Symantec accused of scareware tactics

Symantec has been sued by a Washington resident for misrepresenting the effect of errors discovered by some of the company’s PC utility products.  Symantec apparently used scareware tactics to lead users into buying licenses for some of its products.

The complaint was filed on Tuesday in a California court on behalf of a Symantec customer based in Washington. The allegations point to three of the company’s products namely the PC Tools Registry Mechanic, Norton Utilities and PC Tools Performance Toolkit. Both PC Tools Registry Mechanic and PC Tools Performance Toolkit are created by PC Tools, a subsidiary of Symantec since 2008.

All the products are designed to address issues pertaining to the privacy and performance of Operating Systems. They also check on other threats that may interfere with the functions of a computer. Symantec always gives away free trials of these products to allow users have a test before they can decide to pay the full license fees.

The complainant is said to have hired a team of forensic experts who established that the Symantec trial products were configured to always indicate that there are problems even when the computer has no problems at all! The tools will then point to a stream of errors and privacy risks, then report that not all the errors discovered can be addressed without purchasing the full licenses. This will ultimately scare the user and compel him or her to buy the products so the problems can be fixed. Given this setting, the complainant, James Gross, indicated that the products automatically fall in the scareware category, where dangers and errors are misrepresented in order to trick users into purchasing the software.

A lawyer representing Gross said the team of experts was also able to find out that some of the threats that the Symantec programs flagged as ‘High Priority’ were not credible threats by any level of imagination.

The lawsuit seeks to have Symantec make damage payments to Gross and all other US entities or individuals that have so far bought the three Symantec programs.