ESET now censoring content!!

[sagelike 0]

I discovered today that ESET is now censoring content based on reputation which has absolutely NOTHING to do with malware or privacy/info protection. 

I went to visit a website of woman who is a biologist, researcher and dives the Great Barrier Reef. She does good work and I've been to her site before. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her website however the subject matter is often climate related and she does not hew to climate orthodoxy. So I received a warning that she had a bad reputation. WTF!

This is why it was blocked and it has nothing to do with malware! It's blatant censorship.

ESET has ONE job and that is to protect my computers and devices from malware and other illegal attempts to steal information from me.

ESET has absolutely NO BUSINESS determining what is appropriate or inappropriate content for me or anyone to read. This is completely unacceptable and is part of the same evil trend in Big Tech to stifle and censor content. The worst part is most users will see this warning and assume it's a malware threat which it isn't and this makes this form of censorship far more insidious than facebook or google censorship which is more obvious.

I have been a long time user of ESET and have recommended it to my customers for years. I will be replacing ESET as soon as I find a better replacement and I will disparage ESET at every opportunity to my customers and on social media!

Sincerely,
Glenn T

 

[Marcos 5,074]

We do not censor websites. Please provide the url which is allegedly blocked.

[sagelike 0]

BS. I have never in the more than 10 years I have used ESET seen this type of warning. This a NEW feature and it clearly had to do with the nature of the content and had nothing to do with malware or information theft and the notification made that clear.

I have seen ESET malware warnings for websites before and they are very different and make it clear the threat is malware related. 

This is the site:  https://jennifermarohasy.com/

There is absolutely no way this site should have been flagged and it is clear to me that it was flagged because the site promotes so-called 'climate change skepticism'. That's censorship!

If ESET is flagging this site based on the nature of the content then it will flag other websites which don't hew to orthodoxy of one kind or another. 

Edited April 15, 2022 by sagelike

[Marcos 5,074]

The website was blocked as a PUA (ie. you could choose to continue to the website) due to a malicious javascript that was there a few months ago. Since the malware appears to have been removed, we have unblocked it.

[sagelike 0]

Then why didn't it have the typical malware warning which I've seen before? This warning appeared to be content related and not about malware. 

Nevertheless, I will be watching this closely to see if it happens again on other sites. 

 

[Marcos 5,074]

The malware would have been detected had it still been there and you had chosen to continue to the website.

Since the malware has already been removed, it would not be detected after choosing to continue. That's also why we have unblocked the website.

[peteyt 393]

On 4/15/2022 at 4:31 PM, Marcos said:

The malware would have been detected had it still been there and you had chosen to continue to the website.

Since the malware has already been removed, it would not be detected after choosing to continue. That's also why we have unblocked the website.

Would it not be best to warn the user this site has previously been known to have malware or something similar.

Mentioning that this may be unwanted content is very vague wording. Better to protect yourself