Malwarebytes Declares Amnesty for Pirates, Offers Them Free Licenses

Helmed by 25-year-old Marcin Kleczynski, who founded the company in 2008 while still a college freshman, San Jose-based Malwarebytes has quickly emerged as one of the most popular purveyors of anti-malware solutions. Its flagship malware-fighting tool is available both as a free download limited to only on-demand scans and as a $25/year three-PC package offering real-time protection. Sounds like a fairly uncomplicated product strategy, right? Only until you consider the millions running so-called “cracked” copies of the software and the amnesty that the company is now offering these pirates.

Turns out the company is giving away free replacement keys to any Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium user whose existing key has been found to have a problem. The Malwarebytes Amnesty program’s FAQ page describes it as being aimed at those “inconvenienced by piracy or abuse.”

All such users need to do is to tell the company how they came to possess their existing key when confronted by a popup saying there’s an issue with their license key. Those who say they are unsure where they got it from or that they downloaded it from the Internet will get a 12-month license. As for those who say they purchased it, they will get a free lifetime license.

It’s no surprise, then, that some paying customers are feeling short-changed. This is what one such customer had to say on the Malwarebytes forum: “This is insane. MB [Malwarebytes], if you are handing out free lifetime licenses to pirates, then I would like my money back as well.”

And this is what Kleczynski said in response: “When I started Malwarebytes, I absolutely had no idea how successful we would be today. I am extremely grateful for all of the support from everyone and how fast we've grown. That being said, I picked a very insecure license key algorithm and as such, generating a pirated key was, and is, very simple.”

The problem is the algorithm that he chose as a callow youth has been used to churn out millions of keys, and Kleczynski says it has resulted in an absolute mess. With there being every possibility that pirated keys may clash with legitimate ones, the company is moving to an entirely new licensing regime.

“The first stage of this program is to collect data from our users. What keys are still alive, and who are they used by. If you are a true pirate, the furthest you will get is a year's worth of Malwarebytes. I wish we could handle each of the keys manually and determine if they are legitimate, but there are tens of millions of them and so we've automated the process a bit to cut them down. After that cut down, which is when a user selects an option, we will be going through the uses manually.”