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Comment by reitanqild | Hacker News Reader

Bigger problem is at least two of the more well known AV solutions are badware. My enemy #1 in this regard is McAfee, but recently (front page now) Avast seems to have upped their game considerably.

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Can you expand a bit on this ?

According to stopbadware.org a badware is a "[...] software that fundamentally disregards a user’s choice about how his or her computer or network connection will be used."

I think op meant in a more general sense they are bad at what they are marketted to do because the cost of using the software (user/admin experience, not money) is starting to outweigh the pros of using the software (gets rid of viruses et al).

http://www.thesafemac.com/avasts-man-in-the-middle/ and HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10727431

Hm. I do have a candidate fitting this description. "But of course you want to update to W*s Nein, even though you have declined the popups, disabled the GWX Clippy abomination and disabled the specific updates; I will kindly reenable all of that for you. Oh, and I'll also suck down 6 gigs of install data, it's not like you are using your metered pipe for anything useful anyway. Admit that you want it."

Late answer but McAfee for example will stop you from using Internet until you pay them.

This in addition to causing general issues. (On at least two occasions have I fixed what weird computer problems just by removing McAfee.)

Oh, and yes: scammy click-by-installers when you try to install other software.

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