LAST week, I wrote about some unpleasant business I experienced with MacKeeper, a suite of Mac OS X utilities that I felt was being promoted in underhanded ways. Among these were “pop-under” ads and bogus virus warnings that brought my attention to the program in the first place.
My column drew an almost immediate response from Jeremiah Fowler, the official in charge of communications at Kromtech, the company that bought MacKeeper from Zeobit in 2013.
In the interest of fairness, I am printing parts of his letter and paraphrasing the rest of it for brevity.
“We do not condone or endorse any form of ‘Scare Advertising’ and will suspend the account of any affiliate who uses these type of ads. We have even launched a campaign against ads like this and invite the public to report them to us,” Fowler said.
He said the company does not and will never approve scare ads or fake scans claiming that a user’s Mac is infected with a virus and pushing the user to download or buy MacKeeper.
He said they will also not claim to do things that MacKeeper cannot actually do (e.g. speed up Mac’s performance, fix system issues, etc.).
Fowler also pointed to a Business Insider profile of the law firm, Edelson McGuire, which filed the class action suit against MacKeeper’s original developer, Zeobit.
“Sadly, their business model is to file hundreds of lawsuits [that] companies can fight spending hundreds of thousands of dollars living under a cloud of a court case or they can pay money and settle,” Fowler said.
The judge in the MacKeeper case, he said, pointed out that someone filing a claim “might be lucky to receive maybe $3” based on the $2 million settlement.
“Love or hate MacKeeper, it is easy to see only the lawyer is the real winner in these cases,” Fowler said.
To address various user concerns, he said, the company has taken action, including:
• Decreasing the number of global ad impressions and the advertising channels they use.
• Eliminating more than half of their sales affiliates and enacting a zero tolerance policy for those who abuse it.
• Launching a no-scare ad campaign and creating a formal complaint process to identify ads that anyone finds misleading.
• Changing the wording, tone, and descriptions of the scan results to be more open and transparent, and to better explain potential issues.
• Undergoing an independent review of its business and practices by the OTA (Online Trust Alliance) to create and promote business practices and technologies to enhance online trust.
• Working with TRUSTe to be certified and to ensure that the company’s privacy policy and EULA (end-user licensing agreement) comply the highest standards.
“These are real changes that show we are serious about more than revenue. I would welcome the opportunity to contribute to the conversation on this or any related subject,” Fowler said. “If you have any questions for MacKeeper’s CEO or myself we would be happy to answer honestly and openly about the software and service that MacKeeper provides to millions of customers around the world.”
When I suggested they were not doing enough to stop the scare ads, Fowler replied: “I fully agree with you that scare advertising is unacceptable and we are doing everything we can to identify affiliates who use these tactics and terminate them. Our legal and compliance department approves every advertisement or landing page used by affiliates. Unfortunately, what we have caught several of the affiliates doing is presenting their own ‘Scare Landings’ and then using a series of redirects that bring the traffic to our approved landing pages (making it almost impossible to find out exactly which ones are using these methods). This is why we have reached out to the public to help us with screen shots and URLs so that we can identify unethical affiliates and end our relationship with them. Some critics say ‘Well just end your affiliate marketing’.. but the truth is that we have many good affiliates who follow the rules, use good judgement and do not try to game the system, but as you have seen first hand it only takes a few bad apples to ruin the bunch and our reputation in the process.”
Fowler assured me that since 2012, all versions of MacKeeper leave nothing behind except a version identifier, and are “extremely easy to delete.”
The new version, he added, has no alerts about cleaning or serious issues, only recommendations and notifications. Fowler said he could send me a copy to test—but given what has gone ahead, that’s something I will have to think about. Chin Wong
Column archives and blog at: http://www.chinwong.com