On the eve of the execution of the Kama Sutra worm my EZTrust AV and Firewall by Computer Associates, stopped working.
An IE window from Digital River kept popping up asking me to pay for my renewal and tellingn me I had no AV or Firewall. I had already paid an annual renewal fee on December 15, 2005. I checked the expiry date marked on the software and yes it said that their software expired on 02/02/2006. Not a good deal for an "annual" fee that lasts only 6 weeks.
The end of November 2005 I started being harrassed everytime I logged in to my computer by IE popups asking me to renew my annual subscription for EZArmour, and also offering me a deal to upgrade to Computer Associates EZ Internet Security Suite, if I renewed then. The expiry date for EZArmour was December 23, 2005. I wrote their customer service dept. and asked why I should renew before my subscription expired because I had lost almost a month when I renewed the previous year. (The previous year, my subscription was to expire at the end of January 2005. I renewed on December 23, 2004 and they set my annual renewal date to December 23rd, so I lost a month of the "annual fee" I had paid the previous year. )
They responded saying that they would make sure the expiry date was December 23, 2006, if I downloaded their software then. So I went to the website that handles renewals: Digital River.com on December 15, 2005 and renewed, only to find that they would only allow me to download EZArmour, not the upgrade they had been harrassing me with. So I wrote customer service again. I finally was given a download link to receive EZ Internet Security Suite and a new License Key. After downloading and installing the software, it again "expired" several times, on several different days. After writing Customer Service 3 times, the IE popups asking me to renew, finally stopped....until February 2, 2006.
Then all of a sudden on February 2nd at 5:47 pm, an IE window from Digital River, started popping up which contained my information, my license key and credit card information, asking me to pay my renewal fee by agreeing that they could charge my credit card. I immediately wrote customer service. As the hours passed, knowing I had no protection from the kama sutra worm I installed AVG free in the interim and sent another email to customer service. I also tried the other license key I had been given by customer service when I renewed, but it also showed that it had expired 02/02/2006. I tried re-installing the software, but no dice, it still had "expired" that day.
The evening wore on, and after IE popping up several times asking me to renew, I found a notice on their website, that they had a "glitch" in their updates that day that had failed to take, and asking people not to write to customer service about it. My AV wasn't working, neither was my firewall...a glitch you say...if the worm had managed to get on my PC ...
Well, I wrote customer service again anyway, as I found it outrageous that they didn't care what they had done, so much so that they didn't want to hear about it. They did not mention in the notice that people had no AV or Firewall, or apologize for it.
Finally I shut down for the night and when I logged in the following day, the expiry date had changed back to December 23, 2006 and it appeared that my AV and Firewall were functioning normally.
However, since then I get a daily popup asking me to register my software. I registered it on February 3rd then again on the 4th and again on the 5th.
The "glitch" certainly could have caused many people to be infected by the Kama Sutra worm, and many other viruses or trojans. To top it all off, I have yet to hear from customer service about any of the emails I sent that day. I just hope that no one paid them money to renew, when it wasn't their renewal date. If they did, I hope they ask for a refund plus interest.
I am really getting tired of Computer Associates and their EZ line of products. Though the products are good, after all the harrassment, and now the "glitch" which prevented the software from functioning for a number of hours, I will certainly think twice before I renew again. For now, I will continue to use the EZ Internet Suite because I have paid for it, but will also keep AVG free on hold, in case there is another "glitch".