How does a security vendor lose trust? It likely begins when the company CEO becomes overly defensive and posts rants such the one at the end of this post:

“You know what pisses me off the most: Its ill-informing, mis-informing doing a disservice to users, because of our own agendas!!!! I have no problem with people liking or disliking what we have, we respect opinions, however people in the position to make a difference, abusing the trust that users have bestowed upon them by ill-informing is just plain wrong!!!”

Please pay particular attention to the words in bold in the above quotation while you consider the explanation on the Comodo website for providing a free firewall:

“You must be wondering - how can we stay in business by giving away high quality solutions that all other software vendors sell. Simply, Comodo’s main revenue comes from authenticating web business with SSL certificates (e.g. we put the padlock on websites).”

Apparently that source of revenue must not be as lucrative as one might expect since Comodo has found it necessary to add to their revenue base by including the IAC/Ask Toolbar to the most recent version of the firewall.

Circling back to the subject of a vendor losing trust and considering the above text in bold, it seems that Comodo is indeed abusing trust when, in defense of including a toolbar provided by a known adware vendor, they are suggesting that users turn off their antivirus software!

NOTE: This “Toolbar” is being detected by various Anti-virus software as Adware/Malware *THIS IS A FALSE POSTIVE!!!*, There is NO Adware, Spyware etc in this Toolbar WHAT SO EVER. If you are having problems installing the Toolbar, turn off your AV if this is the case.

Indeed, Comodo is ill-forming, mis-informing and providing a major disservice to users. As illustrated at Calendar of Updates, when the Comodo toolbar was installed and the toolbar .dll scanned at virustotal and virusscan.jotti, the following were the results:

ASKSBAR.DLL
MD5…: ccc67b6b51bf3b004c6186c2da2faa2e

A-Squared Found Adware.Win32.MySearch.i
ArcaVir Found Adware.Mysearch.I
CAT-QuickHeal 9.50 2008.05.29 AdWare.MySearch.i (Not a Virus)
ClamAV 0.92.1 2008.05.29 Adware.Mysearch-1
Fortinet 3.14.0.0 2008.05.29 Adware/MySearch
Panda 9.0.0.4 2008.05.29 Suspicious file
Sunbelt 3.0.1139.1 2008.05.29 AdWare.Win32.MySearch.i
VBA32 3.12.6.6 2008.05.29 AdWare.Win32.MySearch.i

Everyone must decide for themselves. Personally, any vendor that not only condones but recommends turning off users antivirus software and intentionally includes known adware in their software is not one that I trust.

The full text of Comodo’s ill-informing advice which is not only doing a disservice to users, but is also an abuse of trust has been preserved at Info: COMODO SafeSurf Toolbar.

Remember - “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”
May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart…