| By Scott Dunn These days, even the software we like often comes with hidden annoyances designed to help the vendor at the expense of us poor customers. Here are five examples of sneaky marketing — snarketing, as I call it — and what you can do to mitigate the practice's ill effects. |
Software downloads are rife with deceptions
Clicking a link on a Web page to download software certainly beats strolling the aisles of your local computer superstore. But anyone who has spent much time acquiring freeware or buying and registering shareware or other software products knows that some of this convenience is undercut by the very people who say they want us to use their products.
These companies want to make a sale so badly that they're willing to resort to underhanded and obnoxious marketing practices to close the deal.
Too often, these sneaky marketing — or snarketing — practices go unpunished because not enough of us complain. Well, I've found five examples of software-marketing practices that a snake-oil salesman would love.
Install crapware by default. When you need a Web plug-in to use a particular site, you just want to click your way through the essential download and be done with it. Similarly, if you're just trying to install a security update, you may think you can click the Install button and download only the code you require.
Unfortunately, if you go with the installer's default settings, you might end up with a lot of unwanted software cluttering your system. For example, both Adobe Reader and Adobe's Flash Player install the Google Toolbar unless you opt out; Sun's Java applet installs the Yahoo Toolbar; and unless you uncheck their options in the installer, Apple's QuickTime updates include the Safari browser and iTunes player, whether you want them or not.
Initially, the QuickTime updater installed Safari without the user's knowledge or consent. According to a story in InformationWeek, that practice was halted a few months ago. But the Apple updater still defaults to installing Safari and iTunes unless you uncheck their respective boxes.
For more on this type of snarketing, see Susan Bradley's Mar. 27 Patch Watch column in the paid version of the newsletter.
A close cousin of this practice is the tendency of some online stores to use purchase forms that surreptitiously gain your consent to share your e-mail address with other companies or to receive additional mail from the seller itself.
What can you do to protect yourself? Read before you click.
Fortunately, most of these sneaky, bundled installations are not buried in the fine print the way many other license-agreement tricks are. Still, you have to train yourself to look carefully at every field and option in a form and decide for each whether the default is the option you really want.
Hide the freebie. Software publishers often make a less full-featured version of their product available for free as a way to promote sales of the commercial version. Then they make the link to download the free version as difficult to find as possible.
It's as if the company had no confidence in the power of the free version to sell the full version. Moreover, the frustration of hunting for the free version causes some people to give up and choose an alternative program — or none at all.
Some of the more egregious examples of this scheme are the EditPad text editor (click the Free EditPad Lite link on the left and then scroll to the bottom of the EditPad Lite page) and Foxit Reader, a PDF-viewing alternative to Adobe Reader (resist the temptation to click the big, misleading "Get It Free" buttons and instead click the tiny "Download" link just above them).
Similarly, you can waste a lot of time hunting around Grisoft's site looking for the free version of the company's AVG Anti-Virus program unless you know that the freeware has its own separate Web address (free.avg.com).
To give credit where it's due, not all software publishers pull this trick. For example, in recent years both Real and Apple have made it much simpler to find the free version of their respective media players. Just go to each company's main page and use Real's "Get Real Player — Free" button and Apple's "Free Download" button.
If you find yourself spending too much time looking for the free version of a program, search for it at a big-name download site such as CNET's Download.com or SnapFiles. The chances are good that you'll get the very same product without all the up-sell pitches and other marketing distractions.
Keep on charging. As I reported in my May 17, 2007, column, purchasing a security application may automatically sign you up for a subscription to updates or virus-definition files — a fact that is often buried in a lengthy license agreement or hidden behind an optional link (or both).
Many customers discover this catch only after an automatically recurring charge appears on their credit cards some time later. Furthermore, many of these companies provide no easy way to cancel the subscription.
To avoid hidden charges in online purchases, ask your credit-card company to issue you a disposable credit-card number that can be used only once per purchase. Another strategy is to see whether the product you're buying has a pay-by-check option, which means you don't have to provide a credit card number at all.
Finally, consider buying your security software at a brick-and-mortar store. Doing so is less convenient, but if you watch for sales, you can sometimes get a new security program every year for less than you'd pay for an online subscription renewal.
Faking the grade. It's common knowledge that many major software-download sites (including Download.com) and online merchants (such as Amazon) let customers post their own ratings and reviews. It would be nice to think that all the user-authored reviews are from unbiased customers giving their honest opinions.
Unfortunately, it's all too easy for developers to post their own stealth reviews and comments, praising their own products or slamming the competition — or both.
For example, the site TechCrunch recently reported that Slide Inc. had posted multiple positive reviews of its Funwall application on Facebook. The reviews used fake names with fake accounts, some of which have been traced to Slide's senior product manager.
Similarly, a Venture Chronicles article from last April described how employees of the company Parallels posted 5-star reviews of the firm's own product on Amazon and added less-than-kind reviews of a competing product, VMware Fusion.
Such practices are certainly nothing new, but the fact that they persist in 2008 shows that corporations still have a long way to go in their ethical practices.
Software publishers need to establish clear policies for employee behavior that — at a minimum — require their staff members to identify themselves and their employer in any reviews they post.
Unfortunately, there is little that we can do to distinguish between the authentic and fake customer comments. The only way to avoid falling into the trap is to rely on reviews in Windows Secrets and other reputable publications and Web sites.
In addition, if a company makes available trial versions of its products, you can try them out yourself with no financial risk and form your own opinion. Just make sure the trial download has all the functionality of the full release.
Nag, nag, nag. It's reasonable to assume that a free program or the trial version of a commercial product will nudge you now and then to upgrade to the paid version. But when a program you've already bought and registered keeps hitting you up for money, it's difficult to avoid getting irked.
But that's exactly what McAfee Internet Security and some other security programs do. Either they're reminding you to renew your subscription months before it's set to expire or they're pushing you to buy related products that claim to offer more protection.
Recently, a Windows Secrets editor starting seeing notices from Symantec pop up every time he booted his PC. The nag notes pointed out that he had X number of days (starting with 30) to renew his subscription to the Norton 360 security suite. The pop-ups came in bunches of five or six in quick succession, requiring that he close each one before he could continue with his work.
This went on for two weeks before he received an e-mail notice from Symantec stating that he had signed up for automatic renewals. Were the two weeks of pop-ups an attempt to double-bill a paid-up customer? Or were the bogus warnings simply an indication of Symantec not having its renewal act together? In either case, the company comes across as hostile toward its customers.
I wish I could tell you some easy way to avoid these kinds of shameless marketing tactics. Sadly, there is none. Your best bet may be to wait until your subscription expires and then try a different (and less annoying) security product.
Don't patronize obnoxious snarketers
In olden days, merchants at least paid lip service to the idea that the customer is always right. But snarketing practices such as these show total disrespect for the needs and convenience of software consumers. Such behavior by vendors suggests only a blind interest in an immediate sale without regard to encouraging brand loyalty.
If these companies think they can thrive by courting first-time buyers only, then that's their decision. But as consumers, we have a choice. Personally, I'm boycotting any vendor that isn't on the up-and-up, even if theirs is the better product.
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