John McAfee

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John McAfee (2016)

John David McAfee (born September 18, 1945 at a US military base in Scotland , according to other sources in Sling , Gloucestershire , † June 23, 2021 in Sant Esteve Sesrovires , province of Barcelona ) was a British - American entrepreneur , programmer and a pioneer in the development of antivirus - and computer Security - software .

Life

John McAfee was born in the United Kingdom to a British mother and a US soldier, but most of his life was spent in the United States. He held both nationalities . From the age of two he grew up in Salem, Virginia . In 1967 he gained there at Roanoke College the Bachelor of Science in Mathematics . He studied at Virginia Tech until 1970 and then moved to Silicon Valley .

In the following years he worked in the field of hardware and software development for General Electric , Univac , Lockheed Martin , Xerox , Siemens and IBM . In the meantime he lived in Brazil, Germany, Great Britain, Mexico, India and Hong Kong. In 1981 he founded Interpath Inc., a company that was involved in the development of speech recognition systems. In 1987, while still employed by Lockheed, he founded the computer security company McAfee . The occasion was an infection of his own computer to the first MS-DOS - virus called (c) Brain . John McAfee used the shareware business model to distribute his anti-virus software. In 1992 his company benefited from the “ Michelangelo hysteria ”, and his reputation and sales figures literally exploded. In some cases, John McAfee was even blamed for the great media coverage surrounding the virus, as he spoke of “possibly 15 million infected computers” in an interview.

He retired from the company in 1994 and sold his shares in the public company in 1997 when it merged with Network General to become Network Associates . Of his fortune, which has meanwhile been estimated at $ 100 million, only about $ 4 million are said to have remained after the US real estate crisis. John McAfee was also the founder of Tribal Voice , which developed PowWow, one of the first instant messengers .

John McAfee ran a yoga center in Colorado, worked as a yoga teacher and author of several books on the subject. He also devoted himself to aerotrekking , flying at low altitudes in an ultralight aircraft . In 2008 he emigrated to Belize . In February 2010 he started a new business unit in Orange Walk Town , the company QuorumEx , which is working on the development of antibiotics using the ability of bacteria to sense quorum .

In April 2012 the property of John McAfee was searched by a special unit of the Belizean police. The allegations against him of illegal possession of weapons and the production of drugs could not be upheld.

From November 2012 he was wanted by the Belizean police in order to be questioned about his neighbor Gregory Faull, who had been the victim of a homicide. However, no charges were subsequently brought by the authorities. McAfee denied any involvement in the murder.

McAfee went into hiding for about three weeks. During this period he gave several interviews and posted news on his blog . On December 5, he announced in Guatemala City that he wanted to apply for political asylum there because he was being persecuted by the government in Belize. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested for violating immigration law because he and his girlfriend had not contacted the local immigration service when he entered Puerto Barrios . McAfee had been located based on metadata from photographs taken with an iPhone in Río Dulce . Guatemala did not comply with his asylum request and, with his consent, expelled him to the United States on December 12th. It landed in Miami that same day .

McAfee's property in Belize burned down, he announced on May 16, 2013. In June 2013, McAfee posted a video satire about his rich life with women, drugs, and guns.

According to McAfee, he had problems with alcohol and cocaine until 1983 . In 2015 there was an incident involving the use of weapons while under the influence of alprazolam .

In September 2015, McAfee announced that he had successfully registered as an independent candidate for the 2016 US presidential election . He wants to found a cyber party for this . McAfee was not born in the United States (which is considered by many constitutional lawyers to be a prerequisite for running for president), but was born on a US base abroad, which is why he could still run. End of December 2015 it was announced that McAfee the nomination as presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party of the United States sought. However, he only ended up in third place at the party congress and was eliminated.

In 2016, the documentary Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee about John McAfee's life (primarily in Belize) was released.

In June 2018, McAfee announced again that he would run for the next presidential election in the United States - either for the Libertarian Party , if it came up to him, or with a party he himself had founded. At the nomination convention of the Libertarian Party in May 2020, however, he was again not nominated.

On October 5, 2020, McAfee was arrested in Spain at the instigation of the US criminal authorities. He was accused of tax evasion and unfair advertising for cryptocurrency. In March 2021, it was reported that McAfee and a man acting as his adviser and bodyguard were charged on seven counts. They were accused of, among other things, fraud with cryptocurrencies and conspiracy to launder money . On June 23, 2021, the Audiencia Nacional de España decided to extradite him to the United States. A few hours after the decision of the Audiencia Nacional, McAfee died of suicide in his cell at the age of 75, according to his lawyer . October 2020. McAfee was via Tweet expressed no suicide commit to want: "Know did if I hang myself, a la Epstein ., It will be no fault of mine" (translated: "Know when I go à la Epstein erhänge, it's not my fault. ”) .

Fonts (selection)

  • Computer viruses, worms, data diddlers, killer programs, and other threats to your system: What they are, how they work, and how to defend your PC, Mac, or mainframe . St. Martin's Press, New York 1989, ISBN 978-0-312-02889-3 .
  • Into the Heart of Truth: The Spirit of Relational Yoga . Woodland Publications, Woodland Park, Colorado 2001, ISBN 978-0-9711569-1-3 .

Web links

Commons : John McAfee  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. John McAfee in the Notable Names Database ; Retrieved December 13, 2012
  2. Mike Rogoway: Former Portlander John McAfee prepares a run for president. In: The Oregonian . September 9, 2015, accessed June 23, 2021 .
  3. ^ A b Daniel AJ Sokolov: John McAfee also wants to be Mr. President. In: heise online . September 9, 2015, accessed September 9, 2015 .
  4. a b Graeme Culliford: I'm planning new life with my girlfriends ... in Southampton. (Not available online.) In: The Sun . December 22, 2012, archived from the original on January 15, 2013 ; accessed on June 23, 2021 (English).
  5. a b El Mundo: Hallan muerto a John McAfee, el creador del antivirus, en su celda de una prisión de Barcelona después de que la AN ordenara su extradición. In: El Mundo . June 23, 2021, accessed June 23, 2021 (Spanish).
  6. a b Natalia Penza, Chiara Fiorillo: John McAfee dead: UK-born computer genius found dead in prison cell in Spain. In: Daily Mirror . June 23, 2021, accessed June 23, 2021 .
  7. ^ A b c d Marshall Cavendish Corporation (Ed.): Inventors and Inventions . tape 4 . Marshall Cavendish, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-7614-7761-7 , pp. 1029 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  8. a b c Roanoke College on May 3, 2008. (PDF; 800 kB) Accessed on November 14, 2012 (English).
  9. https://www.wz.de/digital/john-mcafee-software-pionier-und-schlitzohr_aid-30187615 WZ.de: John McAfee, software pioneer and rascal
  10. https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/blogs/mcafee-michelangelo/ InfoSecurity-Magazine.com: McAfee and Michelangelo
  11. a b c d e Anna-Lena Abbott: Suspicion against John McAfee: From virus hunter to hunted. In: Spiegel Online . Spiegel Group , November 13, 2012, accessed November 14, 2012 .
  12. Internet entrepreneur McAfee is wanted by the police ( Memento from December 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). In: Financial Times Deutschland of November 13, 2012, accessed on November 13, 2012
  13. ^ A b John McAfee: «I have nothing more». In: Tages-Anzeiger / Newsnet . December 14, 2021, accessed June 23, 2021 .
  14. Software developer McAfee finds no asylum in Guatemala. (No longer available online.) In: Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen . December 7, 2012, archived from the original on November 3, 2013 ; accessed on June 23, 2021 .
  15. Simone Utler: Submerged after neighbor murder: The bizarre escape of John McAfee. In: Spiegel Online from December 3, 2012
  16. ^ John McAfee applies for asylum in Guatemala. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . December 5, 2012, accessed December 5, 2012 .
  17. John McAfee arrested in Guatemala. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . December 6, 2012, accessed December 6, 2012 .
  18. Achim Sawall: On the run: John McAfee located with iPhone geolocation. In: Golem.de. December 4, 2012, accessed June 23, 2021 .
  19. Software pioneer: McAfee is expelled to the USA. In: Spiegel Online. December 12, 2012. Retrieved December 12, 2012 .
  20. ^ John McAfee: Orange Walk Compound burned to the ground - not accidental. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on June 23, 2021 (English).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.whoismcafee.com
  21. Ole Reissmann : Clicked: McAfee, bath salts and weapons in a video. In: Spiegel Online . Spiegel Group , June 20, 2013, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  22. John McAfee: How To Uninstall McAfee Antivirus on YouTube , June 19, 2013, accessed June 23, 2021.
  23. David Segal: John McAfee Plays Hide-and-Seek in Belize. In: New York Times . December 1, 2012, accessed June 23, 2021 .
  24. Sam Biddle: John McAfee Arrested While Armed and High as Hell on Xanax. August 7, 2015, accessed June 23, 2021 .
  25. Jon Swartz: McAfee will run as Libertarian Party candidate for president. In: USA Today . December 24, 2015, accessed June 23, 2021 .
  26. John McAfee Says He Will Run for President in 2020 . In: Fortune . ( fortune.com [accessed July 11, 2018]).
  27. ^ Indictment in the USA: McAfee software developer arrested in Spain. In: Spiegel Online . Spiegel Group , October 5, 2020, accessed October 6, 2020 .
  28. Antivirus guru McAfee faces a long prison sentence. In: Österreichischer Rundfunk . March 5, 2021, accessed March 6, 2021 .
  29. Larger-than-life software mogul John McAfee dies in Spain by suicide, lawyer says. In: Reuters, June 24, 2021.
  30. https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1316801215083225096. Retrieved June 24, 2021 .
  31. Michael Brächer: On the death of John McAfee: Sex, Drugs and Computer Viruses . In: Der Spiegel. Retrieved June 24, 2021 .