Office Depot to pay $25 million in refunds for customers who used free "rigged" virus scans

[kuhnertdm]

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/office-depot-tricked-people-into-buying-pc-support-with-fake-virus-scans/

FTC Press Release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/03/office-depot-tech-support-firm-will-pay-35-million-settle-ftc?utm_source=govdelivery

 

The FTC announced yesterday that they have reached a settlement with Office Depot, Inc. and their software supplier, Support.com, Inc. The two companies were accused of scamming users out of tens of millions of dollars through fake virus scans. Office Depot will pay $25 million to the FTC, while Support.com will pay $10 million. The FTC will use this money to offer refunds to users who were scammed.

 

The scam operated as follows: Office Depot advertised free PC scans with a "$20-$60 value" (note: Many providers of antivirus software do so for free online, and Windows PCs come with antivirus preinstalled in the form of Windows Defender). Before beginning the scan, the scan software would present the following questions to the user, saying to "check all that apply":

• Frequent pop-ups or other problems prevent me from browsing the internet.
• My PC recently became much slower or is too slow to use.
• I am often warned of a virus infection or I am asked to pay for virus removal.
• My PC frequently crashes.

If the user checked any of the boxes presented, the software would be 100% guaranteed to report that a virus was found, and advertise a virus removal service for up to $300. This was demonstrated by a local news station in Seattle who installed the PC scanner on freshly imaged computers that had never connected to the internet. When they checked the boxes, it would advertise the removal service. When they didn't, it would not do so. Newer versions of the $300 removal service cleaned up junk files from temporary directories and such, but did not do any sort of virus or malware removal. Older versions did nothing.

 

The FTC reports that Office Depot employees were encouraged to recommend the free PC scans whenever possible, and that the number of people who used the scan was directly tied to the employees' performance reviews. The OfficeMax corporation also warned individual stores against recommending the free scan if the user had already purchased the $300 removal service, explaining that it was guaranteed to report a false positive.

[.Apex.]

7 minutes ago, kuhnertdm said:

If the user checked any of the boxes presented, the software would be 100% guaranteed to report that a virus was found, and advertise a virus removal service for up to $300. This was demonstrated by a local news station in Seattle who installed the PC scanner on freshly imaged computers that had never connected to the internet. When they checked the boxes, it would advertise the removal service. When they didn't, it would not do so. Newer versions of the $300 removal service cleaned up junk files from temporary directories and such, but did not do any sort of virus or malware removal. Older versions did nothing.

 

The FTC reports that Office Depot employees were encouraged to recommend the free PC scans whenever possible, and that the number of people who used the scan was directly tied to the employees' performance reviews. The OfficeMax corporation also warned individual stores against recommending the free scan if the user had already purchased the $300 removal service, explaining that it was guaranteed to report a false positive.

That is disgusting..

[Guest]

For $360 you could just buy a new PC. WTF

[HarryNyquist]

And people wonder why the robocalling/windows support scam thing still happens. It's lucrative as eff.

[Bitcolbyin]

scum bags

[rcmaehl]

To be fair this was 3+ years ago, and they were forced to go through a lot of changes once they got found out.

 

EDIT: Additionally, it's not the first time Support.com did this, having done with AOL in 2012. https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/200692/aol-supportcom-settle-scareware-lawsuit-for-85.html

[dtaflorida]

Just curious, how much money did they actually make? Really wondering if they got a slap on the wrist and still made out with a profit.

[kuhnertdm]

1 minute ago, rcmaehl said:

To be fair this was 3+ years ago, and they were forced to go through a lot of changes once they got found out.

Yeah, the important thing is that now the scammed users have the opportunity to get their money back, which they couldn't before.

[rcmaehl]

19 minutes ago, kuhnertdm said:

Yeah, the important thing is that now the scammed users have the opportunity to get their money back, which they couldn't before.

Just updated that comment too. Isn't the first time Support.com has done this either. They put AOL up to it back around 2012.

[UncleJarvis]

23 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

To be fair this was 3+ years ago, and they were forced to go through a lot of changes once they got found out.

 

EDIT: Additionally, it's not the first time Support.com did this, having done with AOL in 2012. https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/200692/aol-supportcom-settle-scareware-lawsuit-for-85.html

I was going to ask when this happened. I worked for a major retailer up to 2012 and we used Support.com and had free virus check/clean up program. We used flash drives with Norton branded scannesr for the free scan and hooked it up to the network for Support.com to remove stuff if the customer wanted. If the customer went with the virus removal they could buy Norton at a big discount. I was lead tech in my store and never saw any monkey business.

[Jito463]

4 hours ago, kuhnertdm said:

the user had already purchased the $300 removal service

Sheesh, we charge less than 1/4^th that for virus removal, and typically we recommend reinstalling instead of cleaning.

[TetraSky]

Wow... They did this shit? Terrible.

[SilentDis]

Heya, tech from Support.com, here.

 

What I wanted to get across to folks tonight, while the news segment was going on, this wasn't the fault of the techs who work for SDC.

 

I will agree that what the end user saw the entire time was scummy. What we saw, on the floor went as follows:

 

Ticket comes in.

Has "malware clean" on it

Connect to system

Hand scan while tools run in the back

Come up with bubkis

Do basic tune-up that comes with purchased service (very rudimentary; temp file clear, registry dedup, etc. off an automated tool)

This data is logged, not only by the agent, but in the notes by the automated tools that nothing was found and very little was done.

All screenshare is recorded

Agent closes ticket

Agent moves onto next ticket in the never-ending queue

 

There was scummy fuckery going on, but the techs themselves are not the ones to scream at; at least on SDC's side. I stand behind that, and stand behind my fellow techs. I have zero problems with any of them using/working my computer, ever.

 

Please, blame the high-level sales for this. They deserve that. But understand there's a distinction when it comes to the techs themselves.

[Ravenbear]

The sad thing is when you have a class action suit only the lawyers make anything the people scammed only get a fraction of their money back.

[B16CXHatch]

As some of the articles pointed out, some of the OfficeMax and Office Depot employees who knew this stuff was a scam and had morals pointed this out to the managers and filed complaints. I was one of them along with one of my fellow techs.

 

I almost never ran the tune up. When I did, I never checked any of the boxes, and never showed the "results" to the customer (I only ran it because the manager complained I wasn't running it enough). If it was minor, I ran ADWCleaner. That was my free tune-up. If it was a little more serious but still a relatively quick fix, I'd hit it with some more serious tools and manual work and find miscellaneous charges in the system that were much cheaper (usually $20-50, so many repairs got charged as "replace ink cartridge in printer"). Most of the time for the bad systems, unless the customer absolutely opposed it, we did OS reinstalls/factory resets (was only like $70 when I started but like $120 when I quit). If for whatever reason the customer didn't want a factory reset or clean install of Windows, then I would charge them for the scammy shit but I would also sell the cheapest one (which was like $100-150) and make sure they got their money's worth. A lot of times, after the remote techs were done, the computers were still not really clean. I'd always run my own suite of tools and fixes and make final checks before giving the computer back. I also physically cleaned most computers that came through.

 

Because our store also had actual repair techs working at it (which was rare), we offered a lot wider range of services. Some official, some not. We offered file recovery, lost password/corrupted account recovery, hardware replacement and upgrades, and my specialty, make Windows 8.1 look and function like Windows 7 so you quit bitching about Windows 8/8.1. Of course, I don't really remember how to do it now, but at the time, I got super good at recovering corrupted Windows 7 accounts.

 

That was years ago though. Didn't get paid enough working there and thanks to a couple of customers I interacted with while working there, I have a much higher paying job doing something completely unrelated in an actual office at a different company, often leaving the IT people wondering why the hell I'm not in IT.