Sales Pitches From McAfee, NortonLifeLock Stuck in Bygone Era

Hey y’all, it’s Austin, with some urgent news: My computer, and presumably yours, is in perilous danger. As McAfee Corp. has repeatedly warned me lately in radioactive-red pop-ups, “Emerging cyber-attack techniques threaten devices worldwide and may let hackers: steal your passwords; infiltrate private photos, emails, documents; [and] exploit hardware flaws in your devices.”

According to the McAfee promotion, which is built into my Windows desktop, I have only two options: click the “accept risk” button or renew my $120-per-year subscription for their antivirus software. For PC users, these types of five-alarm cybersecurity ads will be familiar, a scare tactic ubiquitous since the dawn of the internet. The crazy thing is that they still seem to work, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.