Aug26Written by:Will
8/26/2009
Scare tactics happen too often these days. You see them in the news, politics, sports, commercials, and so on. This is not new to us. For example, most pharmaceutical ads basically tell us that we will die if we don't talk to our doctor and begin using their product. The HPV ads are the worst at this. Now, we are on to the average consumer and their PC.
I have been hearing and seeing ads for products like CleanPCToday, where they scare the average person into thinking that their PC is infected with viruses before the commercial even ends. I am sure that if you have family members like I have, you will undoubtedly be asked about this product, or one like it. Your Aunt Jane will buy this up immediately. But why?
(FYI - I didn't link that company on purpose. I don't want them to have the benefit of the link.)
This commercial uses statements such as, "Does your email take more than 3 seconds to open? This is a tell-tell sign of virus activity on your PC." Give me a break! Many programs can potentially take more than 3 seconds to open up. There is a plethora of reasons to explain this, only one of which being a virus.
Be prepared to answer that phone call from your Aunt Jane, asking you to stop by because her PC is still slow, even though she installed that latest speed-up-my-PC product from the infomercial last night.
How can you avoid Aunt Jane from calling you for something this stupid though? Well, there is no real way to do that without disowning your favorite Aunt. You could fix the PC, but that will warrant plenty of future tech support calls. You could point her to a PC support service, but then your favorite Aunt may have to fork out some outrageous fees to that service for something that could have been fixed at a fraction of the price.
I say, fix the PC, and downgrade your Aunt's profile to a Guest account. Ha! That'll teach her. Just kidding. Our Aunt Jane's are all different, so I would love to hear how you handle this.
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