Why not Norton AV?

Is he supposed to step in and stop others from expressing their opinion on an antivirus product? There are reasons so many people dislike Norton -- I personally would never recommend Norton based on its intense resource usage alone when there are several other AV's out there with just as good, if not better, detection rates that are much lighter on the system.

I simply can't immagine anyone choosing an AV that they know doesn't detect worms and trojans well when so many other AV's do -- it's not like adding definitions adds bloat to a product. And many AV's today have an option to detect spyware ("other malware"). Again, I'm sure most people would choose an AV that includes this option versus one that doesn't.

 

I for one have no confidence in norton.
Go on any P2P site download and crack it .
Norton cant even fix this ,so how easy is it for a virus to do the same.
Good antivirus programes cant be cracked Nod for example

 

I downloaded KAV5 with a crack , just to see if it worked(Don't worry I took it off 5 minutes later)

Does this mean that Kaspersky is not a good AV??

 

Unfortunately at the moment it can be cracked. As far as I know a remedy for this situation is being worked on.

Cheers

 

I have submitted thousands of malware samples to SARC and gotten detection on many of them. I have almost a Gigabyte of malware samples in personal collection that I have tested NAV on. I was MVM at DSLReports with ~19K posts before I left, I still am MSMVP {Microsoft}, I post here at Wilders and am active on several other Security forums {TrojanHunter, DiamondCS, PCFlank, CastleCops, etc.} .. Not blowing my own horn but what do you consider enough experience or qualifications for someone who, like me, supports NAV and thinks it is {not perfect} but a good AV? Am I by your definition a "newbie" or "novice" simply because I don't agree with your opinion? What kind of prejudicial and skewed logic is that? Pretty darn arrogant claim, if you ask me .. no offense .. because you have proclaimed yourself as the "expert" and if we disagree, then we must be novices who don't know what we're talking about, right?

The AntiVirus products {Symantec, Trend, ESET, etc.} are indeed expanding coverage and including these threats, but that doesn't mean they are able to *protect* a PC from these threats as well as a dedicated AntiSpyware program. Detection and protection are two different things. Also, user error and unsafe security practices {visiting questionable sites}, and just plain laziness {not keeping virusdefs updated, wrongly configured system, Wrongly configured AV, etc.} oftentimes are the reason for spyware or other malware infections. An AntiVirus does not function in a vaccum; it must work with the User and with the other Security Software {firewall, antitrojan, antispyware, etc.} installed on the same box.

And McAfee, Panda, TrendMicro, etc don't heavily market their products? C'Mon, I get a lot more daily email from those other Vendors than I get from Norton!

If we insist on being sarcastic, let me reply that IMHO the real "joke" is your post that I am debunking. Guess what, the latest award from CNET-ZDNET went not to Norton but to TrendMicro's PC-Cillin. Are you going to turn around and accuse Trend of heavy marketing? Hey, it's legal and it's common to market your product; a free market is a good and healthy thing, if you think you have a better product, then you need to market it and the folks out there will respond and buy it if it is truly as good as promised. People are not all the "goons" and misled "dupes" that elitists like yourself seem to love to brand and paint them as.

Many times they have to actually install or enable NAV. That is the way it was on my new Compaq Presario I purchased a year and four months ago, it had NAV 2003 installer but I had to *choose* to install it and after doing so could uninstall at any time. Also these OEM copies of NAV only have subscription for three months, after which the User must decide whether he-she wants to renew the subscription or try something else. No one is being forced to embrace the copies of NAV or McAfee or Trend-PCC that come with a new box. They can always get something else they like better, just as no one is forced to use IE {even though it is preinstalled on every Windows box}; they can use FireFox, Moz, Opera, etc. if they want.

Hey Bud, guess what -- I"m NOT - "making any excuses", that is. Send me samples of these viruses you think Norton is missing, just PM me and I'll give you email addy. Oftentimes when people do this, I test on my PC and find that NAV is detecting them! Show proof before I willl believe you that NAV is actually the "Crapola" that you seem to think in your posting here. Remember, at Virus Bulletin for example, Symantec is only bested by ESET for the best VB100% success record. I will grant that in my humble opinion, Kaspersky AV has the best detection overall, but Norton is not nearly so bad as it is bashed to be by posts like yours .. thanks.

I use NAV on my boxes and no, I don't think I have a false sense of security, and I challenge you to find and send me all these many viruses that NAV cannot detect because in fact I doubt you can.

I spend my "hard earned money" the way everybody else does, on my product of preference, i.e. it is my choice; and that is the way a free market operates; and I like to think I am not the "newbie" or uninformed imbecile that you are painting NAV-users out to be in your post .. thanks and best wishes to you.

 

Randy it was the best day in the world when you stopped posting at DSLR, I don't care for DSLR much anyways because they are very opinionated and edit or delete posts whenever they are proven wrong or just feel like it.

But don't try and bash me here, I don't think the Mods are one sided like they are at DSLR. I have not "bashed" Norton, I have simply stated facts, things I see on a daily basis. I don't care that you are "MVP" or whatever you called yourself and I don't care about your extensive malware collection or that you post at many forums (I have the same credentials but that is irrelevant)...... and I don't think anyone else here does either.

All I care about is REAL WORLD results, not some test by you or anyone else including VB100%. I care, like most people, that when ANY malicious program tries to infect my computer in any way, shape or from that my antivirus program will detect and eradicate it, it's as simple as that. Norton does not do this more often than is acceptable therefore myself and any true knowledgeable user would never recommend it.

I can give you example after example after example of where I have seen Norton miss countless malwares that Kaspersky and even AVG detect. I can understand that no product is perfect but when I see professionally trained IT people install Norton or Symantec Corp AV and it miss 10-20 malwares, or "mysteriously become corrupt or disabled" then it ranks VERY low on the list of products I would use or recommend. This is not even getting into all of the problems with it's uninstalled or junk it leaves behind after an uninstall or the fact that you can't even uninstall it.

I'm not going to send you samples or anything else because I know like so many others the truth..... Norton is a terrible product. I don't need to "prove" it to anyone, I simply hate to see someone waste their money on something that doesn't live up to it's name. I can't even begin to tell you how many clients call me and describe typical malware issues and tell me they have Norton installed and they just bought it. Then I uninstall it and install KAV and it finds numerous infections.

So please keep your bashing and finger pointing to yourself, it's not professional and it's very immature.

Stick to the topic at hand.

 

I made no {negative or positive} public comment about DSLR here, just that I was MVM And almost 19K posts when I left. I mentioned that as evidence that I have participated in mature Security discussions and don't consider myself a newbie even if you apparently do.

But you did state or imply that anyone who differs from your opinion is misinformed, didn't you? You have clearly criticized if not "bashed" NAV, there is no doubt, you have implied that anyone who uses the product is deceived and misinformed! I clearly said my motive wasn't to "tout" my own credentials but simply to offer the possibility that someone who is security-savvy and knowledgable might have a differing opinion! And I don't care whether folks care about me personally, my point was one of formal argument, namely to refute the notion that anyone who posits different opinion has to be a misinformed newbie with no real facts or evidence.

I'm sure that ESET would love to hear that their VB testing record is irrelevant to the real world! This is typical snobbish and elitist rhetoric, I guess only you are the self-proclaimed Expert who knows what is "real-world" and what is not? Nevermind VB or WildList.org or Univ. of Hamburg, or VirusP, or Rokop .. the professional testers don't know the "real world" that you know.

Hogwash .. Send me samples that you think can infect my box! You can't! OK you just said it again, by your definition I'm not a "true knowledgeable user" because I disagree with you?

Provide the samples {the evidence} and prove your case! Why should I or anyone accept hearsay without provision of evidence to back it up? Now you're even implying that AVG is better than Norton? AVG, a free product with 19 fewer VB100% successes {or, 19 more failures}? And that isn't bashing? No offense but why should I beileve your hearsay? You provide no evidence and want me to trust your word!

I can tell you that if you do send me samples, you will be sending to someone who has an up-to-date and correctly configured and latest version of NAV; who also has KAV, F-Prot, and BitDefender installed for comparison; who himself has tested many hundreds of samples. I can tell you that my PC is completely virus and spyware-free and has been that way for years. You will not be dealing with a clueless client who may have inherited an OEM version of NAV and never set it up properly or kept the virus definitions current; with someone who may use IE without proper security settings or other anti-spyware protection, who may surf unsafe sites, and thus opens himself up for driveby infection .. etc.

And why do the Pros still like Symantec Corporate? They too are deluded and don't know what a Crap Product it really is? Your posts ring hollow to me, because you provide no proof and refuse to provide evidence. No offense but I don't take the personal word of anyone without seeing hard evidence that I can test for myself. I have never been infected and don't expect to because NAV is a much better protection than you assert here. I once was fooling with a Netsky.P sample and accidentally launched it; NAV jumped in and denied it access to my filesystem {it is both a network worm and a viral file infector, and still on Norton's and Trend's "top ten" lists}; it could not harm me; I was protected; I rebooted and it was gone. ZoneAlarm also denied it access to the Net but the point is that NAV denied it access to my filesystem and did not allow it to spread until I had time to kill it. If NAV was so weak as you assert, I might have had to reformat my box but the reality was, nothing happened; NAV did its job. I have also read many accounts of NAV protecting others, the stories are not all failures and problems with NAV.

You won't send me samples because you can't. And are probably afraid of being shown as inaccurate with your negative claims. So far as the other observations, a friend sent me these comments about NAV in email which I think say it best:

I think that was well-stated and factual. Also the element of human nature, that only people with problems tend to post to Security forums, HijackThis log forums, etc. People who are not having issues, who are happy with the product, tend to constitute the "silent majority" who don't post.

 

Sorry Paul, I did not even see this comment of yours until now, after my latest reply to the other .. my apology.

 

It depends upon which anti-virus testing website that you are talking about. If you are going by the one that I personally hear most quoted, that German bulletin site, I forget its name, you all know which one, only NORTON has now gone for 5 years in a row without missing a 100%, not NOD, not KAV, not anybody. Perhaps that testing website is not that good, I really haven’t the faintest idea but it really is the one that I hear about the most at the supposedly "expert" security sites. Take care.

Acadia

 

NOD32 has been cracked.

 

Norton is not that bad. It just uses so much resources that don't justify its detection rates. NOD32 offers a somewhat better detection with a fraction of resources and that's the reason it is so popular (not to mention F-prot, it uses an insanely low resource amount for a good detection rate). Symantec has traded the pure effectiveness for the marketing and these last versions are the result. People which say Norton runs flawlessly are almost all persons who got it bundled with their PC and haven't seen their pc's running without it.

This is no bashing, its reality. There are better products than norton, period.

 

So right. Norton has a resonably good detection rate. However, its quirks:-

- High resource usage
- Very bad file unpacking support leading to missing of certain viruses
- This one I have personally seen. Norton will NOT remove registry entries of malware upon detection. User has to do it manually.

KAV, eScan,Trend Micro (with the additional Damage Cleanup Services Download), McAfee, F-Prot, maybe even NOD32 (not sure), all remove the registry entries of the malware upon detection. It seems Symantec's second name is registry crap (never cleans the registry, even of its own entries).

Those who say Norton runs fine on their system have probably never seen their PC without it as was mentioned earlier by Buzkashi_player. Let me tell you I have always had a double OS setup since 2003. At that time it was Windows Me and XP.

On Windows XP Professional there was Norton Internet Security 2003 (bundled)
And on WinMe I used to have the same... One day it screwed up my PC so bad I could not reinstall it on WinMe... Thats when I got PC-cillin 2002. Even PC-cillin detected a few Trojans on my computer back then that Norton didn't.

Besides, Norton used to slow down my PC so much! Installing PC-cillin, my PC felt like it had been given steroids! I saw performance gains everywhere, from web browsing to gaming, and it was big!

Then I replaced Norton with McAfee (had to do full system format for that, though due to registry garbage of Norton). And guess what McAfee found about 4 Trojans on my PC that Norton or Trend did not find.

McAfee was on XP Pro. When I wiped my disk out I decided to buy a new OS. Now I have Windows XP Home and Pro dualbooted! On Windows XP Home, I installed eScan (KAV engine) and lo one more trojan!. Later McAfee found one Trojan undetected by KAV/eScan. Now its detected though.

I will never look back at Norton and I think I'll replace McAfee with the original KAV 5.0 now. There are MUCH better products than Symantec at MUCH better prices. No doubt about that. I'm sure many will agree here. Again, this is not bashing, its facts. Now the registry problems may be gone, but NAV will still not remove reg entries of malware. I'm not saying NAV is bad as an AntiVirus (now, earlier it was, no denying), but there are better products out there. Only that you'd have to search a bit through the market for them.

With Regards and due respect,
Firecat

 

I used to use P2P alot.My first antivirus was norton.I can remember when it was disabled also by a worm or something.Iam fairly new to all this but i have used other antivirus programes and this has never happened.
Because norton was so popular was they a target.
If you do a search on P2P for norton there are hundreds of sources and they work .Do a search for most other anti virus and there are a few .
OK NOD can be cracked but try ,it will install and update but not after 30 days.
If some users are manageing to do this they are a few compared to norton
Yes kav can be cracked easy as well , which is surprising but most others are very hard.TDS for example is hard or impossible.
This was just something that intrested me.I tried and later uninstalled

 

AV Cracks:

So far as I know KAV has not been cracked. The Warez guys just distribute stolen keys. Kaspersky maintains a blacklist of stolen keys, but some keys can not be blacklisted because they are in wide legitimate distribution.

NOD32 has been cracked, but only the evaluation versions. ESET aggressively blacklists stolen user name/passwords for the full version

NAV is protected by product activation which can be bypassed with a keygen.

The most secure system to protect an AV from being stolen is a system where the serial number is sent to the update server and checked each time the product is updated. If too many update requests are received for the same serial number, then it is blacklisted. However, the publisher must maintain a database of valid serial numbers which becomes difficult if there are multiple distribution channels. If the product is sold shrink wrapped, then the possibility exists that the serial number will be stolen before a retail sale of the box, so this system only works for download sales where the vendor knows at least the email address of the buyer. Some buyers rather be anonymous.

NOD could probably solve their piracy problem by eliminating the evaluation version and allowing downloads of the full product with a serial number that expires. This is how Trend Micro operates.

 

In every comprehensive, AV review I've seen that focuses on detection, Norton beats NOD32. Even AV-Comparatives, who has NOD32 higher than the other reviews I've read, still has NAV edging out NOD32.

I like NOD32 more than Norton, but that's because of resource usage. I recognize that NOD32's detection, namely of trojans and "other malware" such as keyloggers is lacking. And I think this is the most important kind of detection for P2P users.

I certainly agree with you on Kaspersky though. KAV with extended databases has the best overall malware protection of any AV available.

 

I have been a fan of Norton since the old V4 days and only dumped it only when 2004 came out (worst ever).

They've made good in roads in 2005 to make it less hungry and easier to uninstall (they've even added options to include certain types of malware) ............ It is still a great "ANTI VIRUS" BUT the sad truth is that they are falling behind in malware detection and seem not to care.

A TROJAN IS A VIRUS TO ME no matter what anybody else says.

The following trojans are in the wild (real world) and the results speak for themselves.

 

.....

 

I agree. Especially by the definition previously given in this thread:
"A virus is a software program, script, or macro that has been designed to infect, destroy, modify, or cause other problems with a computer or software program."

Unfortunately, I usually see scan results like the one attached. I say unfortunately because I like NOD32. At least NOD32 is listed though. Last I heard Norton requested to have their scanner removed from Jotti's. Results like the ones you posted show why.

 

As I understand it, Trojans are worst than viruses. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I would rather get hit by a virus that reformats my hard drive rather than get hit by a Trojan and just sits there damaging absolutely nothing ... while collecting my ss#, credit card #'s, bank account password, and then phoning them home to its creator.

Acadia

 

Thank you Acadia for this. Correct. If AV companies will cover Trojans in their protection that is great. At this time I would not depend on it alone. Might risk it but not depend on it. Extra care needed.

They are different infections the damage they do is generally different. One can certainly deposit the other but they are different. Good example many will survive a virus in their body, but die from complications presented by the virus. My understanding and I am no expert, virus can deliver payload trojan or take down defenses to allow trojans to come later perhaps from the same source as virus and maybe right away. I would like a more expert opinion on this please. Correct me if I am wrong. But I did not want, "A trojan is a virus," to stand as an inaccuracy, otherwise many will have opinion why get special trojan killer all you need is AV. WRONG...not yet anyway including NORTON AV imho