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Kim Zetter
PC Security on the Installment Plan
McAfee.com subscription security
Buying antivirus protection in installments feels like making a
monthly payment to Tony Soprano and family for protection. But extortion the
subscription security services are not. I tried the company's VirusScan Online
and Personal Firewall services, each of which costs $30 a year. I'll stick with
VirusScan Online, which uses real-time distributed computing techniques to
provide dynamic security alerts. If a Klez worm is on the loose in Bonn,
Germany, for example, a pop-up message alerts me and updates my virus
definitions before the worm ever wiggles past the German border. I canceled
Personal Firewall, though. I felt strong-armed when McAfee.com said both my
work and home computers were "highly vulnerable to being attacked" despite my
having a corporate firewall to protect the former and a router firewall to
guard the latter.
--Tom Spring
