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Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

orca.security

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Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#81

Post by cddotdotslash »

drakenot wrote: post #79
cddotdotslash wrote: post #77

Bear with me here, but what if this entire thing was engineered from the beginning to be a marketing technique? The videos themselves? Marketing. The "we got a cease and desist from a big company" blog? Marketing. The follow-up letter about transparency? Marketing. And it all falls right into the David vs. Goliath story that the tech community loves.

Are you saying the cease and desist is potentially fabricated? That seems unlikely given if that were true, we would expect a public response from Palo Alto to that effect? That isn’t a ploy that would work very long and the backlash and damaged reputation would be significant if that occurred.

No, not fabricated at all. I'm suggesting that they had to know that what they were doing would provoke a response from PAN. And as soon as it did, a nice "underdog" blog post was ready to go.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#82

Post by different_sort »

Prisma cloud (the cloud monitoring part) is not a great product. It lags pretty far behind cloud provider capabilities.

I also got the email that orca probably sent to everyone in their CRM about this, and while I didn’t need any reason to think less of prisma, I now associate Orca as a competitor and probably an earlier call than palo alto for cloud.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#84

Post by no_wizard »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #23
pavel_lishin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you tell whether you're doing something wrong or not without spending money on your own lawyer?

My wife went to law school. I know lots of lawyers. The spread between Justin (first in his class by a fat margin), and the bottom, oh, say, quarter of the class, is brutal.

Question I have...

How bad is that lower quarter? Can you quantify that in any way?

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#85

Post by shrubble »

warhorse10_9 wrote: post #67
paultopia wrote: post #27

Palo Alto networks also makes bossware so intrusive that it's basically malware. Their VPN software on MacOS, for example, collects tons of system data and starts itself persistently on reboot + cannot be quit unless the user happens to have much-more-technical-than-most-users levels of knowledge about things like sudo and the various plist files work. My own experience, in a couple Twitter threads: https://mobile.tw…

I posted this in a comment response below. All of these things are actually configured by the company/library you are connecting to. They are configuration options for the firewall that are enforced by global protect. Blame your library IT, not Palo Alto.

Have you yourself used the interface for configuration of these options?

How easy is it for a non-expert to determine what the vpn client will or will not do, once deployed?

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#86

Post by [deleted] »

otterley wrote: post #69
ghastmaster wrote: post #49

> Palo Alto Networks appears oblivious to the fact that the New York Attorney General’s office sued and won an injunction against McAfee from enforcing its contractual restrictions against publishing reviews or comparisons of its products without its consent more than 17 years ago. In enacting the Consumer Review Fairness Act, Congress has also prohibited businesses from including contract terms that prohibit consume…

Maybe, maybe not. See my analysis elsewhere about the importance of the word "individual" as opposed to "person" in the language of CFRA.

[deleted]

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#87

Post by ghastmaster »

otterley wrote: post #69
ghastmaster wrote: post #49

> Palo Alto Networks appears oblivious to the fact that the New York Attorney General’s office sued and won an injunction against McAfee from enforcing its contractual restrictions against publishing reviews or comparisons of its products without its consent more than 17 years ago. In enacting the Consumer Review Fairness Act, Congress has also prohibited businesses from including contract terms that prohibit consume…

Maybe, maybe not. See my analysis elsewhere about the importance of the word "individual" as opposed to "person" in the language of CFRA.

Good catch! It looks like the New York case does indeed have some relevance as well considering the code explicitly allows state's attorneys general to file suit using this statute. Because it did not proceed to the higher courts(that I know of) it is not of great significance, but still noteworthy.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#88

Post by erik_seaberg »

unethical_ban wrote: post #54
3np wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were just in the process of surveying firewalls. PANW was high on the list, given the user experience. They are no longer on it since today.

I'll say this again, I said it elsewhere. And to clarify, I own no stock in PANW, I don't work for them, though I have years of experience managing PAN firewalls in a large deployment (and some experience with their competitors). My coworkers don't know my HN name so I'm saying this from the heart, not for kudos from meatspace. As part of a team choosing a new technology for something, you really need to take a lot o…

The question is how many other negative reviews they already censored. Maybe it’s none, but how can we know that?

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#89

Post by otterley »

ghastmaster wrote: post #87
otterley wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, maybe not. See my analysis elsewhere about the importance of the word "individual" as opposed to "person" in the language of CFRA.

Good catch! It looks like the New York case does indeed have some relevance as well considering the code explicitly allows state's attorneys general to file suit using this statute. Because it did not proceed to the higher courts(that I know of) it is not of great significance, but still noteworthy.

I don't think People v. Network Associates (the McAfee case, 758 N.Y.S.2d 466 (2003)) is on point. That case involved a number of complex facts, like a difference between the license agreement (which did not contain the restrictive terms and contained an "entire agreement" clause) and the warning printed on the media; and whether consumers could be misled by the warning on the media.

The court did not hold that restrictions in license agreements were void due to public policy. Rather, it held that Network Associates could not bind customers to the language on the disks because the language deceived the customer.

Re: Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos

#90

Post by bnjms »

shrubble wrote: post #85
warhorse10_9 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted this in a comment response below. All of these things are actually configured by the company/library you are connecting to. They are configuration options for the firewall that are enforced by global protect. Blame your library IT, not Palo Alto.

Have you yourself used the interface for configuration of these options? How easy is it for a non-expert to determine what the vpn client will or will not do, once deployed?

It isn’t. You will have to speak with the IT staff to understand how they have it configured. If you have an issue with this use a third party open source client.

The point is, any enterprise client is expected to have these features. Don’t install them on your personal laptop if you have a problem with what is expected behavior.

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