We have requested that they offer an option in the installer to opt-out of activating the free trial, however they have not done so yet.Īs for the issue with the forum search engine, yes, it's pretty bad.
The free trial is will be active each time you install the software because they do not currently provide an option to opt out of it, however deactivating the trial is simple enough that it shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience, at least in my opinion. It is a bug and should be corrected in the next release. There is also a separate issue which is preventing the latest build from connecting to the license validation servers whenever any custom/third party Winsock entries exist on the system.
This same issue appears to be causing some users' customized settings not to be retained following the upgrade which makes sense since those settings are stored within the same configuration files as the encrypted license key for Premium. The only issue is that with the latest release there appears to be a problem with the encrypted configuration files during upgrades, likely due to a bug in the installer, that is causing the software to revert to free mode because it loses the configuration file with the license key. Lifetime licenses remain good for life, including free upgrades to new releases. This is the sort of behaviour that I'd expect to see within the Internet Marketing community - shady as hell! Sorry for 'shouting', in caps, but the totally confusing legalese mess and mixed messaged, designed to obfuscate and confuse that you offer as an 'upgrade' should never have been foisted on anyone! As someone else pointed out, somewhere in my trail of disconnected Malwarebytes forums and support pages, said "Getting tired of Malwarebytes installing a "free trial" without asking!" (a forum search can't find that, despite being on the same site and being viewed right now in another browser). MALWAREBYTES - STATE IN BIG, CLEAR, GREEN LETTERS, "THIS WILL NOT AFFECT YOUR LICENSING OR FUNCTIONALITY IN ANY WAY" FOR EXISTING PREMIUM USERS! If it won't, of course, but big RED if it does. Turns out that while it would keep working, this would remove your existing PREMIUM install and so things like regular scans would stop!
I got ta notification of a 'free upgrade' and immediately, I was suspicious, as I already have PREMIUM, but I was grandfathered into it (and another licence on another laptop) and so I stopped and started researching. They need to be careful, or we will start leaving in droves. I too am extremely concerned about this 'new direction' with Malwarebytes.