Malwarebytes to Pirates "You Get a Free Key!"

   Due to lack of foresight to implement a strong key system when Malwarebytes was first launched, they'll be replacing illegal or unauthorized keys for their software.  This all came down to their license key algorithm.  Marcin Kleczynski, who is a Chief Executive Office at Malwarebytes provided some background in a forum post on June 27, "I picked a very insecure license key algorithm and as such, generating a pirated key was, and is, very simple."  

   While this message isn't necessarily allowing pirates to get a free ride, it just comes down to return on investment (ROI).  Since "there are tens of millions of them [keys]", it's just cheaper to provide those who have bad keys a free year of support.  The alternative is to narrow down the field of illegitimate keys manually.  I can't blame them one bit for going to the easier route to just hand out free support than taking the time to go through to check keys, and correct any mistakes that happen.  And when you're talking about manually evaluating that much data, there will be mistakes.

   It's refreshing to see a company do the right thing for their customers from time to time, because so many care more about the bottom line and squeezing as much out of us as consumers as possible.  Another option Malwarebytes could have taken is just disable those keys.  While chances are a majority of them are pirated keys, there will be some that are valid, and then they'd piss off those customers.  Kudos Malwarebytes for accepting a [minor] business mistake when you started up, take the minor hit it will be to revenue and to keep your customers happy, even ones who didn't pay you.

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About Jimmy R. Tassin

Jimmy Tassin is the IT Manager of Midwest Regional Bank and has been involved with the Technology field for over thirteen years. His two hobbies are overseeing the daily operations of OmniKraft, a Minecraft server community, and writing at Goblinbyte.com.