I used to work for Support.com in a senior technical role during part this window of time, but not directly on the Office Depot tenant. Support.com followed si

I used to work for Support.com in a senior technical role during part this window of time, but not directly on the Office Depot tenant. Support.com followed similar practices of other scanning software like MBAM (MalwareBytes) and SAS (Super Anti Spyware) at the time. In fact, Support.com acquired Super Anti Spyware. The big problems were: a) their staff is incredibly poorly trained, mostly because they barely pay above minimum wage to these workers, their training barely covers more than the UI of their tools and they're pushed on resolution time. These workers don't have much skill and don't have much reason to care. They basically don't know the difference between spyware/adware and infections. b) Office Depot was upselling this on brand new computers which are bundled with loads of adware. Effectively they were telling customers that their brand new computers were infected. Support.com is an incredibly stupid company who repeatedly hired their business development people from failed companies (ex-Radio Shack, CompUSA and Circuit City hires were the rule, not the exception). That said, they weren't the only bad actor here. Also, nobody should be surprised that this company was founded by Mark Pincus of Zynga fame.