Norton

[Stephen Coates]

Anyone know what Norton is like these days?

My Dad's girlfriend's dad bought her a laptop last month from PC World. I think the spec was a little outdated but it would be fine for what they want (accessing the internet downstairs), and they got it at a good price.

But of course he was tricked into buying Norton, so my Dad has decided they will use that on this laptop since they have a years worth of it.

So, I was just wondering if anyone here had used it recently, and if so, is it any good, or it is just a pain in the backside*?

*Most security software it like that in my opinion, but some is definitely worse than others.

[Demon Cleaner]

I think that Norton got better nowadays, their biggest problem was often that it used too many resources running in the background, thus slowing down your PC. But the competition is quite big at the moment, and there are better ones out there. Norton lost a bit of their reliability due to the problem I mentioned.

I personally use now the Comodo Internet Security, and I'm really happy with it. Once set up correctly, it just runs smooth and you don't notice any slowdowns or other negative side effects.

[Andrew1971]

Hi All
I use microsoft security essentials and its free. i had no trouble at all its running on our 2 PC'S and 1 laptop on it. doesn't slow laptop down thats a 1.8ghz single core 2gig ram running windows 7
ultimate 32bit so no problem.
Many Thanks
Andrew1971

[Buleste]

I like Norton and had it up until recently. The only reason I dropped it was because it's cheaper to buy a new version off the shelf than to renew your subscription which I find a load of *&$%. I'm now using AVG and Avast at the moment.

[Harrison]

Norton's has definitely improved a lot from the 2010 edition onwards when they completely rewrote it. However it is still bloatware, filling up way too much HDD space, and it still uses a lot of system resources, although it is now much better with CPU time than it was before. It is however still not the greatest at detecting threats, although it is higher up than AVG which is complete rubbish. So many people's laptops I've had to clean of virus infections have been running AVG thinking they were protected, but it was happily letting all sorts of things through, including some quite horrible viruses that pretended to be a virus checker themselves.

I personally still use a 3 license copy of Kaspersky and have been extermely happy with it. And for other systems I just the free Comodo Internet Security, which is the only free one I would recommend to people.

[J T]

I use MSE on all of our computers, and yeah it's OK. Nice and simple, unobtrusive and although I haven't looked in much detail, doesn't seem to slow things down too much.

I used to use Norton many years ago and it was a real bitch to remove when I wanted to switch.

[Harrison]

Oh, that is still true. It comes installed as 30 day trials on a lot of new laptops still and I'm sometimes asked by friends to remove it for them and install something free/better, and it takes a lot of effort to get rid of it all completely. It often installs things at system level that run as services when the system starts, so they can't be uninstalled because they are running, so they need manually disabling, which can cause Norton's to throw a fit because someone is tampering with its files. So into safe mode, disable nearly everything from loading, manual removal of everything... only way. Definitely not home user friendly in removing it.

[Demon Cleaner]

You have the Norton Removal Tool that pretty much does it's job.

[Buleste]

What on earth's happened to Comodo??? It's become bloatware!! You have to have Comodo Dragon and Geekbuddy if you want any of the products and I started the 30 day trial of the Internet Security (AV and Firewall) and it eats all my systems resources when it does a full scan!!!! Definitely not recommended for an older system like mine. 2 1/2 hours and it managed to scan 2% of my hard drive and it was impossible to do anything else whilst it was trying to scan.

I think I'll go with the double sock method and find another free AV to go with Avast.

[Harrison]

Did you download the right version?

http://www.comodo.com/home/internet-security/free-internet-security.php

I've installed this version only last week for someone and it didn't have Geekbuddy or Dragon with it. I think as you mentioned a 30 day trial, you downloaded the Pro paid for version. Just download the free one, and make sure you untick the options in one of the pages that installs advertisers extras like yahoo toolbar, and then it is perfectly fine. I have Comodo Internet Security running on older systems as old as an Athlon XP 3000+ with 1GB of ram and it runs perfectly well on there with no CPU resource hogging.

When I've seen a system scan do that with any security software in the past, a lot of the time there has been a bad infection on the system and the scanner locks up trying to deal with it and can't get past it, using 100% CPU.

[Buleste]

I tried the free trial of Internet Security Complete 2012. Uninstalled. Tried the free AV (http://www.comodo.com/home/internet-security/antivirus.php?key5sk1=ad89b2f80c24d452db24861e3d967d51efb22a86&key5sk2=&key5sk3=1327484145000&key5sk24=null&key5sk25=1327484130000&key5sk26=&key5sk27=1327484148000&key6sk1=&key6sk2=FF901&key6sk3=7&key6sk4=en-gb&key6sk5=GB&key6sk6=1&key6sk7=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.comodo.com%252Fhome%252Fdownload%252Fduring-download.php&key6sk8=111102&key6sk9=1024768&key6sk10=true&key6sk11=a54db1d644482f056211a8e2cf7d39a82519f4b8&key7sk1=4888&key1sk1=dt&key1sk2=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.comodo.com%252Fhome%252Fdownload%252Fduring-download.php) and it still hogged resources and installed Geek buddy and Comodo Dragon and didn't even give me the option not too.

AFAIK I haven't got any infections (at least according to AVG, Avast and Avira in the past) and in the 2 1/2 hours it took Comodo to search 2% of my computer it didn't find anything either so there should have been no reason for it to hog all the CPU all the time but it did. After uninstalling it all yesterday I've switched my computer on today and it's installing itself again!!!!!

[Stephen Coates]

I wonder how safe my Linux system is from viruses :D.

I'm not running any anti-virus/anti-malware software on here.

[Harrison]

Whilst virus and malware are know to exist, you are quite right Steve. Due to how Linux works, with it's permissions systems and hierarchy it's quite hard to directly hack, so malware is too much hassle compared to Windows. Equally because everything normally needs to be compiled before installing due to the vast number of different distributions and builds, it again makes it very hard to develop a standard virus that would work for all versions.

The reason Windows is so prone is actually because it is so user friendly. Consider the Microsoft have made it possible for a lot of code as far back as Windows 3.1 to continue running even under Windows 7, which is quite impressive, and so really does offer the user a good environment to run their code, but also allows virus and malware writers the knowledge that the whole userbase can also run their malicious code.

Linus will never become a standard desktop OS for the home user purely because of this, and IMO Windows will continue to, attracting the same annoying security issues.

Now take Mac OS X. Why hasn't that attracted the same level as Windows? It is a fixed OS much like Windows. All copies of the same version are the same and will run the same code. And pretty much all versions of OS X are compatible to run the same code. Some does exist, but it is more the smaller userbase and how the OS is used that I think limited the interest, more than being able to.

[Stephen Coates]

Remember also, that with OSX, Apple haven't supported the Classic environment for quite a long time now, so no OS9 software anymore, and I think they have also ditched their PowerPC emulator now as well, so its MacIntel stuff only now.

[Harrison]

True, but they have been using Intel CPUs for quite some time now.

BTW, does anyone know if any infections have ever been found on Amiga OS4 and other PPC OSs?

[Stephen Coates]

Hehe. They must have been on Intel processors for about 6 years now. That's quite a long time in computer terms.

No idea about OS4 viruses. Not saying it wouldn't happen, but I'd say its very unlikely.

[Demon Cleaner]

At the beginning of the Amiga 500, viruses became more and more common and frequent, and because of the whole swapping, they spread very fast. Never happened on the C64 before.

[Harrison]

I think the Amiga was the first place I started seeing virus infections. Some magazine cover disks were also accidentally duplicated with virus infections on them and distributed... then the next month a huge apology and the utilities to remove it was on the next cover disk. :lol: Those were the days.

I remember reading about an Amiga virus that would trick an A500 into thinking it had 4 floppy disk drives connected and would make it draw to much power to certain parts and damage them. I'm not sure if that was actually true, but I did hear it from more than one source. And actually, when you have a fixed hardware platform like the A500, or today's consoles, it makes it much easier for someone to target the hardware specifically, whereas in PCs they are very modular with no 2 PCs ever having identical hardware.

[Stephen Coates]

Some magazine cover disks were also accidentally duplicated with virus infections on them and distributed... then the next month a huge apology and the utilities to remove it was on the next cover disk. :lol: Those were the days.


But was it accidental? :ninja:
Maybe it was a way to sell more magazines?

[Buleste]

I'll take some of what I said about Comodo back.

It's not bloatware I just didn't notice the custom install to get rid of the options for installing Comodo Dragon and Geek support.

I have run the AV as smart scan and it took a respectable 8-9 mins. Full scan however is a problem even with almost every background programme turned off except Task manager (to keep an eye on resources) and Resource manager. It wasn't taking up as much CPU power or memory but it still made multi tasking impossible for me.

[Demon Cleaner]

I remember getting one certain virus over and over again, can't remember the name though. But it always rebooted the Amiga after 7 minutes, that was quite a pain in the ass. To get rid of it, I always unplugged the Amiga from the power for some hours, then it seemed to be gone for a while, but I guess as I inserted the infected disk again, it was back :lol:

[Harrison]

It is funny the things we convince ourselves work to fix something, when later we look back and realise how crazy it was.

[J T]

Now take Mac OS X. Why hasn't that attracted the same level as Windows? It is a fixed OS much like Windows. All copies of the same version are the same and will run the same code. And pretty much all versions of OS X are compatible to run the same code. Some does exist, but it is more the smaller userbase and how the OS is used that I think limited the interest, more than being able to.

I've long wondered if the increasing popularity of OSX and iOS will make people target apple OSs more, I think we might even have briefly discussed it here. It's likely, I'd imagine. And possibly quite attractive considering the usual Apple zealots staunch belief that Macs can't get a virus, so are likely to let their guard down. I know I've had a dodgyish looking attachment or a link before, so I've gone to a mac to open it. Of course, it helps that they were work's macs - so if it gets stuffed up it isn't really my problem :ninja:

It seems that the PC door has been well and truly broken down, it's easy for baddies to target all the machines running out of date XP, unpatched versions, the naive, etc... easier pickings.

[Stephen Coates]

I reckon iPhones and iPads will probably become targets of viruses due to their popularity. Probably more so than OSX.

But it will probably depend on how secure iPhones and iPads are. Would it be easy to develop a virus for it?

[Harrison]

iPhones have been the target of security attacks for a long time. There are often reports of Apple needing to do OS updates to patch potential risks. As with everything, the thieves will only target the post popular hardware as they know there will be a greater chance of getting a result. The iPhone and iPad are great targets. However with mobile devices there are a lot more security risks than desktop systems, especially if you factor in wireless networks and bluetooth. Leave bluetooth active and you run the risk of being hacked on any device these days. I only ever turn wifi, bluetooth or mobile data connections on for my android phone when I'm actually using them, then they go straight off again.