Complaints

This profile includes complaints for McAfee Institute's headquarters and its corporate-owned locations. To view all corporate locations, see Find Local Branches.

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  McAfee Institute

  15450 South Outer 40 Rd Ste 135 Chesterfield, MO 63017-2062

• 

  McAfee Institute

  73 W Monroe Chicago, IL 60603

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:10/25/2024

  Type:Order Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I paid $1250 for cybers security certification program, because of my objection on the assignments formatted page , I request a formatted page in order to comply with formatted assignments via word, he cancelled my classes and the access to complete the program .Initially I asked for refund , **** McAfee refused to refund because of my inquiries, but finally I submitted the assignments and was ok, but again this week rejected my homework and I asked to send me a formatted doc, but instead he cancelled my access to complete 5he program, been said that I would like a full refund for not letting me complete the program.Thanks

  Business Response

  Date: 11/27/2024

  This consumer refused to comply with our regulations and has conducted himself in an unprofessional manner with our staff which we will not tolerate. As a result of this behavior he was terminated from the program. 

• Initial Complaint

  Date:07/06/2023

  Type:Product Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I paid (and am continuing to make payments via the credit company Affirm) to take an open-source intelligence class provided by McAfee Institute (****************). As I was researching in order to complete one of the assignments, I located a research paper pursuant to a web search. I was briefly reviewing this paper when I noticed that the content of McAfee's training textbook/PDF contains the exact terminology of this paper—without attribution and as though it were their own content. This is concerning to me because it's important for the intelligence community and those who train them to maintain the highest ethical standards. Plagiarism is, of course, antithetical to that end. It would be unethical for McAfee Institute to reproduce the work "Critical Thinking Skills for Intelligence Analysis" by ** ****** and ** ** ****** without attribution and in order to make money off it. I reached out to the Institute to advise them of this and they thanked me and advised they have begun an investigation. I then requested a refund. I have not yet heard back on the refund. If the Institute does not have permission from the authors, it is blatantly unethical to reproduce this content while presenting their Institute as a leader in the intelligence/cyber/investigations field. It is also a misrepresentation to the consumer to incorporate freely-available scientific research (which can be found by a web search) into training and assume that simple collation and/or reformatting justifies charging extremely high prices. The text of the research paper is available at this link: ******************************************** The text of the McAfee textbook is uploaded to this complaint. I have also attached my emailed reciept as well as my payment receipt from Affirm and my email documenting my next upcoming payment.

  Business Response

  Date: 07/25/2023

  Subject: Response to BBB Report #******** Regarding Customer ******* *****
  
  Dear BBB Team,
  
  We appreciate your attention to this matter and would like to address the concerns raised by our customer, ******* *****, as per BBB Report #******** dated July 6th, 2023. 
  
  Firstly, I would like to affirm that upon receiving the refund request from Ms. ***** on July 6th, 2023, we initiated the refund process promptly that same day as per our standard procedure. As you will see in the attached receipts and confirmations from both our side and affirm, the refund process was immediately set in motion on our end and was refunded that same day. However, because the original payment was made through a third-party loan provider, Affirm, the finalization of this process depends on their processing timeline. As mentioned in our terms of service, this process can take up to 30 days. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused Ms. ***** but would like to reiterate that we processed the refund immediately after the request and both us and affirm refunded it the same day you recieved the complaint.
  
  Moving to the concerns about the content of our open-source intelligence class, we take these allegations very seriously. We understand and respect the high ethical standards required within the intelligence community, and we strive to uphold them in all our endeavors. The specific material from "Critical Thinking Skills for Intelligence Analysis" by ** ****** *** ** ** ******, as mentioned by Ms. *****, was indeed used in our training material, but with due permissions and attributions.
  
  We acknowledge the need for clear and comprehensive attribution and would like to confirm that we have respected the original work by citing it within the document, as required by the publisher. Following Ms. *****’s feedback, we have further improved upon this by adding an additional statement at the beginning of the relevant chapter to provide further clarity and attribution. Moreover, the original document is available within our course resources as indicated within the program. 
  
  We appreciate Ms. ***** for bringing her concerns to our attention and would like to reassure the BBB, and Ms. *****, that McAfee Institute is committed to maintaining the highest level of academic integrity and quality in all our offerings. We hope this addresses all the concerns raised in the report. Should you require any further information or clarification, we stand ready to assist.
  
  Thank you for your time and consideration.
  
  Best Regards,
  
  ****** ****** * *** * ****** *********

  
  

  Customer Answer

  Date: 07/25/2023

  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:
  

  I do appreciate the full refund I received.

  However, I reject the claim that the text at issue was appropriately cited. It was not appropriately cited. Within the intelligence community and in my understanding, reproducing an entire text verbatim within your textbook while providing a citation only at the end of the document does not qualify as acceptable attribution (as was done on page 97 with a reference page included on page 205). This absolutely unacceptable, unethical, and does not accord with the fair use doctrine.

  Further, by including the text without clear and adequate citation, McAfee Institute continues to engage in deceptive  rovision of educational content that they represent to be their own. They position themselves as alleged thought leaders in the field, but in reality, they are reproducing/repackaging the intelligence, knowledge, and research of actual academics.

  This is both unethical, unacceptable, and possibly a violation of intellectual property rights. For this reason I reject McAfee institute's claim.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  ******* *****