In the 1990s, McAfee antivirus was the software every other person turned towards. Named after John McAfee, the company continues to enjoy the support of many computer users globally but not the same can be said about its founder, who was found dead in a Barcelona prison cell on Wednesday.
Born in England, he came to prominence in the 1980s when he founded his tech company in 1987 and released McAfee antivirus. The inspiration for the product came after the Brain computer virus had hit the growing IBM PC marked around the world. The antivirus became extremely popular and in 1992 he took the company public, only to leave it two years later richer than ever before (after 1994, he had nothing to do with the company). “When I first read about the Pakistani Brain virus, I’d never heard of a virus before, neither had anyone in technology. It fascinated me,” he had told BBC in 2013.
His company allowed him to take control over his life, which was a mess in the early 1980s — his then employer, Omex, let him go while his dependency on drugs continued. He somehow managed to make it through the day and spent afternoons drinking scotch, like his father. “Every day I wake up with him. Every relationship I have, he’s by my side; every mistrust, he is the negotiator of that mistrust. So my life is f***ed,” he had told Wired in a profile interview.
By the time he had managed to come up with a solution for Brain, McAfee had been sober for four years. By 1990, McAfee was making $5 million a year. Though life wasn’t perfect even after his marriage fell apart in 2002, he was a respectable man who donated computers to schools and discouraged drug use. Things took a terrible turn in late 2000s after the 2008 economic downturn.
While he lived in Belize, police sought to question him after his neighbour was found shot to death in 2012. He fled to Guatemala. In October 2020, he was arrested in Spain when he was about to board a plane to Turkey. He was accused of failing to file tax returns for four years.
Despite all his shortcomings, John McAfee — who died at the age of 75 — will be remembered as an important figure in the development of the technology scene of the 1980s and 1990s.