Renewal Buddy: Comparison Shopping for Anti-Virus Software
Summary: A comparison shopping site called renewalbuddy.com launched a month before this March 2011 column to help customers find discounted anti-virus deals instead of paying full renewal prices; the author found Norton Internet Security 2011 for $29.99 through the site versus a $62.99 renewal price cited from Symantec's site. RenewalBuddy CEO Graham O'Reilly, a former sales director of AVG's U.K. division, said a license key is a license key and can extend an existing license without reinstalling, while the site earns most of its revenue from referral commissions on 'switch offer' buttons that promoted Panda Internet Security 2011 on one visit and Kaspersky Internet Security on another.
Why it matters: Readers in the comments charged that the site was effectively a Kaspersky reseller masquerading as independent, and O'Reilly confirmed it was showing a Kaspersky switch offer at the time - a reminder that 'independent' comparison tools can be funded by the vendors they rank.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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