I Just Gave Up With Norton

MSI had it installed on my tablet it started poping up wanting me to make it active i uninstalled it quickly.

Josey Wales said:

Norton was Good till Symantec took it over.

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Yes, I stopped using it just after that, I believe.

@Almighty1 Looking at your "My Computer", I notice you also use Windows Defender on your Dell XPS 15. I agree, I don't put total trust in any AV either. In my experience, the best antivirus is a good backup strategy.

It all kind of bollox now. Virtually all packages have a high efficiency against viruses.

With the advent of forced updates, it is quite rare to get a virus infection now.

Most malware is now self inflicted by visting dodgy websites or dodgy downloads.

No amount of super duper "this is the canine testiculars" packages will protect against lack of common sense (an oxymoron).

People who believe other packages are better than Defender always fall into the trap of thinking they are invincible.

If their brain goes to mush.....

cereberus said:

People who believe other packages are better than Defender always fall into the trap of thinking they are invincible.

If their brain goes to mush.....

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I don’t think my antivirus program is better than Microsofts, I just think Microsoft is sloppy and by definition of this forum, often lacking or screwing something up. The company I chose to use has basically one job, antivirus/firewall. I just have to hope and have some faith that they’re on the ball. And you’re right, it’s usually users that invite a virus.

My first store bought PC was an Osborne-I without hard drive. Can't remember how the phone was hooked up but somehow it would connect to some local networks and that is where I found Norton's utilities or whatever it was called. Sometime in the early 80's a few friends and I found a PC guy in town and bought a 286 system with all the stuff to connect to Internet. The whole Internet thing took off like lightening and hackers started sneaking around spoiling our fun. Not sure when anti-virus software came along, it was called something else then. I'm getting old and forgetful, so maybe someone remembers?

Maybe there are some disgruntle Microsoft ex-employees who sell inside secrets to hackers, and so on. Too many holes in heir code.

TraderGary said:

@Almighty1 Looking at your "My Computer", I notice you also use Windows Defender on your Dell XPS 15. I agree, I don't put total trust in any AV either. In my experience, the best antivirus is a good backup strategy.

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THIS !!!






TIP: Make your backup, "before" you get infected.

jeffbeish said:

Maybe there are some disgruntle Microsoft ex-employees who sell inside secrets to hackers, and so on. Too many holes in heir code.

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I don’t believe anyone would want to spend the amount of time in jail that this act would attract.

Norton
I think we all used Norton tools at one time but, as soon as it became Symantec well...
I was having a good conversation with a co-worker a long time ago and then computers
came on the subject. He was asking if I new how to get his internet back up and running.
I asked what was the security and he said Norton (Symantec). Well, I had to actually write
down every step he had to take to first remove and then install something else before
he re-connected. He was amazed and confused as to how much work that involved. I
told him, welcome to the new world my friend.

badrobot said:

I stopped using 3rd party AVs a decade ago. They are so intrusive. They only get in my way like I am a 5 year old who doesn't know what I am doing. 3rd party AVs interrupt you most of the time making you think it is doing its job. So annoying. Even downloading an update makes it very painful sometimes.

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I use Webroot and I never hear from it unless I visit a dodgy website. It's totally unobtrusive. When I need to renew, I look on eBay for a reseller who has served me well for many years and much cheaper.

I got upset with Norton a couple of years ago. I had Norton something or the other on all of my computers. For years. Forever.
I was constantly being hammered with ads from Norton. Oh your network is unsafe you should buy Norton VPN.
You need THIS. You need THAT. You should upgrade to 360. Whatever.
It seemed like it was endless and I thought why am I seeing this if I am paying for this software.
I finally hit my limit and uninstalled Norton from all of my computers at the same time regardless of how much time was left on each license.
I have a Netgear router and they seem to be in bed with Bitdefender so I went that way. Now I use Bitdefender with Windows defender on all of my computers.
At first I started getting the pop ups from Bitdefender too and I was like OMG what did I do? lol But after I answered the first few pop ups I don't get them anymore unless it sees a problem or something.
So now once again life is good, I am protected and I don't get distracted by a barrage of ads.

Almighty1 said:

Norton Utilities actually didn't exist until 1982 when the company was known as Peter Norton Computing. Symantec bought the company and everything just went downhill ever since.

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That's when I left Norton, Symantec started getting rid of some good things.

If you, like me, are proficient in various admin type stuff, chances will be that you'll sometimes (sometimes often) perform tasks that require your preferred 3rd party internet security suite/antivirus to be disabled before you can proceed with your workflow. That plus the observation that these commercial protection software products can tend to easily make a computer behave in ways that are unpredictable so as a result it becomes harder and/or more time consuming to troubleshoot certain stuff, which is an added risk and therefore is contrary to added security so, it is a marketing ploy. So much so, in my own personal view Symantec Norton is more akin to a virus than an antivirus (no joke).

As for making reliable backups of all your critical data, you have to make them anyway in the first place simply because any electronics device can fail, and, both software errors and user errors can wreak all sorts of havoc also in addition to this. So, the main idea is to not let backups get infected, which requires at least some form of added protection. The built-in security of Windows already goes a very long way. You can go to visit websites like www.av-test.org and www.av-comparatives.org to verify on that.

However, a lot of average users remain oblivious of the fact that saving backups onto a secondary (or tertiary or etc.) internal HDD/SSD alone is not enough to make backups reliable, and that plugging in an external USB HDD/SSD/flash drive is equivalent to adding another internal storage device when it comes to reliability of the backups stored on it. This is just a fact, as reliable backups always require a secondary information repository, which the internal/external storage that is installed in/hooked up to the same computer that the primary information repository is hooked up to isn't, because, instead, it is merely an expansion of the primary information repository.

Further, I don't download any viruses. Despite this, I keep Windows Security enabled anyway just in case. Statistically, the vast majority of attacks start with receiving an e-mail message, and, the vast majority of attacks enter the computer via the web browser. Also, there has been an increase in recent years of attacks targeting the router firmware. As another added precaution I run Firefox Portable sandboxed with Sandboxie-Plus (using the Forced Folder feature thereof). This is my Default browser, as it also is possible to register any portable browser as an app and set it as the Default browser. Set Firefox Portable as default browser | PortableApps.com

I used Norton for many years (late 1980's - early 1990's), including a few years after Symantec bought it. Like everyone else, I had to find another security solution as Norton was too resource-intensive, and its detection rate was not all that good. I have been happy with Bitdefender Total Security with Malwarebytes Premium for many years.

I also follow the excellent advice to have more than one backup and ensure that one copy is on an external drive only connected for the purpose of copying the newest weekly backup image to it, and then it is disconnected and stored in a fireproof security box in the basement. Malware cannot nuke what it cannot find.

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

TraderGary said:

@Almighty1 Looking at your "My Computer", I notice you also use Windows Defender on your Dell XPS 15. I agree, I don't put total trust in any AV either. In my experience, the best antivirus is a good backup strategy.

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That's because the Dell XPS 15 was originally a replacement computer when I accidentally killed my previous ASUS ROG G74SX-3DE notebook but I only installed things I needed on a day to day basis and never really installed anything else since the former ran Windows 10, originally 7 since I would probably need some time to research to see what is actually the best reported by different places before I even go that route, not to mention that the Dell XPS 15 had 1TB as the maximum storage capacity available and the previous machine was running on Samsung 980Pro 2.5" SATA 2TB SSDs so I also had more storage available and try to not install too much things that are big in size. I think I used Norton not because of the AV but more for the other things that were included originally until ofcourse when Norton Utilities was no longer available in a package like SystemWorks.

I am not saying Windows Defender is good or bad but I remember it was not as good as other free solutions and what is weird is I have been having a weird issue where the detection does not show up in the history until a week or so later so for example, the computer is on 24/7/365 but for some reason, on 10/16/2023 when I think like 4 events happened with Windows Defender, it is not showing the notification or the history until all of a sudden on 10/25/2023 as a real-time notification and then in the Protection History, it would show the 10/16/2023 dated events since I have noticed Windows Defender can be missing the earlier history after either the engine or the definitions get updated. Norton is a resource hog when it is scanning. I wished Windows Defender had a option when it detects that when you click on Allow, it actually remembers it and adds it to a exclusion list but it was basically complaining about the same file and I always click on the allow option. So with what I said earlier which might not be what A/Vs do currently as this was sometime in the 2000s, a A/V should actually stop the processes of the virus but in the case of earlier, it will show a pop up after that .exe has been infected and ask if you want to quarantine or ignore but the virus runs in the background and basically infects all the .exe files and making them all 0 bytes in size. To this day, I still have no idea where the virus actually lives as it will become active again. This is with Win32.tenga or Win32.licum which is the same virus. With other things, both Norton as of a few years ago and even Windows Defender now, it stops everything that is false positive including downloads of System Informer/Process Hacker for example except I have to download the same thing multiple times because either the browsers stops it or Windows Defender does and ofcourse being on a bandwidth capped internet connection, it's making it get to the limits easier. I should also say that my experience with Windows Defender only started on April 25, 2019 so for now, I will just say it works since it's only when something happens. I'll probably get into the habit of doing backups since in the old days, I usually have two computers, one desktop and one notebook that has the same apps and data so should one fail, I wouldn't lose anything but since 2009 after I bought a house and moved, many of the things are still unpacked because with a planned renovation, I don't want to have to unpack and repack again so haven't been up to date on what hardware is out there either.

Berton said:

That's when I left Norton, Symantec started getting rid of some good things.

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I am not complaining about Norton's Antivirus but I remember in the 1990's, Norton SystemWorks was I believe at 9.0, this was the one that after a defrag completely killed the HD. and ofcourse, the next version of Norton SystemWorks was called Norton SystemWorks for Windows v1.0. Norton Calibrate which came with Norton Utilities was actually a good product as it was the only thing that offered non-destructive low level formatting, all the formatting tools people use including the OSes are high level formatting. Spinrite which takes forever and does not allow using the computer as it has to run booted from DOS was the other option but extremely slow.

I switch often, I’m now using Bitdefender Total Security 2024 and Sophos Endpoint (Intercept X) Protection (Sophos I keep)

Almighty1 said:

Norton Utilities actually didn't exist until 1982 when the company was known as Peter Norton Computing. Symantec bought the company and everything just went downhill ever since.

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I agree with this, except that, for a while there, (early Win 7 days, IIRC) Symantec Anti Virus (Corporate Edition) was hands down the best, fastest, and second lightest in resource usage on Windows Desktop PCs for a while.

Right up until they started putting in bogus consumer-level features to get more sales of their consumer offerings. At that point they died for me. But NAV for DOS got me out of a massive pickle from a self-replicating and propagating ... worm, I suppose it should be called ... and NU was that absolute, must have set of utilities for all things disk related and many things file system related.

And I was 11 in '82.

When Symantec took over Drive image, I left (Drive Image). Then They took over PGP. Left (PGP) too.

Symantec is way too intrusive, same reason I left Acronis (yearly subscription) I still use the Acronis free with WD drives.