I hate my Job
As a self employed IT Professional, I hate my job at times.
Actually, I enjoy my job in general, but it’s one aspect that I hate. Spyware. I make a pretty big portion of my income removing spyware/adware/malware from user systems. You’d think that would be a good thing. Well, it is financially, but I really don’t like the fact that so many innocent users are forced to pay hundreds of dollars to clean infestations from their computers.
Let’s say your grandmother buys a complete system from Walmart. (We won’t discuss quality). Let’s say they pay $500. For that amount, they can track genealogies, play solitaire and a host of other games, and keep in touch with the grandkids whose parents never seem to have time to come visit. With that system, they are given some grossly inadequate commercial antivirus program that is free for 3 months or so, then asks for a credit card number or it disables itself. Beyond that, there is virtually no spyware/adware/malware protection at all. Certainly, they don’t have a Mozilla based browser, such as Firefox, which compounds the problem.
So, they take their computer on the Internet, and over time they start to discover all the Internet has to offer. They begin to enjoy new online friendships, as they discover how to use e-mail. Then it happens. They see some scary message popup that says something is terribly wrong, then asks the ominous question: Do you want to protect your Computer, your Name, your Country, your Grandkids, and your Cat, or do you want to ignore this message and possibly see the downfall of the free world, the enslavement of their grandchildren, and various hostilities carried out against Fluffy, their cat, not to mention all the horrible things that will happen to their computer. After a moment of contemplation, they click “Protect Me”… and things are never the same again. It’s the natural choice. First, the message really didn’t give much of a choice. Second, it looked like a system message just like all the other ones they have seen pop up since they bought the computer, and finally, they reason that surely such wonderful protection would be built into a product such as MS-Windows. Alas, they are wrong on all accounts.
So they call the repair shop, or worse yet, to their Big Name mass merchant’s Freak Squad and are told their computer can be fixed, but it will cost them $200 and they will need to buy Program X for $50 plus $29.99 a year to keep it updated or something similar.
So they go that route, but find that the problem comes back in six months. and the cycle repeats itself.
What does that have to do with me?
I just get tired of seeing it. It’s immoral. The Malware writers should be in jail. The IT con-artists should be out of business for fleecing their customers, and Microsoft should pay the bill because they sold software that is not safe for surfing the Internet.
Yea, those are some pretty strong opinions.
When they come to me, they can’t believe that I can fix the problem for half the cost of the Freak Squad, provide them with an Open Source or other free solutions, and best of all, help them understand how to prevent the problem. Then I let them play with a Linux-Based System.
They leave happy, but I am sad… because they had to spend a lot of money that didn’t need to be spent.