The Symantec/Norton Thread.

I think we're seeing a shakeout. Many AV and Security firms are going out of business, or at the point where they can't keep up with evolving technologies and blended threats. The market is becoming very tight, with a few players controlling the majority of the market. Then as threats escalate, and people gain security awareness, the free solutions may start to drop in dominance. Good security comes at a price, and often free things have 'something' they are selling (usually YOU). Then you have firms like Norton and Trend making BIG plays to make major gains. These are juggernauts, with incredible resources to push ahead of the pack. The 'guard' is changing so to speak...

 

I'm still scratching my head how you can define Norton a miracle when it has had a bug huge as a mountain reported by several expert members and namely that sometimes it deletes good files silently... Another thing I find very critical is its absolute dependence on the internet. These are serious issues and I'm not denying Norton is an excellent AV.

 

Everything has depedance on the internet, even moreso as the years go on. This isn't 1982, everyone should have a stable, always on connection by this point. The only way to leverage advanced detection is to be able to access the back end architecture of these products. Without the internet there isn't enough computing horsepower on a home to deal with all of it. The only other option is to;

1) Run a signature based AV, more local AV, but accept the limitations it has.
2) Run your own UTM/Appliance, to offload AV processing to the UTM. (Fortinet, Sophos UTM, Bit Defender Box, etc)

Choices are becoming more limited if you choose not to have a fully internet reliant security solution.

 

Perhaps there is excessive undue exuberance on this thread.

Symantec/Norton is not perfect. There are some issues...

But you have to admit, for a product that was perpetually bloated, and often sucky for a long long time, Symantec/Norton has made a remarkable turnaround into being one of the better products available.

Dependence on the cloud is just sorta the nature of the beast now with the signature based portion of products.

 

In my opinion Norton is doing fine since version 2009, when its become very light, with little bloat and high detection in dynamic tests and real scenario usage.

To me Norton 2009 was the most important milestone to Symantec in the consumer market, but the damage to the reputation was already done.

 

For me the miracle began with actually getting myself to even install Norton on any machine I owned, let alone actually purchasing a 5-device license. It was something I never thought I would ever do again in my lifetime. Nothing is perfect, to be sure, but Norton Security impressed me enough to buy it and use it. Will I continue with it after my subscription expires? I've no idea, but I'm quite happy with it right now.

 

Chatted with a customer support agent today.

As he/she said, I can at least buy from the U.S. site and use it in any language version (I can choose language when downloading from my account) as long as my payment method can be accepted.

I'll still wait for my trial period to end and see if the Chinese site starts to sell NS22.

 

I agree Frank, Norton was my first internet suite back in 2004 (their worst year in terms of bloat) and since then it has improved a lot according to users’ reports. I’m not criticizing because of my past experience, but false positives deleted silently don’t make an AV reliable at all and Symantec has the resources to do something about it…

 

Re:restore
I can also confirm that Norton do not always allow restore. I still don't see their algorithm about what can be restored and what not, but it's fact.

Yup, that is part of reason I don't take Youtube amateur tests even as a grain of salt. Some AV automatically "remedy" files after detection, so simple equation:
(number of whole sample) - (number of remained sample) / (number of whole sample) * 100 = (detection rate)
can't be used unless you can confirm all detected samples were deleted. Some AV including Norton simply don't have such an option and even in Kaspersky which have the option, still PUPs won't be automatically removed when you enabled Other Software Detection.
To calculate correct detection rate you have to dig in logs.

 

imo 2009 was the turning point for them. imo it was still to this day the lightest version overall and was the best one. they started getting more bloated again the following year and that continued through around 2012 then in 2013 they started to lighten it back up again with 2014 only ehh imo. i can confirm the newest version def is lighter for sure but i can not run it with it deleting files on me especially ones that somehow just disappear into the abyss like socks in a dryer.

 

Admittedly I haven't run it for any great length of time, but I have not yet had any files inexplicably come up missing.

 

I will. Currently the 5 device license is discounted so it would cover all our PCs which is another plus.

 

I've had the new Norton on some machines here for almost 4 months, and I haven't seen anything come up missing either. I think it's on 4-5 machines and a server right now.

 

Just installed trial Norton Security version and I must say that I'm pretty impressed. I'll definitely switch to to this.

 

If you're running Avast, anything you switch to will impress you

 

Uh oh, I was running a scan with Norton.

I guess it recognized my monitor as malware.

Poof.... It ate my monitor. It's gone.

It's not in the quarantine either.

I'm thinking the spooks at NSA figured out a way to integrate malware into the monitor. So that was a good hit.

Oh well, I needed a new monitor anyway.

I wonder if I could get Norton to recognize my mother-in-law as malware?

 

It's worth a shot !!! LOL Let me know if it works!

 

This is not a bug, it is a years long ongoing situation where Norton decides they want to delete your files and not allow you to restore them. I have removed their product many times over the years due to this issue. I have complained on their forums many times and argued with their employees many times on this subject. They have made a choice and they have continued with it. I don't expect them to start caring now what anyone thinks of it, but a bug it is not.

 

Your mother-in-law would fail the reputation check.

Seriously though.. Still no sign of magically disappearing stuff with Norton. Also note, we manage about 4,500 machines running SEP, and I haven't see any reports of disappearing acts. We can always recover stuff if it gets nixed.

 

you know the score,probably one person posted genuinely that something had been deleted and not recoverable from quarantine,then lo and behold thousands suddenly have the same problem,bit like UFO's:-if one person says they have seen one in a location hundreds will confirm it,even if the original was a hoax

 

Or sick building syndrome, where one person gets nausea, starts saying they smell funny stuff, then 10 people drop in the next hour. Authorities rush in, and find nothing, hazmat goes over it, nothing.

 

No, it isnt a hoax or a bug, like xxJackxx said, it is a annoying design decision made by Norton Team.


https://community.norton.com/en/forums/product-complaint

http://community.norton.com/en/forums/unable-restore-file-deleted-norton

If you do a research at Norton forum you will see why people here are talking about this "issue".

I experienced this issue last month and I dont have a reason to make up this "history". I still use, like and recommend Norton.



Anyway, Norton quarantine feature had some serious bugs in the past too:

http://community.norton.com/en/forums/quarantine-restore-bug-still-exist-after-4-month

http://community.norton.com/node/454493

 

I was meaning it isn't as much of an issue as its being depicted,you always get folk jumping on the band wagon or just trolling to make a problem seem worse than what it actually is,a few years back I had a discussion about this with one of their techs,back then the criteria to delete was less stringent and totally automatic and now with most files you do have the final say,their argument was that less tech savvy customers,by far the greatest number,are better protected as most wouldn't have a clue if asked to keep/delete a dubious file

 

I don't think it's a hoax or anything. I think a few people may have had a file deleted that was unrecoverable. But I don't see any evidence that it's widespread, willy nilly or oddly random. Until I do, I'm not going to worry about. Hopefully, my backup routine will let me restore a file if it comes down to it.

 

Auto delete is actually good for less tech customers, but it is necessary to make a copy in quarantine in case something goes wrong, the problem is that Norton doesnt always make a quarantine copy.

I dont see a reason to this behavior, it should always make a copy in quarantine.