Immoral advertising

[silviucc]

I've just stumbled upon this Avast blog post:

http://blog.avast.com/2014/02/06/going-to-the-olympics-prepare-to-be-hacked/

It piggybacks on a questionable "investigation" conducted by NBC and tries to scaremonger potential "customers" into using Avast products.

Here's why I say "questionable":

1) There is no disclosure of what actually happened on the Macs
2) We don't know what security settings those computers had. They say they were "out of the box". Did they bother to update those machines before the "experiment"?
3) How was the file on the phone downloaded and how did it actually get to be installed? Side loading is turned off on Android phones by default. This does now prevent files from being downloaded, but it does not auto-install them.

All in all, I would say the NBC piece was a piece of anti-russian propaganda for whatever political reasons. We know for a fact that public wifi is not safer anywhere else, but still... if it's Russia then it has to be "bad". We know, after the Snowden revelations, that the US, UK, Canada and others are spying on their citizens and foreigners... but, if you're in Russia for the Olympics you still should not "expect privacy".

So, why did Avast stoop so low?

[abruptum]

I'd rather be spied on by FSB than NSA,but that is just my opinion.

[bob3160]

@ Silviu C.
I think you're trying to read something into a post that isn't there.
It's a simple attempt to emphasize the advantage of using avast!'s VPN service.
It points out that any time you are someplace where your internet access is insecure,
using SecureLine is the smart thing to do.
Politics belong to the politicians. Security belongs to Avast.

[silviucc]

There were plenty of other ways to advertise their VPN offering instead of using that terrible piece from NBC.

If you are one of the thousands of visitors headed to Sochi, Russia for Friday’s 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony then you will be hacked. Richard Engel, from NBC news, reported that it’s not if you get hacked, it’s when, and he discovered that it starts from the moment you turn on your device

/facepalm

[bob3160]

There were plenty of other ways to advertise their VPN offering instead of using that terrible piece from NBC.

If you are one of the thousands of visitors headed to Sochi, Russia for Friday’s 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony then you will be hacked. Richard Engel, from NBC news, reported that it’s not if you get hacked, it’s when, and he discovered that it starts from the moment you turn on your device

/facepalm

Maybe you don't understand the art of advertising
Someone has already got many peoples attention so if you use that to demonstrate your point,
You've already accomplished half of your task.
You're taking something personally which is the wrong way to look at this.
To each their own.....

[silviucc]

I understand advertising just fine. Thank you.

Using a piece of bad journalism to convince someone to use your product is bad and lazy. They should slap an "As Seen On TV" logo on there. I hear that is all the rage these days.

Here:

[Pondus]

Using a piece of bad journalism ......

what is bad about it?

[silviucc]

* fearmongering that you're going to get hacked as soon as you step of the plane.
* they insinuate that such a thing could only happen in Russia, they show no actual malware being downloaded on the phone
* they never show how the supposed malware installed itself on the phone
* they never say what the security settings on the supposed hacked Macs were
* they never say whether the "out of the box" Macs were updated or not
* they never show how the Macs actually were hacked
* they never showed the effects the hacks had on either the phone or the Macs

There's no proof shown of anything. They just say a bunch of stuff confirmed by some dude that supposedly is an "expert". And they also show what appears to be a packet sniffer running on a maximised terminal window on a Ubuntu machine. 3l1t3 stuff indeed.

Yeah, top notch reporting there. Nothing bad about it... Carry on.

[Pondus]

* they never say what the security settings on the supposed hacked Macs were
* they never say whether the "out of the box" Macs were updated or not

it was not a security program test

as i see it, they just tested if the birds of pray are monitoring the net in sochi (who ever they are... FSB or just bandits) and would attack as soon as they get a chance

my guess is that if it was FSB you would not notice

[polonus]

Well it is an advert, right, and an advert is a particular form of representation of reality. They could have taken a real life example of Open WiFi with a vulnerable Moscow MikroTik router from a Sochi school in that neigbourhood,- very insecure - but you have to envisage that right for the audience, so you use an already existing presentation to communicate your message. We know the real life examples from the advert one, but is that really important? And I do not see any "Immorality" there - what is more immoral a peanut brand ad or this? But it demonstrates that "users" now can get upset about almost anything!

polonus

[silviucc]

The immoral part is using a third party's piece of political propaganda to convince people to use your product in order to "stay safe" from "hackerz"

There's the part where the guy says that he got a piece of malware just by visiting a page related to the Sochi events. If he got it from that site how is a VPN supposed to protect him?

But hey, it's reality as envisioned by the marketers which has nothing to do with how things happen in the real world. Who cares? Right?

[George Yves]

Visitors to Russia can expect to be hacked,” said NBC’s anchorman Brian Williams as he introduced the report.

Yes, visitors to Russia can expect to be caught, fried and eaten.

But seriously, the advertising service of Avast chose, to put it mildly, not the best example of an anti-Russian rhetoric for their advertising.

[bob3160]

We obviously have some folks on here who would rather discuss Politics instead of Security.
Security is a valid topic.... Politics is NOT

[George Yves]

We obviously have some folks on here who would rather discuss Politics instead of Security.
Security is a valid topic.... Politics is NOT

Can you imagine the reaction of many Russian users, if they read this "masterpiece" of advertising art?

[polonus]

Well as a rule Russians are very sympathetic and friendly open people with their sensitive and honorable Slavonic hearts.
Mind you they formed part of our culture.
Of course there are some that do not fall into that realm, but I won't mention those here. e.g. - Kriminalnaya rossiya.
And open Wifi is a threat all over the globe, whether in Sochi or Los Angeles period.

polonus