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What to Do When You Encounter Pirate Software As a Tech
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What to Do When You Encounter Pirate Software As a Tech
In this episode of the Technibble Computer Business Podcast (with transcript below), I’m going to talk about what you should do when you encounter pirate software on a client’s computer.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:25 — 6.1MB)
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Discussion:
00:33 – First thing to do when you found out your client is using pirate software
01:59 – Offering legitimate options for your clients
03:02 – Not accepting clients who insist on using pirate software
04:50 – Why you should care with clients using pirate software
Tweetables:
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Transcription:
In this podcast, I’m going to talk about what you should do when you encounter pirate software on a client’s computer. I mean, it happened to many of us. A client will bring a computer to you, or perhaps you walk into an office and notice there’s some pirate software. It could be a simple activation error with a little pop up or maybe something like an enterprise version of software in a home environment. When you do spot pirate software, the first thing you should do is, don’t go gung ho accusing the clients of being criminals. You’ll find that there’s a very good chance that most clients don’t know that there’s pirate software on their computer.
In fact, a lot of my clients used to think that Microsoft Office came with Windows, so don’t argue and treat the client like a kindergartner or anything like that, just calmly explain and resolve the problem. The first step is obviously to verify the legitimacy or illegitimacy of already installed product. If it turns out the product is pirated, then verify whether the client paid for it. If you find that they were charged for it, then you’ll probably need to send the client back to the original service provider to either get it fixed or refunded.
In any case, tell them the negative impacts of piracy, so it could be that Windows isn’t getting updated and as hackers try and figure out new ways to break into Windows every day and Microsoft is constantly playing the cat and mouse game of trying to patch this up, a lot of the pirate versions don’t or can’t update. You also can’t get the official support that you may need and things may stop working at a potentially critical time when the software discovers that it is a pirate version and disables itself. For businesses, a lot of software companies often audit large businesses looking for pirate software and if found, they actually have some very steep fines.
Start to lay out a game plan to replace your client’s software with legitimate options. If price is a problem, which often is for home users and some business users too, for software like Microsoft Office, you can either suggest open source options like Open Office (now Libre Office) or free options like Kingsoft Office or if neither of those are appropriate alternatives and they actually need the real deal Microsoft Office, then suggest something like Office 365, as it allows them to pay in small increments and they always have the latest version plus official Microsoft support.
If it’s a cracked antivirus, then of course there are many free alternatives out there that are pretty good. If you explain the implications and explain that you don’t want to leave it that way because you’re a professional and you have a reputation to uphold, then clients are usually understanding and will go ahead with what you were saying. If they start arguing with you about how it’s fine to use pirate software, then just explain to them that it’s against your terms of service and kindly refuse their business. A lot of techs actually start out hungry for clients and will basically take whatever clients they can get and you know, that’s understandable when you’re new, but these are customers you don’t want.
If a client is cheap and they use pirate software and have no moral issues with it, they’re very likely to be cheap with other stuff including your services. These people are likely to insist on taking shortcuts for everything. They’ll insist on never upgrading, never doing the recommended best practices that you want to implement. They often prefer to keep an office full of network cables hanging down across walls and back of desks and plugged into old hubs and slow switches which are daisy chained around the floor under desks instead of actually doing a good Ethernet wiring job and patch panels and wall plates all going through a good central switch.
These people are often short-cutters. Things will go wrong and they’ll probably blame you when it does. When starting your business, don’t start out desperate. Start out with high standards and decent prices and while you will grow a little bit slower, you’ll be able to build a sustainable business with quality customers that are more likely to stick with you. Customers who pirate are more likely to go elsewhere when you have a price hike or decide to go completely legitimate if you started out otherwise. Even if you do want to take on these people and do want to make them happy with pirated software, you’re unlikely to be able to keep them.
Some techs actually don’t see a problem with pirate software and some are even supplying it, thinking it allows them to get a price edge over other competitors but beyond the moral, civil and criminal problems and of course the client problems I mentioned before, it only takes one customer to be upset with you to report you or one jealous competitor and companies like Microsoft do pursue it. I’ve also heard a lot of techs say, why should we care? It’s not our job to police our customers and enforce any piracy laws.
Well it may not be our job to enforce anti-piracy laws, it is our job to make sure our client’s systems are running safely and reliably, which we can’t do with pirate software. It is also our responsibility to maintain our reputation because the reputation in this business is pretty much everything. If you do see pirate software, let the customer know in a non-condescending way because they may not know that there is pirate software. Let them know the negative impacts of piracy, how it puts them, it makes them vulnerable to hackers and other things, the businesses know that they can be potentially fined quite steeply and then build a game plan to get them going with legitimate options.
If they don’t care or argue with you, just get rid of them. They’re not going to be worth your time and they’ll probably be a problem in the long run. That’s it for this podcast. If you liked this podcast, please leave us a review on iTunes. If you’re listening to this as a once off download, consider subscribing, every new podcast automatically pushed to your device. I love turning my drive time into learning time with podcasts and as many of us are onsite techs, there’s plenty of drive time we have to do. This is Bryce Whitty with the Technibble Computer Business Podcast. Thank you for listening.
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Me personally? I probably put them there to begin with! Ha-HOO!
As an independent tech I can’t afford to get all preachy when it comes to piracy. This isn’t like we’re stumbling across CP on their drive – that’s the only type of customer I don’t want – and who of us has never pirated an mp3 like back in the glory days of Napster? There’s only a handful of apps I feel are deserving of being paid for the full version because of a track record of outstanding personal experience with said apps; Malwarebytes and Advanced SystemCare are the top two that have never let me down.
You seem to be making a lot of judgemental assertions about the personal character and habits of someone based solely off a factor like piracy as a means to poison the well. If I don’t know them on a close, personal basis I don’t leave my apps on their machine – Just install what you need for as long as you need it, run the scans and pull out of ‘Nam.
You must be a hobbyist or a pizza tech. A professional would never have a response like that.