John McAfee

John David McAfee (18 September 1945 – 23 June 2021) was a British-American computer programmer, businessman, and two-time presidential candidate who unsuccessfully sought the Libertarian Party nomination for president of the United States in 2016 and in 2020.

McAfee was born in Cinderford, in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England, on 18 September 1945, on a U.S. Army base (of the 596th Ordnance Ammunition Company), to an American father, Don McAfee, who was stationed there, and a British mother, Joan (Williams).

His father was from Roanoke, Virginia, and McAfee was himself primarily raised in Salem, Virginia, United States.

He said he felt as much British as American.

When he was 15, his father, whom a BBC columnist described as "an abusive alcoholic", killed himself with a gun.

He had spent his childhood living in fear that a beating from his father could happen at any time, and struggled to make sense of why this was happening to him.

In Running With the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee, it is alleged that McAfee may have shot and killed his father, staging the scene to look like a suicide.

McAfee received a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1967 from Roanoke College in Virginia, which subsequently awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 2008.

After receiving his bachelor's degree, McAfee began working towards a doctorate in mathematics at Northeast Louisiana State College, but was expelled in about 1968 because of a relationship with an undergraduate student, who became his first wife.

McAfee was employed as a programmer by NASA's Institute for Space Studies in New York City from 1968 to 1970 working on the Apollo program.

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.

He worked for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton from 1980 to 1982.

In 1986, while employed by Lockheed, he read about the Brain computer virus made for the PC, and he found it terrifying.

Sensing a business opportunity, he went about creating an antivirus software that could detect the computer virus and remove it automatically.

In 1987, he wrote the first commercial anti-virus software, founding McAfee Associates to sell his creation.

In 1987, McAfee created McAfee Associates Inc. to sell this software, which he named VirusScan.

This was the first anti-virus software brought to market, and one of the first software products to be distributed over the Internet.

Initially McAfee did not seek a large userbase of paying users, but rather wanted to raise awareness of the need to be protected from computer viruses.

However, by making people fear such malware, he managed to generate millions of sales, and by 1990 he was making $5 million a year.

The company was incorporated in Delaware in 1992, and had its initial public offering the same year.

In August 1993, McAfee stepped down as chief executive and remained with the company as the chief technical officer.

He was succeeded by Bill Larson.

He resigned in 1994 and sold his remaining stake in the company.

McAfee became the company's most vocal critic in later years, urging consumers to uninstall the company's anti-virus software, which he characterized as bloatware.

He disavowed the company's continued use of his name in branding, a practice that has persisted in spite of a short-lived corporate rebrand attempt under Intel ownership.

In 1994 he sold his remaining stake in the company.

He had no further involvement in its operations.

McAfee's fortunes plummeted in the financial crisis of 2007–2008.

After leaving McAfee Associates, he founded the companies Tribal Voice (makers of the PowWow chat program), QuorumEx, and Future Tense Central, among others, and was involved in leadership positions in the companies Everykey, MGT Capital Investments, and Luxcore, among others.

His personal and business interests included smartphone apps, cryptocurrency, yoga, light-sport aircraft and recreational drug use.

After various mergers and ownership changes, Intel acquired McAfee in August 2010.

He resided for a number of years in Belize, but returned to the United States in 2013 while wanted in Belize for questioning on suspicion of murder.

In January 2014, Intel announced that McAfee-related products would be marketed as Intel Security.

McAfee expressed his pleasure at the name change, saying, "I am now everlastingly grateful to Intel for freeing me from this terrible association with the worst software on the planet."

The business was soon de-merged from Intel, once more under the McAfee name.

In October 2020, McAfee was arrested in Spain over U.S. tax evasion charges.

U.S. federal prosecutors brought criminal and civil charges alleging that McAfee had failed to file income taxes over a four-year period.

On 23 June 2021, he was found dead due to an apparent suicide by hanging in his prison cell near Barcelona shortly after the Spanish National Court authorized his extradition to the U.S. His death generated speculation and theories about the possibility that he was murdered.

McAfee's wife, Janice McAfee, said she did not believe McAfee died by suicide.