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Your thoughts on Symantec products?

M

MoogerFooger

Member
What do you guys think about Symentec software and Norton Internet Security in particular? Do you think that one can go finely along without it and use just Norton Antivirus instead? I'm trying to make up my mind. I have the trial version of IS installed but it's kind of buggy and also has annoying pop-up messages (ironically). I don't think I need a Firewall (which goes with IS) because I seem to have one already built in my ADSL modem. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks! 🙂
 
Norton Internet Security is many times worse than the viruses and worms it is meant to protect against. It eats all your resources, annoys the hell out of you, and is impossible to uninstall. Attempting to uninstall Norton has broken more systems than any single virus or malicious hacker. One only needs to sneeze on code to make it undetectable by Norton, so it lulls you into a false sense of security by never detecting anything, and they expect you to PAY for this?!?
 

I used to be a big fan of Norton products in general but in recent years they've become much too resource intensive and severely impacted the performance of my systems.

I just built a new system a couple of weeks ago and knew from the start I would not be using any Norton products on this machine. After some research and evaluating, I went with Zone Alarm.

It is a complete Internet Security suite that includes a firewall, anti-virus, e-mail scanning (incoming & outgoing), etc. It runs in the background and does not hurt the performance of my machine in any way. I recommend you check it out. You can download a trial version from www.ZoneLabs.com.
 
I don't like any suites. Too much crap I don't need. I used Norton AV 2003 for 2 years and got sick of reformatting to reset my OEM subscription for the virus definitions so I switched to AVG.

I wouldn't use a firewall, unless you, or someone else who uses the computer have problems with downloading viruses and spyware. If that's the case, a software firewall would be nice because a cable/dsl router will only filter incoming requests, not outgoing.
 
I don't have any probs with Norton stuff but I don't think Internet Security is necessary. At minimum, run their anti-virus... and just use a free / lightweight firewall like blackice or zone labs.
 
Originally posted by: MoogerFooger
What do you guys think about Symentec software and Norton Internet Security in particular? Do you think that one can go finely along without it and use just Norton Antivirus instead? I'm trying to make up my mind. I have the trial version of IS installed but it's kind of buggy and also has annoying pop-up messages (ironically). I don't think I need a Firewall (which goes with IS) because I seem to have one already built in my ADSL modem. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks! 🙂
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Symantec is fine, sort of...

Basically it gets the job done -but- at a cost. It is really expensive, and the Suites are insanely resource intensive.

There are better products out there that are free or cost less. See the Consolidated Security Thread for some help finding good stuff.

Note, the "free" market is changing. Sygate and Kerio are not going to be offering free firewalls much longer (Symantec is to blame for part of this), so use Zonealarm (free) instead.

You will need a software firewall (even with a hardware firewall) to restrict outbound activity on your PC (as Jeff7181 indicated). While the hardware firewall protects you from external harm, you won't have any control over the apps on your system without a software firewall. Software firewalls uses few resources, but they offer great protection. And if you were wondering, the XP-SP2 firewall is not good...

For antivirus, there are 3 good free solutions (antivir, avast and AVG), but these don't "rate" as high as Norton. If you are going to pay for AV, get Kapersky or F-Secure, as both cost the same or less than Norton, but offer vastly better protection. See the consolidated security thread for more details, and here for some test results.
 
Originally posted by: evilharp

Symantec is fine, sort of...

Basically it gets the job done -but- at a cost. It is really expensive, and the Suites are insanely resource intensive.

There are better products out there that are free or cost less. See the Consolidated Security Thread for some help finding good stuff.

Note, the "free" market is changing. Sygate and Kerio are not going to be offering free firewalls much longer (Symantec is to blame for part of this), so use Zonealarm (free) instead.
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I agree about the insane bloat in NIS. I tried Symantec Client Security on a few computers (basically the enterprise version of NIS), and it's just as bad.

That's too bad about Kerio not being free in the future. There's a few more besides Zonealarm to try. If you have an Nforce mb, try the Nvidia Network Access Manager included with the Forceware drivers. I gave up on it myself because v6.66 had big problems with corrupt downloads, but I heard later ones fixed that. There's a Free project called Core Force. It's still beta, but looks promising. Link
 
I've just ran a scan at Shields Up and it seems like my system is secure.

Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet ? solicited or otherwise ? was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice.
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Your Internet port 139 does not appear to exist!
One or more ports on this system are operating in FULL STEALTH MODE! Standard Internet behavior requires port connection attempts to be answered with a success or refusal response. Therefore, only an attempt to connect to a nonexistent computer results in no response of either kind. But YOUR computer has DELIBERATELY CHOSEN NOT TO RESPOND (that's very cool!) which represents advanced computer and port stealthing capabilities. A machine configured in this fashion is well hardened to Internet NetBIOS attack and intrusion.

Unable to connect with NetBIOS to your computer.
All attempts to get any information from your computer have FAILED. (This is very uncommon for a Windows networking-based PC.) Relative to vulnerabilities from Windows networking, this computer appears to be VERY SECURE since it is NOT exposing ANY of its internal NetBIOS networking protocol over the Internet.
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My work has a license that allows employees to install Symantec Antivirus and Firewall at home. I've never had a problem with either. I think they are solid, I didn't notice any decrease in performance.
 
This is really sad. I remember using Norton Utilities some seven (or so) years ago. It screwed up my system bigtime. Now I was just hoping that Symantec have learnt from their own mistakes but it seems like I was wrong. I didn't have any bad experience with Norton Antivirus though, which I was using extensively last year. However, I didn't have to uninstall it because I've just bought a new system and foolishly installed a 3-months trial of Norton Security. Do you guys think that I'm guaranteed to have problems with uninstalling it? Do 100% of users with XP SP2 have it or is it a random glitch?
 
2nd or 3rd the responses on Norton being a resource hog and $$. Personally, I like McAfee although I find McAfee a bit buggy as well. Sometimes for whatever reason, when McAfee starts up it says the firewall is disabled. I right click on the icon in the tray and enable it but I am 90% sure it is enabled anyway.

Back to Norton. Stay away.
 
Norton is HORRIBLE. Thus i would say use either Mcaffee, panda, or if you need something free try AVG with auto updates enabled
 
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