As long as American companies outsource their support to India and other countries, this sort of thing is going to happen. Symantec makes enough money to keep its support in the country in which its doing business. In this case, a U.S. customer was talking to an unqualified support tech, most likely in India.
Maybe it's a good Christian ideal to forgive and forget, but I don't see Symantec's apology as a step in the right direction. It's foolish to think that this is an isolated incident. What about all the other "Bill P's" out there? What about all the other good programs that Symantec has incorrectly identified over the years. Did they contact their authors and apologize.
Symantec has a long history of using its brand name to sell an inferior product with inferior support.
Genuflecting to Symantec because they apologized to Bill P. is ludicrous. They apologized because this one incident was all over the Web thanks to Bill P, Security Garden, Cloudeight and others who published articles about it.
They aren't sorry it happened, they're sorry they got caught.
TC
Hi Corrine,
I wanted to let you know that we've been in touch with Bill Pytlovany and have reached out to the original customer who called support.
Symantec does not classify WinPatrol as a threat, and we're actively investigating this customer's experience to learn more about why the support agent provided incorrect information and to ensure it doesn't happen again.
Best,
Noah Edwardsen
Symantec