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Office Depot Stops PC Health Checks During False Claims of Infection


Office Depot along with OfficeMax, sister retailer of Office Depot, stopped using the technically suspicious piece of the malware-scanning software when 2 news services have caught stores recommending for costly PC infections fixes, which didn't exist.

KIRO TV News conducted an investigation and found that 4 out of 6 stores in Seattle as well as Portland, Oregon are claiming that the out-of-the-box PCs are showing "symptoms of malware" which required similar to protection and repairs. The report reveals that the computers were never connected to Internet, and are diagnosed as malware free by IOActive, a security firm. On Friday, another team of TV News from WFXT, Boston, highlighted that same free scanning service OfficeMax offers similarly misdiagnosed 2 of 3 brand-new PCs as possibly infected.

The station has taken 6 virgin PCs to the stores of Office Depot in Washington and Oregon State, US, for investigating his claims. Their researchers have been told in 4 stores that malware infection exists on clean PCs, and hard sell were also given for the cleanup services that cost around $180 for fixing the "problems."

After that, the PCs have been given to IOActive, company of computer security. Will Longman, Security VP of the company, says that "we found no symptoms of malware when we operated them. Nor did we find any actual malware."

Thus, the Office Depot suspended the service of PC Health Check all over the nation and an investigation is going on. Theregister.co.uk posted on November 22nd, 2016, quoting a spokesperson of chain as telling on Monday to The Register that "Office Depot in no way condones any of the conduct that has been alleged in media reports."

KIRO further reported that Support.com sold the PC Health Check. Support.com is the company who with AOL, its partner, agreed for paying $8.5 Million for settling a lawsuit in 2013 alleging them for misrepresentation of free malware scans results and then for charging fees to resolve the infections that do not exist. Maria Cantwell, a US Senator, of the Washington State asked the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) for investigating on the service of Office Depot.

During past decade, fake scams of PC support have appeared as key Internet scourge, which has tricked people of hundreds of million dollars.

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