Why you can’t trust John McAfee’s tech support video advice

By now, you’ve probably all watched (with jaws agog) the NSFW video where John McAfee describes – with the merest hint of sex and drugs – how to uninstall McAfee Antivirus.

It’s been a couple of decades since John McAfee had any affiliation with the company which bears his name, and it’s possible that his technical support skills have got a bit rusty in the meantime.

Take this screen capture I made from his video, for instance. You can find it at 3 min 21 seconds:

McAfee video screen cap

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Take a closer look in the version below, or click on the image above for a much larger version.

McAfee screen capture close-up

Mac OS X running on a Dell laptop?

Neat trick. But probably not a combination being used by many McAfee Antivirus users I’ll wager.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "The AI Fix" and "Smashing Security" podcasts. Follow him on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, or drop him an email.

9 comments on “Why you can’t trust John McAfee’s tech support video advice”

  1. You know since you left Sophos.. too much free time at all? :)

    1. Well, this is only my second day after leaving Sophos.

      So far I'm doing fine, thanks!

  2. Sly

    Everybody knows that you can run OS/X on just about any x86 Intel based computer, as long as your video card is supported by OS/X. Obviously, that requires a hacked version of OS/X to do so and that make me wonder on the subtlety behind that fact. Does he wants to look like a hacker or a pirate?

    1. Graham CluleyGraham Cluley · in reply to Sly

      My thinking was that it's more likely the marketroids who prepared the material for the video created the screenshots on a Mac, and chucked them into something like PowerPoint to display them on the screen.

  3. Sly

    Funny, I had to allow noscript to perform an XSS in order to submit comments. Strange behaviour for a security site, don't you think?

    1. Graham CluleyGraham Cluley · in reply to Sly

      Feel free to send me details at [email protected], and I'll take a look.

      But the comments functionality used on this site are provided by WordPress's JetPack function (http://jetpack.me/), which means the same code is being used on kazillions of websites across the net.

  4. Hello,

    I think it is really important to understand that this video was made to have a little light-heated fun, rather than to be an actual guide to removing John McAfee's namesake from a computer.

    The video was originally shot with the laptop off, and the screen added in via chroma key later.

    Regards,

    Aryeh Goretsky

  5. Yep, that is definitely the only problem with that video

  6. john mcafee

    @graham..whats wrong with you…it was a fun video and What really make you think i want to tell you guys "How uninstall mcafee"…wake up and enjoy the videos and have fun.

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