Saturday 24 January 2015

BitDefender and underhanded automatic re-subscription

My BitDefender license expired today so I had to re-subscribe. After the issues I had last year I was really careful about reading everything on screen. And as usual you have to be really careful or they’ll get you.

At the bottom of the payment screen was this anonymous piece of text:



This isn’t just any old blurb. This is you allowing Avangate to automatically take money from you next year. Clicking on the 'here' link gives you this:



Basically, they are hiding the checkbox that allows you to opt out of automatic re-subscription. Now why would they do that? It’s hardly saving space on screen. No, this is completely by design because they know that if you see a checkbox you are more likely to pay attention and therefore are more likely to opt out of automatic re-subscription.

This is an underhand tactic to tie you in to their product and to guarantee a revenue stream. Come on Avangate, you are supposed to be in the trust business. This hardly qualifies as trustworthy behaviour.
Saturday 24 January 2015