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John McAfee on How To Uninstall McAfee Antivirus (youtube.com)
162 points by techinsidr on June 19, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 49 comments



I haven't really kept up on McAfee news, isn't he wanted for murder somewhere? But I thought the vid was hilarious!

I have to say, the McAfee AV on Windows is pretty much as described. I have to support it for clients, and often, when I get complaints about PC slow down or freezes, one of the first things I do is to disable all the McAfee services.

Anyone recommend better competitors to McAfee?


Everything from prayer upwards is better than McAfee except the Norton $#|&'s.

My standard win setup is Security Essentials, UAC up to the max and commodo firewall and Sandboxie for trainers and the like. So far nothing has passed.


EMET is a good thing to be running too - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2458544


>So far nothing has passed.

Nothing that you know of anyway.


Well I do make audits with other tools from time to time booted from another OS. Also blocking flash and having vmware instances for the real dangerous stuff helps.

And anything that is smart enough to subvert that is usually used by NSA and the likes and I doubt I have gotten their attention.


Any downsides you've noticed to those programs/settings?

Also not sure what is meant by "for trainers and the like" ?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trainer_%28games%29

  > programs made to modify behaviour of a computer game


Trainers, memory editors, mods and everything else that is of not verifiable origin.


isn't he wanted for murder somewhere? But I thought the vid was hilarious!

I imagine murderers are capable of both killing and comedy, though not necessarily at the same time.


One must try to keep the laughter in slaughter.


For free soft, I used to install AV, but it had horrible chance of getting messed up by user by installing 30 days trial and blocking me running my small viruses on my own comupter. MSE all the way, no way to accidentally install trial and allows to run everything I want.


So MSE is good because it doesn't block YOUR VIRUSES? Not the most solid praise I've heard.


Let me rephrase it. It allows me to be in control when I want it. If I choose to run something it THINKS is malicious, it will let me. It is decently hidden menu for a casual user, but easy enough for people who need it. With AVG only way was to allow certain directories and it was buried under menus.


I'd had great experiences with NOD32 on my personal PCs in the past. Haven't used anything in a while, and nothing in a business setting.


> isn't he wanted for murder somewhere?

This was certainly effective in getting me to catch up on the story. Good PR move?


Freely[0] available MS Security Essentials tops on Windows, in both performance and protection. I've tried them all, all the famous ones at least.

[0]As in free milk bottle.


Yeah, get a Mac


I'm a Mac user, and my blood boils when I hear people say this. It's so incredibly smug and lacking in any sense of social sensitivity. I've been on the receiving end.

[At a moderately busy coffee shop]

I sit down with my MacBook to send a few quick emails. A man -- also using a Mac -- sits at the table in front of me, facing away from me. I pull my laptop out and open it up. It recovers from sleep, and I connect to the free WiFi. I've used it many times in the past without issue, but today, I cannot get any web pages to respond.

I say meekly to the man sitting in front of me: "Excuse me, are you able to connect to the WiFi?"

Him: "Yep."

Me: "That's strange, I'm able to connect, but I can't get any web pages to load."

Him: "Get a Mac."

Me: "I've already got one, thanks for nothing."

I understand the imposition I made on him, but hearing "get a Mac" just had me seething. I'd never had an opportunity to say those words to someone else, so I'm not trying to claim any moral high-ground here, but I knew at that moment that I'd never say them should the opportunity arise.


And for those with computers people can be bothered to write virii for because of the massive market share, I would suggest Microsoft Security Essentials or if you have windows 8, don't bother with AV as it is built in.


And get the Flashback trojan -- no user interaction required!


And how would exactly getting a mac protect him from malware when he dual boots to windows?


dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1 bs=512

Boom. Problem solved.


Why are you specifying such a small block size? bs=1M or more is much quicker for that sort of thing


Probably worth noting that depending on your office culture, this may be NSFW.


I like how self aware he is of how people think he is crazy.


Didn't he "allegedly" murder someone?


Allegedly. The rule of law in the Caribbean is sketchy at best, and corruption is rampant. You're more likely to get robbed, framed, or killed by the police than to receive any kind of help or justice.


I believe the story turned into one of extortion by a politition looking for millions in donations.


A bit much.


Pretty funny, although still crazy.

McAfee bought Dr. Solomon's AV in 1997.

If you don't want to have issues with AV, just don't use any and don't click on anything and sit behind a firewalled router.

If you have MFE installed: 1) disable OAS (On Access Scan) if it's slowing you down, re-enable it if your kids/family members that click attachments get on your computer 2) Set full scans only to be done in the middle of the night, or never (manually update), but don't expect the AV to protect you if you forget. 3) Set updates to only run only in the middle of the night or never (manually update), but see above about forgetting.

Now you ask yourself, why in the F would someone's AV (any vendor) crank up in the middle of the day and screw me? If and when new important virus's are found (like Flame), the signature for that virus may be pushed out immediately, triggering a full scan. In the case of Flame the signer(Microsoft) was revoked, triggering a new full scan.

Why is AV so slow? Most AV vendors have a huge signature of virii, and have to search each file for matching patterns (often having to match different sections of the file). Each new virus adds a new pattern, and adds just that little bit more overhead. There are some projects to do a predictive engine, but that requires overhead itself, and ends up really needing a lot more resources (block on every action while your predictive engine determines if the process doing the action is behaving or not, like having a Big Brother hanging out in your OS).

I use both MFE and Windows on different computers, and remember, even if you install another AV, Windows Defender is still partially enabled on Win8+, probably because Windows is taking security more seriously.


This is the best post I've ever seen on Hacker News


Wasn't he on the run and wanted for murder?


The fact he's running free and wild in the US shows that they don't take the Belize government's allegations seriously. Nor should they...


Could just run OpenBSD, where instead of blocking malware, you just don't let bugs rot in the software....


This is hilarious. And I want to see a King Dotcom verse John Mcafee video please. I think it could be fun.


They need to become the dark knights of the internet, protecting us from all the white knightery going around lately.


Is he still hanging out in Miami?


The credits at the end state that most of the actresses were hired through a firm in Portland, so I'd assume he's in Oregon, where summer days aren't 90°F.


Yes, he's in Portland from last I heard.


In completely unrelated news no-one has registered ishnreddityet.com


cough :)


I salute you sir.


He is like the Kim Dotcom of skinny people.


Skinny people? I don't think we were watching the same video.


In comparison to Dotcom, we are all skinny people.


He's quite good looking for his age.


American skinny, not real world skinny.

Just like how obese is "curvy" or "chubby" over there


Rather the elderly tattooed


This guy is good. Living the life his way. But wasn't he supposed to be in a jail[0] or sth and didn't he lose all his money[1] in the bubble burst?

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee#Legal_problems

[1]http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=8462247 and http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/fcc5bdda-3f36-11e2-a095-00144feabd...




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