I was reading a story at Computerworld earlier that made me think about how the porn industry makes gobs money on the internet, and has since the first porn sites were developed.

As a matter of fact I remember reading a story in one of the big business magazines some years ago, sorry I don’t remember which one now, about the business model porn sites use to keep their customers happy and spending money.

Now it appears, I thought with a laugh, that the anti-virus companies are starting to learn from the porn industry. The Computerworld story talks about how McAfee has joined Symantec and Microsoft in the auto-renewal of your subscription every year on your credit card unless you opt out.

That is exactly what porn sites do. If you sign up for a membership, your credit card is charged every month by default, unless you cancel before the next billing date. Actually, porn sites even make it easy to opt out or cancel a membership. They hope you will come back some day.

McAfee, Symantec, and Microsoft don’t make it easy or friendly. They seem to have learned how to increase the cash flow, good for them, but not how to make it easy for the customer to cancel or even switch to another vendor, bad for us.

Just like the porn sites, when you sign up for one of their anti-virus products online, the auto renewal feature is the default action. There is no opting out or canceling it until at least one month later in one case.

They big three are saying that it is for the good of the customer to protect their computers and those of others that they communicate with. All in all, not a bad idea. But, the customer service side of this stinks.

So, as low as it might sound, again, the porn industry has beaten some of the biggest computer software companies in the game of customer service and knowing how to please and/or keep the customer.

As I am not a fan of any of their services because the are invasive and intrusive to the performance of the operating system, I will continue to use other products that many times seem to do a better job anyway. In some cases FREE software.

What do I use? Trend Micro’s products, NOD32, Kaspersky, and AVG (Free).

The moral of the story? Be very careful when buying your anti-virus or security software online. Especially from McAfee, Symantec, and Microsoft.