We notified Malwarebytes last month that their Malwarebytes Cleanup Utility resets the trial countdown for Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium. They seemed quite surprised and turned it over to their engineers. Still has not been patched. So letting the cat out of the bag. We did wait for a month. 
(Note: After running the tool you have to reinstall the trial.)
Wouldnt that mean that the cleanup utility is doing its job? A month is probably not enough time for them to put a new system in place that checks against a server so they can close a loophole that is, if im honest, a PITA to take advantage of. I probably wouldnt advocate bypassing the trial on this forum as that is teetering dangerously on the scale of:
Aside from that why would I run the trial of malwarebytes when I could run sophos home which is actually free/legal?
It was a simple bug post. Ample time was given to the company to fix the bug before reporting it publicly. It is not us that is resetting the trial. It is not third party software that is resetting the trial. It is the companies own software. It is not a hack. It is not illegal activity. It is a software bug.
Bypassing their trial period is likely breaking their eula.
I don’t think it’s a huge deal, especially if the software that resets it is from the same company. It is just a bug after all. The ethics could be argued I guess.
I mean I’ve reset Windows trials dozens of times by simply punching in slmgr -rearm into CMD dozens of times, and that’s using tools built into bone stock OEM Windows.
1 Like
If you have agreed to the terms of the trial period (which you must have, in order to install the program), the limits of the trial bind you even if they’re not enforced technically by the software.
Whoever owns the rights to the software has the right to dictate by what terms the software can be used. If they limit free use to 30 days, you can’t legally use it beyond that - even if the program continues to work.
Perhaps they should post in their utilities EULA that it breaks their software’s EULA.
I actually can’t find anything in their eula that specifies you cannot use the trial period multiple times. 
2 Likes
You may now send us no-bake cookies and Slim Jims.
Multiple times of 30 days is still more than 30 days. You can’t circumvent time limits by arbitrarily deciding to reset the clock.
I would agree with that normally but their own EULA doesnt actually say this. It simply says you have to have a license to use the software (im assuming that a trial license is still a license) and that you can only use the trial on one machine. So long as you are meeting those 2 criteria you are not breaking any of their own EULA.
Feel free to read for yourself though in case im missing something.
1 Like
If a free trial has a time limitation such as “30-day free trial”, you can’t expect to be allowed to interpret it in a way that would completely undermine the whole time limitation - the intent of the limitation. The 30 day limit must be understood to be per-user, not per-install.
And I assume there is a 30 day limitation, even if it’s not in the EULA, since it’s been mentioned earlier in this thread. I have no interest in installing this software.
Again, I don’t disagree with the sentiment. To me its a scummy thing to do, and we can argue until we’re blue in the face about the ethics of doing so, but the question came up about legal or not. In this particular case I can’t find anything illegal here, though i’m not a lawyer so this is my interpretation.
You don’t have to install the software to read the EULA as its provided on their site. It specifies many things about the license but fails to mention, almost intentionally, anything about the 30 day limitation being one time only use. There is a clause about 3rd party software to modify it but being that this is their own software, not third party, I can’t actually find a single line that shows the EULA is broken and is therefore illegal.
Not necessarily , you can install windows server evaluation for 130 days at least twice , bork it do a fresh install and all’s fine. Install 10 if you want forever unactivated with no personalisation
All depends, in other words, and if a company can’t get it together to enforce whatever trial limitations they have so be it. I’ll not be losing any sleep over the legalities/ethics and nor would the vast majority. Doubt Malwarebytes will be morally shocked by this behavior and can always write better code if they care.