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To handle the cost of the legal defense, which is a whopping $100,000 (€91,000), Bleeping Computer has put up a GoFundMe campaign and is also taking donations via PayPal.
#MALWAREBYTE BLEEPING FREE#
The site is now calling on its users to help it defend its right to free speech. In many past instances where people that got rid of ransomware recovered their personal files and wanted to give money back to the site's operators, users were told to donate to local charities instead.
#MALWAREBYTE BLEEPING SOFTWARE#
In recent years, Bleeping Computer has become one of the darling sites of the tech and infosec communities, after its members, together with various security researchers, helped crack numerous ransomware families and provide decrypting software free of charge. "Enigma Software doesn't like this post and instead of publicly defending their product, they are trying to bully us into censoring it," he explains. Abrams considers the entire lawsuit to be an attempt to censor his website and focused only on removing a negative review. SLAPP stands for "strategic lawsuit against public participation" and refers to lawsuits that come with such a high cost of legal defense fees that the plaintiff, even if right, may sometimes bow down to the opposition just to escape the mounting financial costs. In a statement on its site, Bleeping Computer's owner, Lawrence Abrams, says that "the hallmark of an SLAPP suit, which is what we think this is, is to file a frivolous claim to try and silence your opponent." Bleeping Computer calls it an assault on free speech On the other hand, it's quite hard not to take Bleeping Computer's criticism seriously, especially since the person that wrote it also included external references to the stated facts. In its lawsuit, Enigma Software claims that all statements made on the Bleeping Compute were false and posted only to make users believe that Malwarebytes was a better product for the sole purpose of earning Bleeping Computer a commission out of redirecting users to Malwarebytes' website. The problem may reside in the fact that the Bleeping Computer topic is in the top 3 search results for Google search queries like "spyhunter review" or "spyhunter vs malwarebytes." On the other hand, a quick Internet search reveals forum topics similar to the one on Bleeping Computer.
![malwarebyte bleeping malwarebyte bleeping](https://www.bleepstatic.com/download/screenshots/m/malwarebytes-anti-malware-for-mac/install-malwarebytes-for-mac.gif)
Enigma Software files slander lawsuit against Bleeping ComputerĪccording to a lawsuit filed in the US Southern District Court of New York on January 8, 2016, Enigma Software is accusing Bleeping Computer's parent company, Bleeping Computer LLC, of false advertising, commercial disparagement, and defamation.Įnigma Software claims that, because Bleeping Computer participates in an affiliate program run by Malwarebytes for which it receives a commission for every new customer they send their way, Bleeping Computer has a direct interest in promoting a negative review of SpyHunter on their forum. The issue at the core of this dispute is a forum topic started in September 2014, after a user asked for support from the Bleeping Computer community to help him choose from three anti-malware products that included SpyHunter, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (MBAM), and IObit. Enigma Software, the company behind the SpyHunter anti-malware software product, has filed a lawsuit against Bleeping Computer, a tech news site, after one of its moderators posted a bad review of Spyhunter on their forum.