As many of you in the Dallas area may have seen lately, a company called “FinallyFast” is heavily advertising on television. Their product is a program that they promise will speed up your computer by clearing out the junk files that accumulate on computers over time.
You would think that as a bankruptcy lawyer, I would never fall victim to a scam. Unfortunately, I saw one of the commercials while I was waiting impatiently for a webpage to load on my laptop, which has become increasingly slow over the past few months. In a weak moment, I went to the website and downloaded the program, after paying $30.00 for the privilege.
At first, I was pleasantly surprised. My computer did indeed speed up noticeably, and I was very happy with the result. However, when I turned on my computer the next morning, I was greeted by a succession of Viagra ads, porno websites, and warnings that I needed to go back to the website and download the company’s anti-virus program. For another $30.00, of course.
Fortunately, I wasn’t that gullible, and I tried to go to the websites for Microsoft, Norton, and McAfee to download a reputable anti-virus program. The FinallyFast program blocked all my efforts to go to those websites, and I had to give up and go buy a program to load manually.
When I told the salesman at the computer store what was going on, he told me that the program might not allow me to load the Norton software I had purchased. He was right. My first attempts to load the program failed. Fortunately, Norton had a fix for that on the CD, and I was finally able to load the program.
Instantly, the virus was detected and eliminated. I was so relieved, and immediately did what I should have done to begin with — researched the website from which I had downloaded the program. I found hundreds of consumer complaints, and added my experience to every website I could find that addressed the problem.
And, of course, I should already have had a good anti-virus program installed on my computer. The program I had expired a few months ago, and I had planned to buy a new computer, so I didn’t resubscribe. Then I forgot about it, until I needed it. Never again. I hope my experience will keep a few people from the same expense and frustration.