John McAfee is a Scottish-American computer programmer and founder of McAfee, Inc.
Early life McAfee was born in Scotland and raised in
Salem, Virginia, United States.
He received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Roanoke College in 1967.
Ventures Pre McAfee Associates
McAfee was employed as a programmer by NASA's Institute for Space Studies in New York City
from 1968 to 1970.
From there he went to Univac as a software designer and later to Xerox as an operating
system architect.
In 1978 he joined Computer Sciences Corporation as a software consultant.
Later, while employed by Lockheed in the 1980s, McAfee received a copy of the Pakistani Brain
computer virus and began developing software to combat viruses.
In 1987 McAfee founded McAfee Associates, a computer anti-virus company.
In 1989, he quit Lockheed and began working full-time at McAfee Associates, which he initially
operated from his home in Santa Clara, California.
The company was incorporated in Delaware in 1992, and McAfee resigned from the company
in 1994.
Two years after McAfee Associates went public, McAfee sold his remaining stake in the company.
Network Associates was formed in 1997 as a merger of McAfee Associates and Network General.
This company later became Network Associates, a name it retained for seven years until it
was renamed McAfee.
In August 2010, Intel Corporation bought McAfee, maintaining the separate branding, until January
2014, when it announced that McAfee related products will be marketed as Intel Security.
McAfee expressed his pleasure at his name no longer being associated with the software.
Post McAfee Associates Other business ventures that he founded included
Tribal Voice, which developed one of the first instant messaging programs, PowWow.
In 2000, John McAfee invested in and joined the board of directors of Zone Labs, makers
of firewall software, prior to its acquisition by Check Point Software in 2003.
In August 2009, The New York Times reported that McAfee's personal fortune had declined
to $4 million from a peak of $100 million, the effect of the global financial crisis
and recession on his investments.
In 2009, McAfee was interviewed in Belize for the CNBC special "The Bubble Decade",
in which it was reported that he had invested in and/or built many mansions in the USA that
went unsold when the 2007 global recession hit.
The report also discussed his quest to produce plants for possible medicinal uses on his
land in Belize.
Beginning in February 2010, McAfee started a new venture in the field of bacterial quorum
sensing.
His company QuorumEx has its headquarters in Belize and is working towards producing
commercial all natural antibiotics based on anti-quorum sensing technology.
In 2013 McAfee started a new company, Future Tense Central, to produce a secure computer
network device called the D-Central.
In February 2014, McAfee announced Cognizant, an application for smartphones, which displays
information about the permissions of other installed applications.
On April 3, 2014, John McAfee rebranded Cognizant as DCentral 1, and released an Android version
for free on Google Play . At the DEF CON conference in Las Vegas, Nevada
in August 2014, he warned Americans not to use smartphones, suggesting apps are used
to spy on clueless consumers who do not read privacy user agreements.
Personal life McAfee teaches yoga and has written several
books about yoga.
In a 2012 article in Mensa Bulletin, the magazine of American Mensa, he stated that being the
developer of the first commercial anti-virus program has made him "the most popular hacking
target", adding "Hackers see hacking me as a badge of honor".
He added that for his own security he has other people buy his computer equipment for
him, uses pseudonyms for setting up computers and logging in, and changes his IP address
several times a day.
In 2012, when asked if he personally uses McAfee anti-virus he replied by saying "I
take it off," and that "It's too annoying."
As of January 2013, McAfee is living in Portland, Oregon, intending to work on an autobiography
in graphic novel form.
Former cocaine baron "Boston" George Jung is writing No Domain, McAfee's official biography.
Legal issues On April 30, 2012, McAfee's property in Orange
Walk Town, Belize, was raided by the Gang Suppression Unit of the Belizean Police Department.
McAfee was in bed with his girlfriend at that time who McAfee said was scared by the incident.
A GSU press release stated that McAfee was arrested for unlicensed drug manufacturing
and possession of an unlicensed weapon.
He was released without charge.
In 2012, Belize police spokesman Raphael Martinez confirmed that he was not convicted nor charged
but only suspected.
On November 12, 2012, Belize police started a search for McAfee as a "person of interest"
in connection to the murder of American expatriate Gregory Viant Faull.
Faull was found dead of a gunshot wound on November 11, 2012, at his home on the island
of Ambergris Caye, the largest island in Belize.
Faull was a neighbor of McAfee.
In a November 2012 interview with Wired, McAfee said that he has always been afraid police
would kill him and thus refused their routine questions; he has since been evading the Belizean
authorities.
Belize's prime minister Dean Barrow called McAfee "extremely paranoid, even bonkers".
McAfee fled Belize when he was sought for questioning concerning the murder.
Vice accidentally gave away his location at a Guatemalan resort in early December 2012,
when a photo taken by one of its journalists accompanying McAfee was posted with the Exif
geolocation metadata still attached.
While in Guatemala, McAfee asked Chad Essley, an American cartoonist and animator, to set
up a blog so that he could write about his experience while on the run.
He then appeared publicly in Guatemala City where he attempted to seek political asylum.
On December 5, 2012, McAfee was arrested for illegally entering Guatemala.
Shortly after being placed under arrest, a board to review McAfee's plea for asylum was
formed.
The committee denied his asylum, so he was taken from his holding facility to a detention
center in order to await deportation to Belize.
On December 6, 2012, Reuters and ABC News reported that John McAfee had two minor heart
attacks in a Guatemalan detention center and was hospitalized.
His lawyer stated that McAfee had not suffered heart attacks, but he had instead suffered
from high blood pressure and anxiety attacks.
McAfee later stated that he faked the heart attack while being held in Guatemala to buy
time for his attorney to file a series of appeals that ultimately prevented his deportation
to Belize, hastening the government's decision to send him back to the United States.
On December 12, 2012, McAfee was released from detention in Guatemala and deported to
the United States.
As of January 8, 2014, Belizean police have presented no new accusations, and they have
not persisted in seeking McAfee's imprisonment for any of the crimes they accused him of.
However, they have auctioned off McAfee's seized assets, and his home was burned down
under suspicious circumstances.
See also
Eugene Kaspersky Natalya Kaspersky
Peter Norton References
External links John McAfee's Website
John McAfee on Facebook John McAfee's channel on YouTube
@officialmcafee on Twitter Bio on NNDB
"Zone Labs To Get Funding, New Board Member", InformationWeek, October 2, 2000
"It's Official: Network Associates Becomes McAfee", PC World, July 1, 2004
"John McAfee's Last Stand", Wired, December 24, 2012
"Dancing with a Madman", Psychology Today, May 7, 2013
"John McAfee: Addict, coder, runaway", by Leo Kelion, BBC News, October 11, 2013