Results & analysis of poll #001

Rob Rosenberger, Vmyths co-founder
Tuesday, 21 September 2004

IN OUR FIRST unscientific poll of Vmyths readers, we asked "did you know some antivirus firms offer a true 100% virus detection guarantee, or your money back?" We offered four choices:

More than half of respondents didn't know some antivirus firms offer a true 100% virus detection guarantee, or your money back.

More than a quarter of respondents refused to believe it.

Yes, I knew that
No, I didn't know that
I've heard of it, but I refuse to believe it
[Type your own answer]

A total of 171 people responded to our poll, with 58% saying "I didn't know that," 13% saying "I knew that," and 21% saying "I refuse to believe it." Fourteen people submitted their own answers. Of these, one could be described as "I didn't know that," one could be described as "I knew that," and twelve could be described as "I refuse to believe it." Two common themes emerged: "read the fine print" and "when pigs fly." If we re-distribute those answers, we'd get 58% saying "I didn't know that," 13% saying "I knew that," and 28% saying "I refuse to believe it." In other words, more than half of respondents didn't know some antivirus firms offer a true 100% virus detection guarantee, or your money back — and more than a quarter of respondents refused to believe it. MessageLabs offers a 100% virus detection guarantee, so I asked chief technology officer Mark Sunner to comment on our poll. "I am entirely unsurprised by these results," he said. "There is still a great reluctance among many traditional desktop AV vendors to put their money where their mouth is and as such the like to keep initiatives like this shrouded in smoke and mirrors by dismissing them as mere a marketing ploy. Which of course if you think about it says a lot about the vendors in question, i.e. they are obviously uncomfortable about their approach and ability to deliver — which is not wholly unsurprising when dealing with protection methodologies that have remained unchanged in over a decade(!) when as we all know the problem itself has changed substantially." [Editor's note: Vmyths refuses to run ads for antivirus products & services in order to maintain our independence.] MessageLabs wonk Alex Shipp explained why they can offer a 100% virus detection guarantee:

Our service level agreement is an important differentiator between us and our competition. Every AV [antivirus] company says that "we have the best AV." Since our proven track record in detecting new malware in email was far better than everyone else, we tried to find some way of differentiating ourselves. We could have said "we have the best AV," but that would just be playing "me too" with the rest of the pack. So we came up with the [100%] service level agreement. It's a ballsy way of saying we are the best, daring the other AV companies to match us. None have. To be fair, it's not a level playing field. Desktop AV companies could not offer this kind of agreement because they would be out of business within the week. Because we only scan email, we can put much stronger defences in place. So really we are trying to differentiate ourselves from our competitors in the managed email arena, none of whom offer anything like this. We are also trying to show that it is worth having both desktop and us protecting you, because desktop AV in general does not detect new viruses, wheras we do.

"It's one thing to refuse to believe AV stops all viruses, but another to refuse to believe AV stops all viruses, or your money back. It's like saying 'I bought insurance for my house, but I don't believe they will pay out if I get burgled."

("None of whom offer anything like this" may be just a little bit harsh. A competitor, Avecho.com, brags how they've "operated without passing a single email virus, worm or trojan since 2002.")
SHIPP DESCRIBES HIS firm's guarantee as a service level agreement. "The word 'guarantee' had different shades of meaning in different countries," he explained. "Now we say that if we let a virus through, that breaks our service level agreement, so you get your money back." Shipp admitted "we still have problems with people not believing we can do what we do, so I now have a 2 hour technical lecture showing the things we do that you just cannot do on a desktop (due to memory/speed/disk size limitations)." Shipp made an interesting observation about the disbelievers in our unscientific poll. "It's one thing to refuse to believe AV stops all viruses, but another to refuse to believe AV stops all viruses, or your money back. It's like saying 'I bought insurance for my house, but I don't believe they will pay out if I get burgled."

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