Norton Internet Security 2006 - don't buy it!

[Cloth Ears]

Used to run AntiVirus Professional + Firewall (2003 edition? I think). Had no problems (and when bored, it was fun to trace the intrusions back to the source computer where they were initiated from). Don't have that PC any more, but I believe it's still working fine (friend still has it working).

Don't know anything about the current version, but it might be laziness (akin to Microsoft) causing the bloat.

VX Heavens indicates the sentiment expressed before (that the mainstream AV is what the majority of virii/trojans/worms are written to defeat) is absolutely correct. Most of them keep the latest copies on-hand to test against...

 

[Christer]

Yes, very nice. Now which is the bit we're interested in?

I am really no expert in this, but if I gave the right link you will first get to a page where you get info about what can be disclosed about you from your IP number. There should ideally be nothing there than can identy you or your computer, although it will usually tell something about what ISP (Internet service provider) you have.

Then if you click "Proceed" you get to the "Shields up" page, for testing the firewall and some other things.

The two tests that seems most interesting are

All service ports which scans the firs 1056 ports on you computer and tries to make contact through them. There are three possible outcomes. If a port is open, then probably anybody can contact your computer through it. In the worst case, there is a trojan listening for incoming calls. If a port is closed, it denies access, but the caller still gets a response that it is denied access. A hacker will then know that at least there is something at this IP address and might try to attack you. If a port is in stealth mode, your computer does not respond at all to incoming calls. If all ports are in stealth mode, it is impossible to know if there even is a computer at this IP address. A decent firewall should use stealth mode for all ports that are not authorized to respond to this particular caller, that is, all ports should be reported as in stealth mode.


Browser headers shows what info your browser sends to the places you browse. It should preferrably not reveal any personal info about you or your computer.

You may also try the Messenger Spam function, to see if foreign computers can send pop up messages to you. There is a freeware program, Shoot the messenger, on tha same site that prevents that.

There are some more functions. "File sharing" tries to see if there is a file server that can be accessed. I think it is trying to find a server for local networks, but I am not sure. Somwhere on the site there is also a program where you can "bake your own cookies" , ie. you can set cookies and tell yourself what content they should have. It is useful if you want to experiment with the cookie security settings in your browser.

 

[Christer]

Drive Image that was. Great program under win98.
On winXP machines it worked very, very slowly and you had to repair windows afterwards. On a XP machine ALLWAYS run the program from a repair diskette and not the dos mode. The program then wants to reboot in DOS mode, but somehow it locks up. Everytime I restarted it tried start Drive Image. After trying several things I was fed up with it and formatted c and reinstalled everything.

Right, that's it. I still have the program, but haven't tried it since I finally decided to move on to XP. Sound like I shouldn't try it either.

 

[EC8010]

Christer, thanks for that. I will go away and experiment (carefully).

 

[richie00boy]

Right, that's it. I still have the program, but haven't tried it since I finally decided to move on to XP. Sound like I shouldn't try it either.

Drive Image 2002(?) works perfectly on my XP SP2 machine. I only ever use the boot floppys though.

 

[ssmith]

Norton Antivirus is still the only antivirus program worth the name. People have always complained about it consuming computer power. But the other antivirus programs consume no computer power because they do nothing at all.

I disagree. I've been using Avast! Anti-Virus (Free) in combination with Spybot S&D, Spyware Blaster, ZoneAlarm & Adaware SE for close to two years now on 3 PC's I have at home, connected 24/7 to Internet. All of them have worked fine, and I see no reason to pay for Norton.

 

[richie00boy]

avast! has successfully blocked trojans coming on dodgy downloads and through scripted webpages, and removed viruses that AVG has not been able to (the boot time scan mode/option is very good).

It also seems to have a measure of anti-spyware as I run no anti-spyware software, yet on the occasions that I download the current top 3 packages I never have any.