The New York Attorney General’s office has slapped Symantec and McAfee with $375,000 in fines over charges they automatically renewed customer’s subscriptions without their consent.

Both companies also agreed to make clear disclosures of renewal fees when customers sign up. Automatic renewals are nothing new, and anti-virus software vendors like Symantec and McAfee say it was for their customer’s safety as auto-renewals prevent them from the risks associated with having out of date anti-virus software on their computers. However, they worked with the New York AG’s office for 2 years to improve their practices.

If you’ve decided to take the netbook plunge, you’re probably going to want to streamline the programs you use and get rid of any “crapware.” The real question is what applications do you really need for a netbook? Netbooks are meant to browse the web and take advantage of web services. Since they are somewhat underpowered, you need applications that use system resources efficiently so they don’t slow down your machine.

The writer at PCWorld was asked to take a look at a computer that was running sluggishly and experiencing odd behavior. He discovered two things-that its anti-virus program was out of date and Windows Updates had been turned off. The result? A severe malware infestation:

I got the machine patched and updated and ran an AV scan right after disconnecting it from the Internet. Thirty-two viruses came up in the form of Trojans, Rootkits and Spyware. After rebooting, the same pop ups and slow behavior continued. I ran the scan again, and only six incidents of malware showed up. Cleaned those and ran antispyware and picked up a few more. Even initiated a boot-time scan the next go around and picked up even more!

It seems that every time he rebooted the system new malware infestations showed up! Apparently some malware has become so smart that when its deleted it simply reinstalls itself automatically. Scary stuff. The writer eventually had to reinstall Windows XP to get rid of the bad stuff once and for all.

What makes this story even more troublesome is that the computer in question was part of a SOHO network. Many types of malware are network aware and eagerly spread to other computers it finds networked to the one it initially infects. This can wreak real havoc for business and organizations. The moral of the story?

Never let your anti-virus get out of date, and never completely turn off Windows Updates.

If you have succumbed to the fear of the massive damage that the Conficker worm can inflict on your computer, then you probably have spent time scouring the web for methods to protect yourself. What you may not realize is that Googling Conficker search terms can lead you to malicious sites. Malware installers have started more »

One of the popular applications being pirated today is Norton AntiVirus. I guess it makes sense that if you’re grabbing all kinds of files from who knows where, you want to make sure your system stays healthy. It looks like everyone knows the importance of having anti-virus protection on your computer. Norton AntiVirus from Symantec is a popular choice, but can prove costly if you pay the annual $35.00-$80.00 subscription fee. Let’s UnPirate Norton AntiVirus.

Our personal choice for low-cost, well actually free Windows anti-virus has been AVG for a long time now, which as you can imagine is directly related to the price. There are lots of great alternatives and I cannot or will not attempt to tell you which is the best, however if you are looking for more »

In an effort to better brand themselves Grisoft will be changing their name to better reflect their current product line. Their name will be changed to AVG Technologies, which is a name that more people will recognize thanks to their current AVG software line. They are the makers of the great and free “AVG Anti-Virus more »