Is Norton Antivirus supposed to always provide recovery of files it deletes

I asked this on Norton forums, but no exact answer yet. Anyone here know:

There is no way to set Norton to always ask before it treats a suspected file it finds. This gives me concern that it could delete a system or program file that is a false positive. But Norton has a quarantine that I think* is supposed to be backup recovery of files it deletes (* from old messages I found on its forums, this seems to be the case but it is only an assumption of mine, nothing from Symantec stated it directly.)

Here is my question: Excluding bugs/snafus/etc. that could happen, is Norton Antivirus supposed to make quarantined backups of any file that it deletes from a user's drive? In other words, should Norton always make files, it deletes from your drive, recoverable? Or by its design (not a bug or random error), it sometimes deletes, with no recourse to recover, some files it projects as threats?

 

I have had it delete files before with no way to recover unless I had a backup. Since I do run regular backups this is usually the case but no less maddening. So no, it does not always save a copy of every file in quarantine.

 

Thanks. I can use it for free (internet provider) but that bothers me and keeps me from wanting to still use it. So thanks for confirming.

I will wait and see how Avast 8 does in independent tests, and if good, stay with it, and if not, look at Kaspersky.

 

Hello. Norton follow another strategic by design - it relies on Symantec to "tell" Norton which threat is what level threat - I mean is it severe, is it high, medium or low one. If it is severe and high - it poses higher risk so it is permanently removed without the chance for the end user to do anything else (who might be professional or most often is non-savvy at all). That is OK except that it might cause false positive. But Symantec believe that Norton is used mostly by non-savvy users and this is OK for them.

Symantec offer another solution you can use which offers more options -> Symantec Endpoint Protection. The small business edition 2013 (the non-cloud version) should have options which will let you in details configure what you can do with files. It costs only 24 euros/1machine/1 year and protection is the same as Norton.

 

Thanks. That makes sense, although if it did remove an important file as a false positive, a non-savvy users would probably be more lost (why is my system acting funny now, no clue) and just live with the problem created, whereas someone who knew what happened (Damn Norton deleted my file) would re-install or recover from a back up.

 

Do you think a non-savvy person would monitor CPU usage and check performance logs? Norton is targeting premium users, though not necessarily geeks. Norton also has a multitude of options - many of which are not needed by non-savvy users.

I just had the chance to use Norton 360 on a laptop, and to be honest I think PC Tools does a far better job of making alerts and protection understandable to someone who doesn't have much experience with things like this.

With such odd design and a dual brand strategy, one has to wonder where Symantec is headed!

 

Hi.

Well, I kind of agree with you about PCTools alerts.

CPU usage and performance stuff in the product are made for those who search fancy and modern things - a savvy user will not rely on Norton to have a look at the CPU usage. That is why (+ a lot more) I think Norton is for premium and mostly non-savvy users who trust the Norton brand.

Well, if we talk about Symantec (not Norton or PCTools) then Symantec is situated in the big enterprises and big companies and this is what gives them a lot of money.

 

Can you give a specific example of where you think a PC Tools alert was more understandable to the average non-tech-savvy user than the Norton one.

 

Set both products to their maximum settings, run scans and see for yourself each alert (esp. if you have files that trigger cloud/reputation based detections)

Wrangling with Insight, for example, is not something I think appeals to a common user compared to PC Tools which just blocks the file via Download Guard if the reputation is low (you can always allow any file by simply adding a link to the global action list - it's very intuitive and takes less time compared to Norton where one has to read through the details and trust levels provided by Insight/Reputation based tech before making the final decision).

This is very good if you are a user who really wants to see what's going on - but to the average guy who wants to set it to max and let it do it's thing, I can't see that guy spending a lot of time to see what's going on with Insight.

You could just set Norton to a virtual full auto action mode, but with PC Tools you never have to bother about this in the first place.

Norton's focus on performance and as many options as possible never made sense to me - it feels gimmicky from the get go, though it is still quite usable.

All of this has nothing to do with the protection, however.

I'm saying this because my family works with a lot of files that have low reputation and often trigger alerts from both products - but with PC Tools it was far less irritating and like I said, adding to the global action list was easy and intuitive (and you can actually limit the exclusion to the next system restart). The fact that most of my family understands to do this with PC Tools and struggles to do the same with Norton was what got me thinking. Norton seems to target young folks like myself.....