Comments on: Symantec: it’s dangerous to rely on free antivirus

By: deo

deo — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:03:03 +0000

I have landed on this site after my Norton AV that I bought with the machine ran out of date. I have been enlighted on what to do next ie do away with Norton forever

By: Neil Patmore

Neil Patmore — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:08:15 +0000

An interesting take on free antivirus software

By: jefferson

jefferson — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:30:14 +0000

fuck you

By: Erls11

Erls11 — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:37:24 +0000

Wow, all those people who are so much clever on security than the guy from Symantec, amazing ;-)

By: buckshoteku2002

buckshoteku2002 — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:22:46 +0000

I haven’t read all the comments, etc…so forgive if I missed anything….just had to comment on this.
I am an IT manager for an IT Consultanting Company. On numerous occasions I’ve seen issues(I realize any software has issues) with Norton/Symantec products. For example with Symantec Endpoint Security multiple customers have had issues with the client portion of the software loosing communication with the server portion(only one of a few issues with this software). In addition, no Anti-Malware software is 100% accurate. Many times I’m able to use free softwares that clean malicious software that paid for products missed, despite realtime scanning being on and regardless of sensitivity/features enabled. The Norton exec’s comment which that includes the following phrase…”you need in-depth layered technologies, which only come from the more mature paid suites”….is a bunch of horse crap. There’s free solutions that offer anti-phishing, site advisors, etc to decrease the chance of drive by downloads and other things that he suggests only paid for apps can do.

By: Sn3akyP3t3

Sn3akyP3t3 — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 05:08:23 +0000

The dirty bottom line is that antivirus companies like Symantec all have a secret division of their conglomerate that strictly re-engineers viruses that their software is guaranteed to catch. They are released into the general public and allowed to spread forcing people to purchase an antivirus solution. This coincides with already existing virus developers that are in it also for the money.

As already stated by another guest, Symantec behaves like a virus. It is injected into many of the computer tasks and boasts its presence very loudly. It also has terrible controls over its behavior such as allowing your movie software to play and not be quarantined. The computer is unnecessarily slowed enough so it qualifies for the government’s clunker program. The software itself isn’t highly ranked for catching zoo class viruses.

An antivirus should do its job effectively and quietly. Only when there is trouble should it announce its presence, otherwise it should remain unseen and unheard. Symantec doesn’t understand this principle. I spout hate against this company for many other reasons and I can add this pet peeve.

At my college we are forced to use Cisco Clean Access to enforce that students have adequate protection before being allowed on the internet. This keeps virus outbreaks down. Many Vista based machines get a BSOD from Symantec installations so we avoid the whole problem by going with Avast. The number of machines that have infections returning to us for work are higher in numbers for ones running Symantec.

Symantec pushy sales executives can stick it where the sun don’t shine. Their product is not worth more than the fries out of a happy meal. Download one of the three main free antivirus solutions to avoid years of griping about Symantec: Avast, Antivir, or AVG. I’m suggesting AVG still only this year. I’m beginning to see AVG fail as an effective antivirus solution at work. If you really must go for a paid antivirus I still suggest Kaspersky for simplicity and effectiveness. I don’t suggest NOD32 since it is difficult to manage. I don’t have an opinion for Bit Defender, but I have used their web based scanner before and it does find infections.

By: PB

PB — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:36:42 +0000

Symantec is CRAP! It slowed down my PC like hell and so I have vowed not to use any of their products again.

I use the following protection modules on my PC and it works great!

1. Avast Home Edition – Simply the BEST!
2. MalwareBytes – Mindblowing detection of malware and adwares
3. SpywareBlaster – Prevents the spywares from being installed.

I use the normal windows firewall since I found Comodo not being able to put many of my vulnerable ports in stealth mode while the default windows firewall put every one of them in stealth mode. Honestly I didn’t expect the firewall to be so good especially when it’s coming from microsoft :)

By: Arthur

Arthur — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:40:44 +0000

I love it, look at the latest virus bulletin test results (www.virusbtn.com) – free products such as avast! and AVG passed, whereas symantec’s product managed to miss viruses already in the wild. Perhaps you should make your product half decent before opening your fat mouth David Hall!

By: RZPogi

RZPogi — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:37:12 +0000

I would rather eat **** before installing a norton in my pc.

Symantec products are a pain in the neck.

Free AVs kicks out more viruses/malware compared to norton’s security suite.

I have been using Avast, malwarebytes, SAS, and ad-aware free and i only get malware if I really want eg going to a know infected side or inserted an unknown flash drive.

By: JH

JH — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:30:59 +0000

Equally, you could argue that malware writers are amongst the most generous people in the world. They distribute their software for free, only asking for trivial things such as the user’s bank details and so forth, and don’t tie them down with restrictive EULA’s. Many commercial AV’s do do that, cost a fortune, are equally difficult to remove, and the tech support is about as helpful. I cannot see the value of the home user paying for AV, the free products are good as if they were crippled too much people would not buy the commercial, forums are almost always better than paid support and it is always some of the more useless features that get taken out.