Internet security - ditch Norton?

Clamwin (or just clamav) is ok, but it doesn't do any active on-access scanning like Avira, norton, AVG,etc can do. It's purely for scanning individual files, which makes it better suited for things like scanning attachments on mailservers.
 
Rolfe said:
Last year when I got my new PC, I took Dell's option of a Norton subscription. Afterwards several geeks here remarked that Norton was rubbish.

I haven't had any real trouble with it, to be honest, but they now want more money to renew the subscription.

Do I take the line of least resistance and pay them, or if not, what should I get instead? I've got about 10 days to make up my mind.

Rolfe.
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No. I'd suggest Avast or AVG, possibly aided by SS&D. Symantec/Norton has too high an overhead (though this has improved) and is overpriced for what it does. It's also damn awkward to remove. OK in enterprise environments, when configured properly, as it has a good deployment/management toolset.
You could look at some of the reports at http://www.av-comparatives.org for more detailed info.
 
I spend much of my day removing infections from machines, particularly fake security programs which I've seen get past pretty much every internet security product; there's nothing can give a 100% guarantee of protection. There's a couple I recommend (Bullguard/Kaspersky) as a reasonable balance between performance and what they detect. But there are other free tools (Malwarebytes' Antimalware, Superantispyware) which are useful in addition to having a realtime protection scanner.

Bewared of being lulled into a false sense of security that because your security software has never reported a virus, you've never been infected; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Norton has a removal tool to help with uninstallation: just Google it. If you having anything backed up using their software, I would retrieve it first mind you.
 
An internet security suite with firewall is recommended by banks in Australia, for secure internet banking. People can argue that point, but I would recommend following their recommendation in case of bank account fraud, to improve your chances of reimbursement.

Also, their is no doubt in my mind that most firewall products do a better job than the Windows built-in firewall.

Since no antivirus programs can protect against all viruses all of the time, a good firewall will block keyloggers from sending out your internet banking password.

Norton hasn't just improved a bit recently. It is now THE most efficient of internet security suites. Less memory usage than AVG free (which doesn't include firewall).
 
Well, well! We just got a corporate memo today...

Ditch Nortons, install McAfee, on everything. :confused:

Synchronicity??
 
Wowbagger said:
Out of curiosity, what does everyone think of ClamWin? It seems to be an open source anti-virus software, I once saw installed on a couple of servers. (The owner of them was cheap.)
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Last I saw a side-by-side comparison of AV products, going solely by detection rates, ClamWin was severely underdetecting, something IIRC along the lines of 60% compared to the upper nineties in everything else. I think it was in PC Pro magazine, but couldn't swear to it. MSE was the best bet in that test for detection rate/price/footprint.
 
Zep said:
Well, well! We just got a corporate memo today...

Ditch Nortons, install McAfee, on everything. :confused:

Synchronicity??
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McAfee is what we have at work. Their enterprise version is much better than the home stuff, though of course that's not saying much. Although it doesn't have the most user-friendly interface, banging EPO on a server and rolling out to a hundred or so clients took me a couple of hours at most, and it makes it very easy to see which machines are running fine and which are in some way defective. Of course, when I say 'defective', I mean the client software is being a pain.
 
McAfee, Kaspersky, Symantec, TrendMicro, AVG....

Whatever. Pick any of those and download them form the internet. They all do relatively the same thing, in relatively similar fashions with relatively similar overhead requirements.

(This post has absolutely nothing to do with what all of those companies has in common. Nothing whatsoever.)
 
Rolfe said:
I've got about 10 days to make up my mind.
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No you don't,
if you paid for your Norton on a credit card then expect it to be automatically renewed by them any time now.

I made the mistake of waiting too long to make up my mind last year and Norton automatically renewed itself ten days before it expired.

I wouldn't get it again. My cable company offers free internet security .
 
It came preinstalled on her Dell.

If you want to be really cheap, transfer all your data to offline storage and reinstall Windows from the recovery partition. This will restart your free subscription. (At least it did mine, which was a pain as I had already uninstalled it on arrival).
MSE seems pretty decent actually.

The main problem with any security package tends to be how annoying you find it, rather than what it lets through. I never did like Norton.
 
Rat said:
McAfee is what we have at work. Their enterprise version is much better than the home stuff, though of course that's not saying much. Although it doesn't have the most user-friendly interface, banging EPO on a server and rolling out to a hundred or so clients took me a couple of hours at most, and it makes it very easy to see which machines are running fine and which are in some way defective. Of course, when I say 'defective', I mean the client software is being a pain.
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I was reading one of the latest comparison reviews (http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report25.pdf) and it shows that McAfee was very bad on reporting "false positives" (page 10) - have you noticed that?
 
Just FYI, in my limited experience the free version of AVG really really really slows down your machine.

Avast does not.

Again limited experience.
 
Darat said:
I was reading one of the latest comparison reviews (http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report25.pdf) and it shows that McAfee was very bad on reporting "false positives" (page 10) - have you noticed that?
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Nope. I get an email whenever viruses come into the office, which is usually by email. They're almost universally attached to spam, and I rarely get reports of expected emails or attachments not arriving. So if there are any FPs, they're not on anything we need.
 
Dancing David said:
Just FYI, in my limited experience the free version of AVG really really really slows down your machine.

Avast does not.

Again limited experience.
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Have you allowed enough RAM for it? (Noted above)

And have you scheduled the scanner process for out-of-hours after you installed? AVG scanner does, naturally, add load. And it is set to run a full, deep scan immediately on installation, which can take some time depending on how full and fragged your system is.
 
Rat said:
I went for the more sensible option of ditching Norton in favour of just not clicking on executables from untrusted sources. Not a single virus since.
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Zee drive by pdf attacks are still a problem.
 
Oddly enough, counter to a few of the posts on page one...

I had Norton 2003, found it to be tight as a drum. Offline after 2006 until 2009, when I again got a Norton setup,

and it was crap, crap, crap! 2009 convinced me Norton was now junk. I got rid of it and installed AVG and Avira too. Freeware has proven effective.

Though I'm told I ought not to run two antivirus at the same time.
 
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