The Symantec/Norton Thread.

The consumer versions of McAfee have never been bad per se, but there has always been scope for improvement.

Norton, on the other hand, has been a rollercoaster ride over the years from being very good to having atrocious bugs and issues (especially with product updates causing stability issues).

But on all counts (Enterprise, SMB, Consumer), I strongly believe there are better alternatives to the classic 4 Antimalware programs of yesteryear (Symantec/Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro, Panda).

 

I have Norton 360 with LifeLock..Paid 19.95 for a year should I look elsewhere...?..Does it protect as well as the reviews say or not?

 

Norton upgraded me from Norton Antivirus to Norton 360 for free. I received an email about it, but when I went to my account to upgrade, I was only given the option to upgrade to AntiVirus Plus for free and had to pay to upgrade to 360. However I talked to their support via live chat and they did the upgrade to 360 for free. I was actually quite impressed by the quality of support. With other vendors, I typically find talking to customer support to be a frustrating experience, which takes much longer than it should.

When you upgrade from your account in your browser, you are required to enter payment details so that that they can auto renew your subscription when it ends. However with them doing the upgrade, they still don't have any billing details from me, so I won't be charged when my subscription expires.

 

Norton Security 22.20.1.69 for Windows is now available!

 

Thanks. Mine updated after running Live Update twice.

 

An update on this issue: Norton has removed my mailing information from their data base. No more Auto Renewal Notices by US Mail.
https://community.norton.com/en/comment/8301421#comment-8301421

 

I've never seen a company roll back so many updates. It was frustrating for me when I still used it as I might get an update on 1 device and not others. Especially when they changed or added features and it became a different experience.

 

Yeah, they've been releasing and rolling back releases for the last few years. There is a lack of QC it appears.

 

It's not going to get any better by the way Norton has been acquired. Being acquired is a down hill slide.

 

Agreed. They are pretty much dead to me at this point. Peter Norton was a brilliant man. The current company hasn't had anything to do with him for quite some time.

 

[Updated on 4th February: Norton Security 22.20.1.69 for Windows has been re-released.

Note: This is a throttled release.]

 

I got the opposite experience. From my point of view, Norton became one of the most solid AV in terms of protection. I remember times when it was sluggish and offers poor detection rate (at beginning of XXI century) but it's distant past and doesn't reflect current product.
I have done a lot of my internal test on rare samples that I collected (or on systems that I' attacking with Metasploit/PowerShell empire etc) and I'm impressed by its capabilities and ability to resists to some network attacks.
I see Norton as one of the most underestimated consumer products available. Most complains are related to few glitches, but it's a really strong competitor versus Kaspersky and BD.

 

My ISP provides a free Norton Security Online license. Would you consider this AV sufficient? Or am I better of purchasing something else?

 

Norton always does well in tests and is light enough. I don't think you need anything else.

 

Thank you for your response. I agree, it is very light on resources.

Would you consider it a good idea to run both Norton Security Online and Malware Bytes Basic?

Do you change any firewall or advanced settings or leave it as is?

 

Running Malwarbytes along side Norton isn't required, but having a copy installed to run the occasional on-demand scan doesn't hurt. In fact the company formerly known as Symantec recommend not having any other security programs running. That said, I do have MB running along side Norton without conflict.

The only thing I do with the firewall is block a handful of programs accessing the 'net.

I do set Boot Time Protection to "Aggressive", but that's about it. Oh, I disable Special Offer Notification too, but I'm not sure if the ISP version has that feature under Administrative Settings towards the bottom.

 

It's been a back and forth for me. I liked it in the '90s until about 2002. Then it was good from about 2009 to 2011. At this point there are just better products for the money. I get tired of the "update just released!" followed up with "update rolled back...". That and the LifeLock thing. Don't want it. Doesn't stop them from spamming me about it. It's not the worst product, but it isn't the best. When you're spending money anyway, might as well get what you want.

 

The one thing I don't like is that they are really good at blocking malware but bad at removing it if you get infected..

 

Symantec acquisition by Broadcom ends in license/support chaos
March 3, 2020
https://borncity.com/win/2020/03/03/symantec-acquisition-by-broadcom-ends-in-license-support-chaos/

 

Smooth move. Once they lose their customers they will likely never get them back.

 

Norton has been on the decline since about 2013 and it doesn't appear to be getting back up. They have been laying off in an attempt to automate processes (there's almost no manual malware testing/experts there anymore, it's all either outsourced or automated).

The acquisition was just another way to shed weight, Symantec and Norton are just brands now, not products - like AKAI, Sanyo, Kodak....relics of the past. In a few years, what I expect is that the Norton brand will be held by some holding company.

I strongly believe it's time for "Norton LifeLock" to abandon/pace down in-house technology and sell an SDK product with a decent AV engine like BitDefender/Kaspersky etc.

Norton Utilities is getting decent again after they started selling a rebranded/modified System Mechanic. The same should be the model for all consumer Norton products.

P.S. Wasn't Symantec Cyber Security sold again to Accenture by Broadcom? I expect a further disruption a few months down the line.

P.P.S.: It appears SEP Cloud, SEP SBE are based off Norton (LifeLock) code (due to which they are being discontinued), meaning the companies are now truly separating (including IP, AV engines, cloud etc.) and in a couple of years, at least one of the two brands will lose a lot of value.

 

I didn't know that NU was replaced with NU Premium. I gather that it's essentially just a rebranded System Mechanic, with no new features. Is that right? I had a look for a trial version, but there is none.

 

It's a subscription product now anyway.

 

Yes, it is essentially a modified/tweaked System Mechanic with a (much) better interface and some features removed such as the registry cleaner and defragmenter (these are not needed in a modern Windows PC anyway). But, to be honest, it throws less alerts and is less intrusive than iolo's product and the customer response is quite good.

Even the last version 16 of NU was a rebranded System Mechanic, but the NU Premium is now a subscription product with free upgrades and use on upto 10 computers.