Darknet – The Darkside

The shocking statistic first, “56% of consumers do not have active anti-virus on their PCs”, ok not that shocking but still a bit worrying. Allthough asking if your average user doesn’t protect themselves on the internet conjures up images of the pope squatting in the woods.

The basic F-Secure anti-virus product protects against viruses and spyware. When installed it scans a machine and alerts users if it finds malicious programs installed.

A spokesman for Barclays denied that the deal was a way to limit its liabilities if customers were defrauded.

“We have a guarantee that if anyone is defrauded through no fault of their own we guarantee their money is safe,” he said.

“We’re trying to stop fraud happening in the first place which is beneficial to them and us,” he added.

Barclays is the latest bank to try to stop customers falling victim to viruses or other computer-borne scams.

So Barclays bank have leapt into action and decided its time to act on it, 4 years after their online service was activated. Their giving all their online customers free AV protection, provided by F-Secure. Barclays have bought 1.6million licenses (I wonder what per unit price they got on that?) and the software will include 2 years free updates. What happens after that? Probably 56% of their customers will be unprotected again.

Source: BBC News