AV engines are designed in such a way that they flag any Application which want to install unwanted files onto the systems critical components and NOD32 was doing the same but was it doing the right thing? Viber doesnt think so! Viber is one of the fastest growing tech companies offering video calling(VoIP) and instant messaging services and has expanded from smartphones and tablets to PCs since 2013. Since then NOD32 has been flagging Viber installation on PCs, Viber took a strong exception to this fact and on 15th December tweeted that Eset’s NOD32 was a ‘buggy software’ and advised users to uninstall it. The tweet which is reproduced below had a image of the popup thrown up by NOD32 with a overlay saying #EsetSucks in bright big red letters.
— Viber (@Viber) December 15, 2014 ESET did not take to this insult lightly and tweeted back with a image of its own. Eset put up a image of the Viber installation’s source code showing details of silent downloads and statistics. They also put a message for Viber that for them user’s privacy came first and added a”#esetDOESNTsuck” hashtag at the end of their tweet.
— ESET (@esetglobal) December 17, 2014 It remains to be seen, which of these two tech firms will win this Twitter war but ESET has a habit of flagging innocuous applications as ‘potential threats’ and no, Viber doesnt install a toolbar onto Internet Explorer. Further the installer source code put up by ESET states a certain “HTTPDownloadInSilent” push request. HTTPDownloadInSilent is GET request used by companies to notify them of a completed error free installation or report them back in case there is a error without popping up error messages on the user interface. Eset seems to be on wrong side regarding sending app statistics silently. All tech companies do that, even browsers do that with cookies which are similar silent statistics. And of course, ESET may hear soon from Viber’s legal team by leaking out Viber installer source code because Viber’s terms of use state that “You may not copy … decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, attempt to derive the source code of, modify, or create derivative works of the Licensed Application, any updates, or any part thereof” in their EULA. Which side are you on?
