Norton Launches 2012 Products

Me to ,i'm in!

 

buttons missing or greyed out, the windows has frozen and i had one unable to close it etc. updates not completing for about a month now etc.. imo sonar has gotten way to sensitive and detects many things imo it shouldnt. i have had it delete legit installers and repair tools etc on me. and my customers get way to many pop ups asking what to deny / allow most have no idea what to answer and call me to ask all the time, just to many diff things

 

no its actually the update that 2012 has had to its core engine causing the problems re false +ves and not the virus bases,201 and2011 has never give me any false +ves,but in any of the versions 2010/2011/2012 there is the option to exclude from scans and even from all detection techniques they employ of any file you want

 

The problem happens when you first download something and it gets deleted. You can't know in advance when this is going to happen. Adding a file to the exclusion list is a follow-up option. What I do which is easier is temporarily disable auto-protect, but it still means downloading the file a second time. That's not usually a big inconvenience for me, but depending on file size and connection speed it can be a pain for some people. This happens so rarely for me that I don't care about it, but apparently it's a bigger problem for some users.

 

if your downloading and you know file is safe,turn of av to get it down then exclude it,unless its from a site that's shall we say is a bit "dodgy",Norton are pretty quick at correcting false +ves so if its reported it wont be one for long
I have found the thing most users complain about is Norton detecting and deleting crack files:-that is hardly a legit complaint about any AV!

 

Yes, some people complain that their security software is actually protecting them LOL. I wouldn't recommend turning off auto-protect in advance though based on the belief that a file is safe. That sets a bad precedent. Most people are better off relying on the software to make the decisions IMHO.

 

but you are defying the softwares decision when you are downloading it the 2nd time as in your previous post

 

Yes, and there is some risk in doing so, but doing this only on the occasions where NIS identifies a file as dangerous and the user is certain that it is safe is much better than making a habit of turning off auto-protect before downloading. If NIS deletes a file I download I look closely at why before I decide to download it again.

Just this morning I updated to the newly released Lastpass 1.8. NIS had already classified the file as safe, however IE9's SmartScreen filter complained and made it difficult to get at (didn't delete it though). Just goes to show that this is not limited to NIS, but is a consequence of the community based file rating system.

 

It is a legit complaint if the file is not a security risk. I'm not advocating the use of such files but copyright enforcement is not the job for AV software. If they want to play big brother it's another strike against them as a matter of principle.

 

The question is are "cracked" files a legitimate security concern when they are hacked versions of known executables? On what basis is NIS detecting and classifying them? I'm guessing that once a file is altered it becomes a wild card - it can't be verified via File Insight or Download Insight. I expect that many "cracked" programs are really malware in disguise. I find it hard to believe that NIS has any way to determine "copyright".

 

Its pretty easy for a cracked file to contain malware,especially trojans,so by alerting on such files they,the AV companies are trying to protect PC users,you'd be surprised how many PCs get brought in where the owner has turned of protection because with it on the couldn't download something they wanted to!

 

I don't disagree with that. I test detection with many files and I find it almost entertaining that Norton will immediately delete any kind of crack without recovery options when other products mark the same files as clean (if they are, not all of them are obviously). Again, I want to emphasize that I do not support using these files for anything other than testing detection. But I don't want to go down that road. It just seems like they are quicker to detect these things than actual malware.

I hope Norton resolves their issues quickly and we can get back to calling it good. Aside from deleting files without asking and without being able to recover (it does this with a lot of shareware/freeware programs like WinRAR and PSPad) Norton tends to be a stable product with few issues.

 

The thing i don't like about Norton are the constant Norton tasks that run in the background. Too much and often hd trashing for my taste. If your allowed to turn off real time protection why aren't u allowed to turn off these tasks? Weird.

 

Very good point. I found that annoying as well.

 

You can turn off the idle time optimizer and performance monitoring. I don't consider these useful and it cuts down on the background activity. The other background tasks are generally important, such as Live Update, Quick Scan, Insight Optimizer, etc. These have to be kept current for optimal protection. I don't know why they will allow Auto-Protect to be turned off permanently - that seems like a bad decision to me. In the rare situation where you want it to stay off during rebooting, such as when installing a service pack, it would be better to uninstall it and reinstall when done. That process is so fast now that it's not a problem. If the background tasks are interfering with foreground apps you could try something like Process Lasso. I use it and it does a good job of smoothing things out. Otherwise it is what it is

 

Understand what you mean here Jack. Its quite annoying. I will not use Norton products until this gets sorted out.

I see you switched to KIS? Thought you were running Eset?

Cheers.

 

You have had Norton delete win-rar?that was either a cracked copy OR you Norton set so aggressive it will delete any file that may have any dodgy characteristic,either in its coding or its behaviour,and there a few legit files that do behave like malware,but Norton isn't more prone to problems with these than most other AV products,I am not talking about 2012 products as they seem to have a problem with the core engine giving false +ves,its not the bases otherwise 2011 would suffer the same issues and it doesn't

 

I was. Too many firewall issues I couldn't resolve. I've had licenses for all 3 for the last 3 years. I run the one that makes me least angry at the moment. I don't get much more than a month at a time with any of them.

 

WinRAR doesn't digitally sign and I run the betas when they release them. I am running 4.10 beta 3 right now. It takes them (Norton) a few days to catch up. I guess all files are dangerous to them until they prove otherwise.

 

That stinks man. If I was having that many issues I would ditch it as well, but so far so good.

How is life with KIS treating you?

 

For what its worth my renewal for nis was due so tried kis:-used to swear by kaspersky products until I had too much hassle with 2011,I found it too heavy compared to nis 2011 that I ditched it after 7 days,back to nis !

 

Not bad overall but out of respect for the other members and for the sake of not dragging this any further off topic any more KIS discussion needs a KIS thread or a PM. Thanks for asking though.

 

Agree. Thanks man.

 

Issues fixed in version 19.2

 

I've ran most of latest win-rar betas with Norton installed:-no issues at all,not being digitally signed normally invokes a microsoft response rather than Norton playing up