Apple Telling Tech Support to Not Help Customers

Recently there has been a big uproar about malware on Mac computers, namely the Mac Defender program. It uses SEO poisoning to get you to download the fake AV program, thus giving up your computer’s password (when you “install” the “AV” program) and your credit card number (when you buy a “license” to the product). See a video of it here. Well, Apple’s response (or lack of, just read on) is pretty scary. While Apple has not released an official public statement about the malware, they have released a statement to their tech support telling them, in essence, to not help anyone, on threat of their jobs, with malware problems. An anonymous Apple tech support employee sent Ed Bott of ZD Net the statement from Apple outlining the procedure they should follow when someone calls in for help. You can see a copy of the script here. It’s messed up, honestly. Here’s a list of things the tech support cannot** do, and I quote:

• You cannot show the customer how to force quit Safari on a Mac Defender call.
• You cannot show the customer how to remove from the Login Items.
• You cannot show the customer how to stop the process of Mac Defender in their Activity Monitor.
• You cannot Refer the customer to Any forums or discussions boards for resolution (this includes the Apple.com forums).
• Once you know that the call is about Mac Defender, and then the customer decides to try and ask you general questions to find a loophole (IE: “OK, then how would you uninstall a third party program in general” or “How do I stop programs from staring upon launch”) The point of this is, things that would be considered “general product usage” questions are not allowed to be answered if the customer has already informed you that he potentially has MacDefender and is now asking obvious questions to skirt our policy.