Cyber Defender Scam Internet

Cyberdefender started out as a company called Eblocs distributing a rogue anti-virus software named SpyBlocs.

Similar to modern rogue antivirus programs many people get infected with today the software would give annoying constant alerts that the user was infected trying to urge the user into paying for the fake software.

The company Eblocs was owned by by the same people who own and operate Cyber Defender Gary Gusinov, CEO was one.

The antivirus software was continually developed to purposefully show false positives in all versions up to the final release of Cyber Defender AntiSpyware 2010.

Many copies of spyblocs and CDAS 2010 are available online for you to test out on a virtual machine to see the results for yourself.

Eventually the company started offering "activation support" for the software. The support started in Ind but a small English speaking office in Los Angeles eventually began to grow with the thousands of dollars the company was making in daily revenue form each sales agent. The codes being automatically generated for the softwares would intentionally not activate correctly forcing customers to call in the 1-800 number for support.

Unfortunately the software is quite buggy and cant always be removed via normal means. Howver, if you do not pay for technical support, you will not recieve much help in removing the software form your pc.

Once a custoemr reached a support agent, the agent would viciously lie to customers telling them their PC was infected... they use many methods to try to influence these customers to pay for expensive technical support plans.

Some methods are showing the user the windows event log and claiming the errors there are due to malware, running a traceroute or ping via the command prompt and advising that the ip addressing showing are actually peopel logged on the customers pc or network, or falsifying information such as tellign the customer that msnmsgnr.exe (MSN Messenger) or DWM.exe (the windows desktop windows managment service) were really malware present on the machine.

They also run many different ad campaigns under different names (like maxmyspped or doublemyspeed) to try and "maximize" profits and avoid using the same tarnished company name.

The registry cleaning software they provide has broken many PCS, ruining Microsoft Office activation keys (rendering the software unusable), amongst many other issues. The registry cleaner also autostarts as windows service. Any tech can tell you a registry cleaner does not need to auto start and that there are many free registry cleaners available online. The reason it autostarts is to urge the user into paying for the software if they have not done so already.

The current anti-virus is now authentium's anti-virus repackaged with CyberDefender's logo, it offers no firewall and little malware protection. The software is also quite buggy detecting many false positives still and creating bluescreens, freezing, or crashes on many pcs.

The Diagnostic Technicans or Sales agents have absolutely no technical knowledge at all and many of the technicians do not either. Very few techs are able to manually remove malware and most rely on using products such as Malwarebytes or Hitman Pro to automatically remove malware for them, although these softwares do not always fix the issues.

Many of these softwares they use are not licensed for commercial use.  If they were forced to use freeware applications, most of the technicians would sadly not be able to perform their jobs.

Once you have paid for the support, if a technician has worked on a PC you will not recieve a full refund. In fact asking for a refund will not get you a refund either, you will only recieve one if you constantly ask and speak with one of the retentions agents. They are trained only to give refund if you threaten a chargeback as if the company receives so many chargebacks they will lose their merchant account.

The entire operation is eerily reminiscent of the movie boiler room with its hardselling sales team scaring customers into buying their technical support.

Most of the people who started with the company have long since left, abandoning the sinking ship before it finally filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy recently.

The entire operation was funded by Guthy Renker, an advertising firm responsible for many as seen on tv infomercials. In fact, one of the persons in charge of running the daily operations of CYDE before he left was actually directly related to the investor at GR.

In short..

The company started off infecting people with a rogue anti-virus (malware) to make money and continued this practice untill it grew large enough to purchase a semi-real anti virus from authentium. They will try as hard as they can to get your money and hold onto as much as they can. Their technicians are mostly incompetent and have very little
experience or training and rely on commercially unlicensed tools to do their jobs.

Think twice about going to this company for support or software. You've been warned by the person who knows the most.