Norton Antivirus/not so bad!

But this is just a lone isolated instance, of one particular set of problems, and very small [tiny actually] bit of malware -- which is why we have objective tests which use a large testbed of malware. Granted, because of this lone instance you are, from the sounds of it, forever negatively colored in your opinion against one particular AV. Which is understandable, it is human nature .. and something I have seen many times now.

Also I think it was clear from the other thread where you discussed this instance in more detail, that: (1) the other security products were only detecting parts [bits & pieces] of this malware; (2) some of this malware was spyware; (3) only versions of NAV 2004-2005 are detecting expanded threats including spyware, and it was not clear what version of NAV was on this system. I still think the latest NAV 2005, if installed and configured properly on that box, might have been detecting at least as much [bits & pieces] of this malware as the other security products you tested. But then since I never got any samples to look at I cannot know for sure but can only speculate.

Anyway, besides that lone instance of your friend's, there are other instances such as this one I came across at the TH Forum, where NAV is detecting a stealthed keylogger trojan that other security products [or at least TH] are not presently seeing: Help needed With keylogger.trojan -- I mention that because it seems to be a similar type of malware that you said NAV was missing on your friend's box.

I don't recommend NAV to anyone. I recommend to folks that they find the right security software that works well for them and their systems. Since we each have a unique blend of hardware and software, we will each find different mixes of security software that work best for us.

What I do find myself spending more time doing, what I find a bit troubling, and what [I think] BigC started this thread to discuss -- I find myself offering, or trying to offer, reasoned rebuttal to the many "potshots" that folks are taking at NAV these days. It does seem to have become the "chic" thing to do -- to be anti-Norton makes you part of the "in-crowd" in security circles these days, or so it seems. What BigC has postulated, and I agree, is [other than pure bigotry and prejudice], "Why?" -- Why is it necessary to treat Norton like a "disease" these days, and speak of NAV like it can't detect a damn thing and it will if you use it let in all kinds of malware and it is no good? Especially considering that it continues to hold its own in objective testing.

This is simply not true, NAV is a good protection, a good AV. All software, including security software, has problems; malware can get by any AV, given unique circumstances; instances of malware getting in are probably more noticed with NAV because of its market share and ubiquitous presence, but all AVs are capable of anomalous behavior and apparent "failure"; as Blue said in the other thread, this can happen with any AV in use.

I have no quarrel with that; recommend what you feel is appropriate and what works for you, and what leaves you with a good conscience in trying to help your colleagues. As I say, I don't really "push" or recommend particular software, only, I find mine a consistently defensive posture these days, warding off all the unfair nasty attacks on NAV. [Not implying yours is one of them]. Take Care Everyone ..

 

That’s what I did. But you said "Avast can't touch NAV for detection" and I see less then 8% difference.

Back on OT.


tECHNODROME

 

Yeah...more statistical data to digest. NAV is worthless if Live Update decides to go on vacation. The true test of an AV is how well it performs in the real world.

The best AV is the USER. Splitting hair over a few % in detection rate shows me you have very little understanding of what makes a good AV.

 

Silly me .......... splitting hairs over a difference (in NAVs favour) of 28,929 samples

 

http://www.claymania.com/tests-trojan.html
http://www.anti-trojan-software-rev...ection-test.htm


the claymania report is almost five years old and the other link leads to a report that is over two years old. Not something I am going to put my trust in.

 

I am not an av expert in the actual meaning of the term but I install and try probably as many av's as anyone on this forum, sometimes three or four a day checking different aspects on a certain av. That said here is my take on removing norton from a computer. Uninstalling norton products is a one step process if you know what you are doing. It is really very simple., you just let the norton product uninstall itself. Not through the add/remove feature. but that is for another thread.

I want to thank you all for your input on this thread. It could have turned into a flame war but I am proud of the members here for posting their experiences and keeping it on topic. I think what has come of this is that Nav has a good detection rate, but it is known for having update problems and it is a very intrusive app seeing as how large it is and how deeply it is installed. And for the average user it can be very troublesome to remove at times. Again I want to thank you all for your participation.

bigc

 

That is when norton decide to add so many signature at once..... all the test before Norton have not been great.

And the startup scan. Even if it is disable it still a hell a lot more resources more tha SAV9. For that sort of resources i get much better protected by Mcafee Enterprise V8i.

 

The problem is that these tests are not real world. I am not posting this to "bash" Norton, rather share my experiences that I see almost daily. In the past 4 days I have seen how poor Norton's detection rate is, I see this routinely, but in the past few days I have 2 examples of how poor it is.

First a client brought his pc to me to clean it up, he said he thought he had a bad virus but he had Norton 2005 installed and up to date and said he already scanned but still had problems. I figured I would use his Norton and make sure it was up to date and set all of the settings to the highest level and scan...... but I couldn't Norton gave me nothing but errors when trying to update. So first I used Ad-Aware, SpyBot, SpySweeper and HijackThis.... all found multiple items. I then tried to update Norton again... no go. I got so fed up with it I uninstalled it and installed Kaspersky Personal 5..... it found 19 viruses and the problems were solved. I know some of you will say "Norton was corrupt, that's why it didn't detect those viruses"..... how did it become corrupt in the first place?

Then this morning I went to a business that had called and said they needed their workstations "cleaned up". They too had Norton 2005 on all of the workstations and it was up to date and working properly, it was set to scan weekly which it had done for the past month. After I used Ad-Aware, SpyBot, SpySweeper and HijackThis I uninstalled Norton and installed Kaspersky Personal 5...... it found 87 viruses on one of the workstations and 1 virus on another, the other 2 were clean. A number of the 87 were in the email databases but not all of them. Needless to say they were amazed and purchased 4 licenses for KAV.

Before you ask..... no I don't know the names of all the viruses, but that is irrelevant, the bottom line is they were still getting infected with multiple viruses using Norton. I see this all the time, everyone wants to dispute it, but it's true. Anyone who works on computers for a living will tell you how many times they see this. If you are a home user and use Norton you may never have a single issue, but if you see multiple computers a week with Norton installed you will see how poorly it actually performs.

Also, uninstalling Norton.... it's not as easy as add/remove programs. Next time you uninstall it go to your device manager and select "display hidden devices" and see how many drivers Norton leaves behind.... about 4-5, not to mention the files on your hard drive or registry entries. I think this is one of the main reasons people have conflicts with other antivirus programs after uninstalling Norton.... the left over drivers. I know there is no program that uninstalls perfectly without leaving a trace, but 4-5 drivers is ridiculous.

Something else to think about....... take a look at any forum that helps a lot with HijackThis logs. Take a look at the logs and see how badly infected these computers are then take a look at what antivirus program they are running.......... 9 times out of 10....... Norton.

 

I owned my own computer repair and custom built computers shop for twelve years plus and never saw the problems with norton that you see. Not everyone is going to have the same results with any av. But symantec would not be as popular as it is if it was as bad as the experience that you saw. Even with all of their enormeous advertising budget if their product was as bad as you say they would already be bankrupt. Just try and advertise how good a Yugo automobile is, spend hundred of thousands of dollars in advertising and see if people are stupid enough to buy them. The same thing goes with any product, if it is not good people will not buy it regardless how it is advertised. It doesn't take very long for word of mouth to spread the news about a bad product. And they just don't last long. Symantec's profits are going up every year and that is not because people are stupid and buying junk.

and as I posted earlier, it really is easy to get rid of norton apps if you know how.

 

That's because 9 out of 10 people run Norton. (That's not exactly correct but then again, neither is your "9 out of 10").

No AV should be relied upon to remove Adware and Spyware, at least not yet; their specialty are viruses, and too many AV are biting off more than they can chew by also trying to cover Adware/Spyware, heck, even the Adware/Spyware programs miss almost 50% of everything that's out there. (And THAT is an accurate figure).

And with most pcs out there using Norton than naturally most problem pcs are going to have Norton on them. Most pcs with problems run Windows, hmmm, I wonder why Windows is on so many pcs having problems?

However one thing I will say about Norton, there is no excuse for that company to make it so hard to uninstall; for most folks reading these forums it is probably no problem, I never have any problem uninstalling Norton, but most folks using Norton do not frequent this forum and do have that problem and I must admit that there is no excuse for this.

Acadia

 

bigc73542 when was the last time you really worked on computers? The reason I ask is because Norton 2003 and older didn't have the problems 2004 and 2005 have. I used to use Norton for all of my clients with NAV 2003 and before, then 4 clients in one month were infected with viruses using Norton so I searched for a better product and I found KAV. I can honestly say I have never had a client call with a virus issue when using KAV.

There is a reason why so many people use Norton.... it comes preinstalled on almost every OEM pc out there and the average user figures "hey it's already installed so why not keep it, besides it must be the best because I see it everywhere".

If KAV or NOD32 were preinstalled on as many OEM pcs as Norton was you would have half of the viruses spreading like they do.

 

Hi BigC,

My computer repair store only recommends McAfee because of poor experiences with Norton. I had McAfee for a short time after the computer repair guys helped me out with my Norton failures a year and a half ago, but after visiting this forum, I settled on KAV.

It would be interesting to hear from more computer repair guys to hear about their experiences - whether it be Norton, McAfee, or otherwise.

Rich

 

I BELIEVE YOU. What percentage of pcs out there use KAV compared to Norton, good grief! I am willing to bet next week's pay check that 99% of the average pc users out there have never even heard of KAV so naturally the odds of you finding a pc with a KAV problem would be almost non-existent.

Acadia

 

I guess I should rephrase what I wrote above "....because Norton 2003 and older didn't have the problems 2004 and 2005 have". One of the reasons for so many problems is spyware, personally I consider viruses, worms, trojan, spyware, adware etc. all the same.... malicious so thereby termed "malware". I think it's a cop out to say that antivirus programs shouldn't detect spyware. What is the definition of a virus? Software that maliciously does something to your pc, so why shouldn't your AV program detect and remove all malware? I mean spyware, adware etc. are the viruses of today, years ago they didn't exist and neither did trojans or worms, but nobody ever says "AV programs shouldn't detect trojans and worms".

Honestly, KAV has done it.... very little malware slips past it, it isn't a resource hog either and it doesn't have 5-6 services running. If they can do it (and NOD32, I don't use it but I know it's very light on resources) then why can't Norton do it?

 

I have actually see one of those situation only 2 week ago. Where the computer is clearly infected but norton fail to clean it. Although the virus doesn't seems to be "working" when norton is running. Norton is only good when you run regula full system Scan.

But then i thought of another reason. May be because there is so many people using norton ( especially noob ) that is why we see much more cases of norton being incapable or defending? ( Again with that said i am sure norton Realtime monitor, unpacker is quite poor compare to others )

 

You misunderstood me...... I refering to all of the clients that used Norton, McAfee, AVG etc. that call me with virus issues. Then I setup KAV for them and never have another virus related issue.

 

heres my general opinions on norton. it offers good detection rates with viruses and fair rates with trojans. its on demand scan is slow and its resident scan isnt too bad. for me, norton is pain to uninstall and sometimes just to install. and like acadia said, people use norton because it comes with their pc. the average consumer may not go out and buy an AV much less a firewall however because its heavily advertised theyll end up choosing Norton anyways but maybe mcafee. as for me, i have used norton for several years (2001-2004) but as i started learning more about computer security i started looking for alternatives and trying various programs. currently i use nod32 because its very light on resources and its http scanner gives it a slight edge in catching malware in realtime. i have become familiar with its options and gui so it isnt very complex for me.

 

It really has not been all that long since I sold my shop. less than a year But it seems like I am busier now than before. Putting together a lot of custom comps. And I leave it up to the client to tell me what av they want. If they really don't have a clue I will recomend one. It seems really silly to me the way a lot of people react like you slapped their mother if you say one negative word about their antivirus program. It is only a program, get a life. If you want to say anything bad about my av I don't mind at all. For now or at least for the next ten hours I am running Panda Platinum Internet Security 2005. Well I have learned all I had planned in this thread good and bad so this will be my final post in this thread.

Thank you all gentlemen I really enjoyed the discussion.

bigc

 

I would fully have to agree with that statement.

 

I do not use KAV. However as I have seen on other web sites where someone will say " I switched to X because it picked up X # of viruses that Kav did not on my system." As has been pointed out elsewhere on these forums you can say that about any (pick one) antivirus. None are 100%

 

Not really. Sorry but in tests we have run at work NAV comes a very poor second to KAV, AVK, BD Pro, F-Secure, Avast and NOD32. An on-demand scan is pretty good at detection but it's resident scanner is appalling.

 

I have converted all of my NAV customers to McAfee corporate, NOD32, or KAV. My #1 gripe with NAV is the DEAD LiveUpdate application. People don't know that there is a problem until windows comes to a crawl.

Most IT Pros don't like NAV because there are better alternatives out there at a lower cost.

 

To bad a Major test site has not rigged up a on access or "resident" test. If I test with a bias, the results will usually reflect what I expect to find.

 

5 Years ago, when I had Norton, it usually alerted me when it found a virus. I couldn't remove the virus.

So I uninstalled Norton, and did an online virus scan. It found 14 trojans/worms/viruses that Norton had "missed".

Don't know if NAV has improved since then, but I'm never touching it again.