Yes, as a years user I can confirm Norton have been using Ask for several years. And eh what?, now they added Norton HP? Symantec earned another from me!
What's Norton HP? Norton 2015 is great, but the toolbar crap annoys me, and now this. I switched back to Trend. But then ran into Trustport 2015, which I find superior to anything, double engines, light as a feather so I bought a 2 year 6 PC license for $49 and will run that for the next 2 years. Not trying anything else anymore.
"Not trying anything else anymore" Can we bet on that? I've been using Webroot & Norton for the last, I think 15 years.
Bet on it. Why? I went nearly 12 years using only Avira or NOD32, never straying. This last year I have tried 3-4 additional products, but for whatever reason they didn't suite me. I would still be using Sophos ESC if I didn't feel I would be better off with a different layer. Now that I have Sophos+Avira on my Gateway/Router, no need to use them anywhere else. Trustport is where I am staying now. It's perfect, and strong, I am committed for the next 2 years. I'm not Mortal Raptor (my buddy). I know most of this endpoint stuff is security theater, and switching is more of an addiction then based on any real security issues. With my superior gateway protection, all I really need is something small, unobtrusive, and not annoying. Trustport fits the bill, and tosses 2 more engines into the mix.
Hmmmm... a hit on Norton. Nothing is perfect though. Symantec Endpoint (SEP) does not have any connection with Ask.com. ...Well at least not that I have detected.
Isn't the main thing with any product how well it works/protects not who or what company they may or may not be working with,so norton uses ask to work with their safe search facility,so what? run it for a while then if worried scan your system with an alternative product,doubt very much you will find anything of any concern,this is paranoia gone mad,could be a lot worse:they could have chosen google lol,in the uk most ISPs work with google or yahoo to provide their email services so if the paranoid lived here they wouldn't use the email service provided by them? Norton home user products have been using ask for years and suddenly realising it makes the product change from the bees knees to one some won't touch with a barge pole,I don't get it!(it hasn't changed!)
is he the member who changes is av like most folk change there socks?and each one is best ever invented for a couple of weeks?
most users on here seem to forget that most homeuser products are aimed at the folk who want a product to do almost everything for them and including a facility to search online with no real risk falls within that brief,I wonder at times why some of the "experts" on here don't just go and write their own product to do exactly what they want then they can be 100% happy all of the time(maybe!)
Ask thing probably is a storm in a tea cup to be honest. I still feel Norton is a fantastic product, barring the nagginess of the toolbars it's light, the reputation/insight is phenomenal, and has a great interface. Norton is still on my short-list of products I recommend. Trend, Norton, Sophos ESC, Forticlient and Trustport are the only things on that list anymore. We only deploy Forticlient (registered via Fortigate) and Trend WFB at work now, they've been extensively vetted by the team. But I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Norton 2015.
Yes, this is it... a small tempest in a teapot (prefered expression to 'storm in a tea cup' ) Norton/Symantec has become really good. Just follow Krusty's advice on product usage, and enjoy one of the best products going at this time. -F
Norton Home page of course. Currently it's still not deal breaker for me, but I got 1 more bad sentiments against Symantec (I like Norton, don't like Symantec).
Why do you like Norton, but dislike Symantec? Here is an example of Symantec helping you & me and all nice internet users. http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2397167/europol-microsoft-and-symantec-take-down-ramnit-botnet Not Norton, but Symantec. And Norton products have the Ask toolbar connection. Symantec Endpoint does not. Symantec gives free software to nonprofits http://www.symantec.com/about/theme.jsp?themeid=cr_software_donations&header=0&depthpath=0 Symantec's commitment to going Green http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/symantec-s-green-commitment Symantec giving over $1M toward literacy http://www.symantec.com/about/news/release/article.jsp?prid=20130225_01 I think you love Symantec. You just didn't realize it. That's all.
And I can add some more contribution to society, but that is "so what?" for me. I just mean I don't like the company but like their security product. As to the reason I like the Norton, maybe not many word will be needed. Simply, there're not many option which meet many of my requirements. I'm wholist in security, so just having good malware protection is never enough. I don't use product which is good in malware but don't take whole user security seriously (I don't list name of them), or product I can't confirm dev using secure coding and fuzzing tools. Major reason I dislike Symantec is, their fraudulent auto-renewal mechanism. They (McAfee too) are finally sued and fined. http://yro-beta.slashdot.org/story/...y-firms-fined-over-never-ending-subscriptions They reconciled and promised improvement, so the problem solved? NOOOO! It is still ongoing problem, every year new victim are born and they swear never to buy Norton. Even worse, afterward some vendor such as Trend and Bitdefender also adopted this bad practice. Just to avoid confusion, I have never affected this. I'm careful enough, on update I uncheck their On-going Protection and have never used credit card for update. It's all matter of ethics. Not only they automatically charge for new version, initially if you call for support, their attitude was terrible overall, they haven't refunded. After getting much criticized and even reported to civil service, now they are more flexible and basically you can get back your money, but their promised "improvement" is still questionable. Their explanation about auto charge is still not very clear for common ppl, and you can cancel automatic renewal ONLY within 60 days before expiration. Why not always? If you changed email address, you can't get notification about renewal. Now, you know fuss about their v2015 move w/out auto upgrade which origianlly guaranteed in 2014 and before. And you're fortune as you can use v2015, in some region including mine, v2015 is not available and there's no single explanation WHY it doesn't yet come, even when you directly asked them. W/out waiting Firecat chime in, Symantec is way too much money oriented company, yeah, all company are more or less money oriented and it's not necessarily bad, however Symantec seems not to truly care about each home user. There're other more customer-centric company out there, but it's another thing if their product is equally good.
Well c'mon now Yuki. We should appreciate companies that are responsible and try to make the world a better place. Oh, well I understand that. And yeah, Trend auto-renewed me without permission (about two years ago)... And that is really maddening. Well yeah, I understand that too. I don't know much about that whole thing... but if it is as you say, that is not good. Maybe Firecat loves Symantec now. Maybe he's now their VP for Marketing in the UK. But maybe not.