Free Antivirus & Business: This Is How Computer Security Works & Makes Money

We all understand the Antivirus Software business model: you pay a license (or a monthly fee) and you have the right to use a program. And we also understand that when a software or online service is free, then the company that has made it earns income in another way, taking advantage of things like our data. Google and Facebook are the kings in this.

Does it translate the same way with antivirus? In the case of paid antivirus, yes, because you simply pay a subscription or a license to be able to use them on your Windows computer. But what about the antivirus that are free? How do they get the money they need to keep running?

The "freemium" model to take advantage of free attention

One of the formulas that free antivirus uses is precisely to amass a good community of users and take advantage of it to promote a series of optional services that cost money. It is enough that a certain part of that community agrees to pay and we already have a business that sustains itself: in October Avast was valued at two billion dollars and revenues of 300 million dollars were forecast for 2015 (40% more than last year).

Those responsible for Avast Antivirus describe it like this on their official website: they have more than 230 million users who use the free database, and who are receiving information on specialized payment plans with improvements for both individuals and companies. Paying users are those who hold “payroll, rent, costs of developing and analyzing new threats that arrive daily and support for all users.”

However, that has not made Avast have a controversial episode. Four years ago the company had to suspend the alliance with a third-party company that was in charge of its technical support, as suspicions arose that such support was misleading users into paying for help they did not need. Fortunately the problem ended there and Avast was not directly responsible.

Bitdefender is another example of this freemium model: a free basic service for everyone, which serves as the basis for offering more complete payment solutions and thus getting a group of subscribers to stay in business. We will not know their 2015 revenues for a few months, but in 2014 they expected that they would grow 50%.

Scareware, Adware and other "express" methods to earn income

Unfortunately, the freemium model is not exempt from unethical practices. How to Geek has a "catalog of horrors" that proves it to us: many security programs resort to tricks such as changing the search engine configured by default in your browser, installing those horrible toolbars that are useless in it, or installing adware in form of absurd utilities on the computer. The latter is usually done by AVG in its free services, and its fiscal year 2015 was a record: $ 428.3 million in revenue.

Avast is once again an example here: in October 2014 the company was accused of using adware to collect the browsing history of its users, which the program's director of operations denied in his support forums.

Avira wants to install adware extensions, Zone Alarm wants to make its official website the home page of your browser, Panda Free wants to put Yahoo as the default search engine in the browser ... all free solutions have some other promotion. And when it offers you legitimate software there is no problem, the bad thing comes when what you install has no use other than affecting the performance of your computer and placing more ads than the account.

And of course there are cases like Mac Keeper, with an advertising campaign so aggressive that many users end up hating the software. In my training I have met many Mac users who do not even know that they have Mac Keeper installed, since you only need to click on one of those banners disguised as system messages for everything to install without your permission.

In fact, Mac Keeper could be considered a good example of the concept of Scareware, because it exaggerates the security dangers to cause the false feeling that the application is essential. Those responsible for the program have faced much criticism and have even denounced those who criticized them negatively. The worst thing is that this style of business works for them, because those complaints contained figures of 650,000 licenses sold in the United States. And that means $ 26 million in revenue.

Are there agreements between companies to flag false threats?

Freemium, installation of malicious or ad-supported programs, change of home websites and default search engines is there any other method by which a Free Antivirus can make money? Hussein Nasser pointed to another on his blog a few years ago that shows us how "creative" they can be.

The screenshot that you can see above is a warning from an antivirus, warning that it has detected an "infectious malware" which is actually a patch to skip the paid license of a game. Okay, it is Antivirus Software made by cracker to be able to play a paid game for free, but nothing beyond that. The suspicion: Antivirus can charge companies to detect those patchers as malicious programs to scare the user.

Be careful: this does not mean that the patches that crack licenses cannot contain malware. In fact, that is a real threat. But there are already those who wonder on websites like Quora if Antiviruses effectively detect these specific threats or if they simply treat any patch known as malware to motivate people to buy more and crack less.