Under: defamation, streisand effect
Companies: cyberdefender