Renewing Antivirus License

Recently, I was trying to renew antivirus license and the fees surprised. I bought the antivirus in the local market and it cost me just $9. After the one year period ended I tried to renew and was surprised that I had to spend $30 for one year license. Why is that so.

 

Because it's all a scam. Most of the viruses that are being defended from were written by others in companies (only a quarter of them were from malicious people during the 80's and 90's). In the 2000's, they put together DIY kits for script kiddies to use to further their market for them, while occasionally getting in on people who were not protected yet in even an average fashion.

By doing so, they increased the 'created need' for antivirus software and malware protection several times more than it ever would have been needed for. It had to become an advertised threat that the masses recognized and had repurcussions from enough to endorse and be willing to pay for, and now here we are. There are ways people could protect themselves from the majority of it, but they intentionally are marketed, locked into, and use a system which always makes sure that they will become victims to it instead for money.

The reason there is any need at all for antivirus software on some systems, is because people choose to use those systems instead of others where it would not be needed much or at all.

After the importance for domain names were created from the dot-coom boom, the competition for the companies offering them drove the prices down for a while, but now that the dot-com hysteria has settled like some of the antivirus sares, they want to keep the money rolling in, so what they do is bait you with a real low introductory price, and then as soon as it's due to expire, they hit you with a really big renewal charge. If they can, they'll lock you into a contract to make you pay it. Even if not, if it's software-based, they'll ruin system performance further and slow things down even when not doing what they were supposed to anymore (Norton and McAfee do this).

 

That makes a lot sense actually. Just to think about it makes me sick, because it means those companies are the responsible for all those new threats... so they are actively working on that. That is so immoral, unethical and plain disgusting. I can definitely see those companies doing that though...

 

Get Avast and save yourself the hurdle. I used to laugh it off when people told me to get one of those ''free'' antivirus, but after almost 6 months of using it I must say they are not bad at all, specially this one.

 

I agree with @IBMPC8088 about the need for anti-virus is being bolstered by the creation of viruses. That is the gimmick of anti-virus makers. But anyway, that's life in the cyber world. The anti-virus in our home computer had an expired license in 2014 so it stopped updating starting in January 2015. At first, I didn't know that the license has an expiry but as months passed, I investigated to learn about it. Now we have installed a free anti-virus protection.

 

Oh how I dread that little pop up that comes. It seems like it comes every day, but of course it doesn't, and I always struggle to consider the pros and the cons of renewing and my my other options. I am also pretty lucky because of my work situation and their help in the renewal for that computer, but my home computer is another story. It is more and more important to keep your information safe, though, so that is a huge factor.

 

What ever the reasons for creating virus and making antivirus may be, it is true that if we don;t have antivirus in the system, there will be problems on our system if we don't handle them. Once I dilly dallying installing an antivirus after the previous expired, my C drive was corrupted and I had to format the drive.

 

I use Avast for free on all my Window laptops, and for the family members too! I have to renew it every year, but only use the Free version of Avast. There are so many free anti-virus software out there to use, and they are all reliable as far as I know, especially since we don't download music, movies or games. We only need to browse the internet, occasionally buy products, and do searches.

 

It looks like nobody understood my question. My question was why the official website of the said anti virus is asking $30 when I had installed it at $9 on a local computer store? Since the website recognizes the key of my antivirus, I guess my antivirus is genuine. I want to know why there is price difference.

 

Probably the antivirus got better, hence the price increase? But doesn't seem so, considering antivirus software nowadays. I think the antivirus company can sell subscriptions only at a certain fix price, hence the price "increase". You might have bought it from a reseller before and not from the antivirus company themselves, and probably just got lucky to have bought it at a lower price of $9. It could have been actually selling for $30 back then in the first place. If you can find a brand new subscription from stores or online resellers at $9 again then definitely go buy it.

 

Well, there are some free, as in "gratis" anti virus software alternatives, one that comes to mind is Clamwin which is also an open source product. I don't vouch for it, I don't know if it is as effective as a commercial product, but since it is free I guess you could say that they don't have any ulterior motives to not protect you or to harm your computer in any way. You could try to give something like that a chance to see if it works for you.

 

I only use the antivirus program that comes with my computer. It works just as well as anything else out there, and now that I have Windows 10, it updates and scans all by itself, which leaves me free to do my stuff that I need to do without thinking about malware problems. I used to use the expensive virus and malware protection because they try to talk you into it in the store when you buy your computer and of course, they make it sound so urgent. But, yeah, each year when that renewal comes due, it is definitely cringe worthy. The initial price is never anything like the renewal one.

 

I am not a very big know-it-all guy but I managed to solve this problem very easily. Before I was always thinking about my anti-virus and because in Serbia we never buy these. We just download it and find the licence key I was never good with it and my friend always did it for me. Every once in a while I forget to renew the licence and problems occur. My solution was Linux. Now I do not have anti.virus at all.