Best precautions for offering free virus removal

[Xander]

I've been trialing an offer for free virus removal on select customers but I think I want to bump it up a notch and make it more available to most customers.

Here's the basic terms of qualifying for the offer:
1) remote monitoring (GFI) with the AV, 1year contract
2) buy MBAM Pro from me
3) custom HOSTS file MVPS, WebOfTrust on browsers
4) OpenDNS (Family)
5) ??? what else ??? (Without pushing things like NoScript on them to make them miserable) Keep it user-friendly.

I'm going to put in a clause that deliberately going to adult sites may void the offer (or result in a 50% charge). So, basically, if they did it to themselves, 50% charge but if it seems incidental/accidental, free.

 

[cprompt]

I've been trialing an offer for free virus removal on select customers but I think I want to bump it up a notch and make it more available to most customers.

Here's the basic terms of qualifying for the offer:
1) remote monitoring (GFI) with the AV, 1year contract
2) buy MBAM Pro from me
3) custom HOSTS file MVPS, WebOfTrust on browsers
4) OpenDNS (Family)
5) ??? what else ??? (Without pushing things like NoScript on them to make them miserable) Keep it user-friendly.

I'm going to put in a clause that deliberately going to adult sites may void the offer (or result in a 50% charge). So, basically, if they did it to themselves, 50% charge but if it seems incidental/accidental, free.

I think this is a real intriguing idea. The only question that comes to my mind is what if a customer already has MBAM Pro that they have purchased? Are they then not eligible?

Oops - more questions that come to my mind.

If a customer DOES get infected, are you removing it remotely via GFI's Teamviewer? What happens if it is unbootable? Do they get the machine to you, or do you go to them to pick it up?

Just some random thoughts.....

Brian.

 

[Kitten Kong]

I've been trialing an offer for free virus removal on select customers but I think I want to bump it up a notch and make it more available to most customers.

Here's the basic terms of qualifying for the offer:
1) remote monitoring (GFI) with the AV, 1year contract
2) buy MBAM Pro from me
3) custom HOSTS file MVPS, WebOfTrust on browsers
4) OpenDNS (Family)
5) ??? what else ??? (Without pushing things like NoScript on them to make them miserable) Keep it user-friendly.

I'm going to put in a clause that deliberately going to adult sites may void the offer (or result in a 50% charge). So, basically, if they did it to themselves, 50% charge but if it seems incidental/accidental, free.

As well as the adult related sites, I would add a clause relating to p2p programs.

How about a parental program such as K9. Adding the administrator password. (NAturally keeping a copy of the password for your records).

 

[rjframe]

I offer free virus removals under one of my plans. I don't require MAV -- as long as they buy both MalwareBytes and Kaspersky or Vipre from me I honor the removal. I push the MAV and haven't sold the other two in a while now, though. That plan includes malware filtering (OpenDNS) so I don't have a "no adult sites" clause; if somebody has trouble after I make the switch I explain why that site was blocked.

Here's my guarantee:

...if you purchase your antivirus/anti-malware solution from us ... and keep both the antimalware software and your operating system up to date [Sales pitch: MAV takes care of this. It offloads some of the responsibility onto me], and your computer gets infected, we will remove the malware for free.

If you do not use our antivirus/anti-malware solutions, we guarantee against reinfection (of the same virus) for fourteen days, provided you do have an antivirus program up to date and a firewall running.

If you have no effective antivirus solution, we offer a 24 hour guarantee. We will not cover against a third reinfection unless you purchase antivirus software from us. [I do the removal for free because I know I'll sell MAV; I don't want them going somewhere else to buy AV]

 

[4ycr]

I sold one of these and one of the kids installed AVG which took off viper MAV. is there any way to stop this?

 

[FremontPC]

Chrome or Firefox with a flashblock extension to handle infected ads from ad networks. Just puts an "f" in the placeholder for the ad, easy to understand for the end user.

Bolster email security. It seems I've seen a lot more phishing email as of late and social engineering is getting better. WOT, MVPS hosts and MBAM Pro should handle links ok, but some are using .PDF, .EXE and .ZIP attachments and those are often designed to shut down A/V protection. Does Vipre scan attachments before they're opened?

App updates (patchmypc or the like) and PDF reader security (different reader, more secure settings).

Sounds like a good market to sell a well-organized backup solution into, as malware isn't the only thing that can cause data loss and downtime.

 

[Xander]

I've only had one customer ever (so far) who's bought MBAM independently. As it's only the difference of ~$15 profit, so long as they've got that protection, I'd be okay with it.

All but a couple of my customers are local so, yeah, I'd try remote (ScreenConnect) and, failing that, I'd have them bring it in.

MAV does allow for scanning based on extension. I had tweaked that to be more forgiving on common document types but I'm second guessing that now.... put it back to defaults and opening stuff on the one on the workbench.

While I like the idea of K9 or similar, I'm hesitant to go putting so much security on there that they find it hard to use and that might deter them from renewing. GFI covers updates pretty quick and, for good measure, I'm looking into trying to script a PatchMyPC run into the works (as GFI doesn't seem to cover *version* updates).

 

[Encrypted Existence]

I sold one of these and one of the kids installed AVG which took off viper MAV. is there any way to stop this?

Implement user accounts/privileges for the children that do not allow them to do such things. Explaining why it is necessary to the parents, of course.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Chrome or Firefox with a flashblock extension to handle infected ads from ad networks. Just puts an "f" in the placeholder for the ad, easy to understand for the end user.

Bolster email security. It seems I've seen a lot more phishing email as of late and social engineering is getting better. WOT, MVPS hosts and MBAM Pro should handle links ok, but some are using .PDF, .EXE and .ZIP attachments and those are often designed to shut down A/V protection. Does Vipre scan attachments before they're opened?

App updates (patchmypc or the like) and PDF reader security (different reader, more secure settings).

Sounds like a good market to sell a well-organized backup solution into, as malware isn't the only thing that can cause data loss and downtime.

Vipre scans and removes known bad links and attachments from emails.

 

[Xander]

Dropped off the system and explained it to the fellow like this: "If all signs point to an accidental or "drive-by" infection, I've got you covered. If all signs point to a user going to the wrong parts of the internet and shooting themselves in the foot, it's still half-off. If there's question as to the cause, I will err on the benefit of the doubt."

Here's what I've got for the email they'll need to reply to:

FREE VIRUS REMOVAL:
Constant Care subscribers (1yr) with antivirus and Malwarebytes Pro and who agree to some additional security adjustments may be eligible for free virus removal. If your infection is completely incidental (100K people became infected last year visiting the New York Times' website), you are completely covered.
Not covered: Infection caused by files downloaded via P2P (torrents), where all signs point to the source being an adult/hacker/etc website, or circumventing security settings. These actions will result in a 50% charge.
If you cancel your subscription before 1 year without having received virus removals, no problem. If you have received disinfections, an invoice for the rest of the year or 1 virus removal (whichever is less) will be sent.

He's also asked me to log in remotely periodically (starting with end of next month) and do up a quick report from the browser history.

 

[taysr]

No adult sites and no p2p..... what is the point of having a computer then

 

[MobileTechie]

My problem with this is that MBAM Pro's pro-active virus prevention is pretty awful and GFI Vipre does very badly in tests too.

I've no confidence in either of these products in stopping the latest ransomewares.

 

[Eagle21]

My problem with this is that MBAM Pro's pro-active virus prevention is pretty awful and GFI Vipre does very badly in tests too.

I've no confidence in either of these products in stopping the latest ransomewares.

I've just been looking at the anti-virus tests on
http://www.av-comparatives.org and
http://www.av-test.org (for Windows 7).

GFI Vipre does OK on both - looks like it may be improving.

 

[MobileTechie]

Yeah it seems better than it was but still not up there with the best in terms of protection.

http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/producer/gfi/

vs.

http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/producer/kaspersky/

Maybe MBAM Pro has also improved since I tested it but was awful then. I put it on a VM and visited the latest entries to the malwaredomainlist and it let several through. Kaspersky on the same VM let nothing through.