McAfee John McAfee died in prison: the “father of anti-virus software” in computers and his life-BBC News

The advent of McAfee VirusScan, a McAfee VirusScan, promoted the multi-billion dollar antivirus industry in the computer world. The software was eventually sold to the technology giant Intel for more than $7.6 billion.

In October 2020, John McAfee was arrested in Spain while he was preparing to board a plane for Turkey. He was accused of not filing taxes in four years, even though he earned millions of dollars from consulting work, speaking activities, cryptocurrency, and selling biographical rights.

The US Department of Justice alleges that McAfee evaded tax liability by depositing his income in a bank account and a cryptocurrency exchange account opened in the name of another person.

He was also accused of concealing assets, including registering a yacht and real estate under someone else’s name.

The Spanish National Court approved the extradition of McAfee to the United States on the morning of June 23 to face these allegations.

According to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, in recent years, McCaffey has repeatedly claimed that someone had conspired to arrest him. However, the court stated that “there is insufficient evidence” to show that he was prosecuted for political or ideological reasons.

McAfee argued in a court hearing earlier this month that the charges against him are politically motivated and that if he returns to the United States, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

But McAfee’s lawyer Nishay Sanan (Nishay Sanan) said that McAfee’s original plan was to continue to defend against the charges.

Sanan told the U.S. public radio station NPR, “This is another attempt by the US government to obliterate John McFee. This man is a fighter. In the hearts of everyone who knows him, he will always be a fighter.”

McAfee speaks with a heavy Southern American accent, but he was actually born in England.

His mother is British and his father is an American soldier stationed in the UK during World War II. On September 18, 1945, he was born in Gloucestershire, England.

When McAfee was young, his family moved to Virginia, USA, but his childhood was not happy. His father was drunk and shot and committed suicide when McAphey was 15 years old.

McAfee once revealed that in the years after his father’s death, he also began to drink a lot of alcohol and drugs, but still managed to maintain excellent academic results.

In the late 1960s, when McAfee was studying for a doctorate in mathematics, he was found to have had a sexual relationship with an undergraduate girl he supervised, and Northeast State Louisiana State College terminated his doctorate study.

He and this girl later married, and McAfee turned his skills to a series of programming jobs. The employers included NASA, General Electric, Siemens, Univac, Xerox and other large institutions and companies in the technology industry at the time. .

At the same time, McAfee also continued to indulge in many of his hobbies.

In 2013, BBC reporter Leo Kelion (Leo Kelion) interviewed him and reported that he was a “addict, decoder, and fugitive.”

McAfee said, “Most of my bosses also used certain drugs. I was in the technical field. After all, we were the forefront of technology and the era of personal experimentation.”

“I have to hide this from my mother, and I can’t tell my wife. But in a working environment, depending on where you work, people take drugs publicly in the office during lunch hours at certain companies. That is a strange era.”

McAfee first made his mark in the 1980s, when he founded his own technology company and launched the antivirus software McAfee VirusScan.

Although he is a pioneer in computer security, he admitted in an interview with the BBC that he has never actually used the software or any virus-killing software on his computer.

In an interview with BBC Science and Technology reporter Leo Colien in 2013, McAfee revealed: “I protect myself by constantly changing my IP address. I don’t attach my name to any device I use, and it’s impossible to enter. Sites that can be infected with viruses.”

He said: “For example, porn sites, I won’t go up.”

McAfee had launched a campaign, hoping to become a candidate for the Libertarian Party’s 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, but was unsuccessful.

In 2019, McAfee stated that he was dismissive of tax collection, saying on Twitter that he had not filed a tax return for eight years because “tax collection is illegal.”

In the same year, he was briefly detained on suspicion of bringing weapons into the Dominican Republic.

Analysis by James Clayton, BBC North American Technology Correspondent:

McAfee has never been what a typical tech entrepreneur should be. He was rude, reckless, and scandal-ridden.

McAfee is best known for the company he founded and named after himself.

The company achieved great success and made him a rich man. In the process, he also helped create a multi-billion-dollar computer security software industry.

McAfee is a visionary, but he is also a hot-headed person. It was his temperament that kept him in trouble all his life.

In 2012, he had been on the run before his arrest in Guatemala, and the Belize police were investigating the death of his neighbor.

He has always denied any connection with the murder.

As a well-known liberal, fascinating speaker and cryptocurrency enthusiast, McAfee has always had the ability to make big money. The last time he had a feast with law enforcement agencies was to make money but was suspected of tax evasion.

As an important figure in the development of technology in the 1980s and 1990s, McAfee will certainly not be forgotten. But what he will remember for the world is his extremely controversial personality: the kind of life that knows that there are tigers in the mountains and tends to the tigers, and from time to time chooses to take a path that may be troublesome.