Thst's just about the exact words the two guys I talked to said. The Norton that is being used the freebie from comcast. For the arm and leg they charge for service the norton is free. LOLOLMy experience says stay away from Norton. Once it was the best, then they bloated it up, and now it is said to work OK. It expires once a year and stops. That's no good if the operator ignores it.
Get a free A/V that does not expire. The free ones I'm familiar with are Bitdefender, Avira, AVG, Panda, and Avast. I can tell you that Bitdefender keeps working without interruption once activated by signing in once.
Jim
I think you're overblowing it a bit.. Antimalware technology has come a long way over the years..
Instead of relying solely on signatures like in the old days, antimalware tech now has behavioral analysis algorithms that can profile malicious software even if is unknown and lacking a signature.
Also, the most cutting edge consumer antimalware all have cloud based signature databases and whitelists that offer way more protection than what was previously attainable..
Basically, it's really difficult to get infected unless you're stupid or are purposely seeking it..
Side Note: I'm using the paid version ie Bitdefender Total Security 2016 on Win10( it has official support for Win10), IMHO probably the best paid version AV out there, light and don't notice it at all.
Free versions well that is always a preference thing, but the top five have been mentioned ie Avast, Bitdefender, Panda, AVG, Avira.
I would go for either Avast or Bitdefender.
Panda use to be great but I hear the latest free version is not as lightweight as it use to be.
Well, in my line of work I haven't seen any significant reduction in appointments for malware cleanups in more than ten years. The only thing that has changed IMO is how deep the average infection goes; in the days of XP a system-level infection was common, these days it isn't. IMO that's mostly down to new OS features such as UAC because the reduction in system-level infections occurred when Vista was released.
Furthermore, I submit that most people on this forum either have experienced a malware infection first-hand (not necessarily on their own PC) or know someone who has in recent years. Hence I think the statistics that av-test.org are pushing are complete and utter fertiliser in real world terms.
Why on earth do you think that an AV vendor would be more ready for such a threat against a piece of software that they have no intimate knowledge of its design?
The only point that I vaguely agree with you on is that savvy and cautious users don't generally get infected, but that's been true for much longer than you claim that AV vendors up'd their game.
I bet that a lot of the computers that you see are older machines, or reasonably new machines using out of date or expired software.
All of them? That's impressive. I'd say I encounter maybe one in a hundred infected machines that aren't receiving Windows updates as expected.I certainly have yes. I've cleaned out some horribly malware infested PCs for friends, coworkers etc, and like I said above, they all had several things in common such as the age of the machines, the fact that they were using expired AV software, and that Windows itself wasn't updated..
Again, if AV vendors knew how to stop zero-day threats with such a level of accuracy that av-test claims, much bigger companies would have either bought them out or licensed their "zero-day detection code" by now. Also, every OS would have anti-malware software in regularly recommended and active use if this was the case. Hopefully you understand what zero-day threats actually are, they're not "new viruses" or something similar.Because those malwares usually have behavioral patterns that can be recognized if you know what to look for.
Sorry I am slow getting back here.
Spent some time playing with daughters laptop. Talked to two people about the problems with norton and windows edge. First guy was a Best Buy Geek Squad expert. He said they get a lot of complaints about Norton not playing well with Edge. The suggested work around is to disable the norton features that cause the problems. Second person I talked to is a IT manager for one of the local banks. His advice was the same as the Geek Squad guy. Both also suggested making ie 11 or firefox or chrome the default browser.
I switched from Avast to Avira years ago. Happy user.I switched from Avast to Avira because avast was acting funny on windows 10, it wasn't re-registering the free version when I tried thus it would not work... reinstalling wasn't helping and I wasn't going to dig around in the registry to find what might be responsible.. wait for them to de-bug the windows 10 version...
Daughter got a Dell laptop.tablet for Xmas.
She gave it to me to register, create a recovery usb, update, etc.
Question is,,,, the laptop will be used on the Comcast/Xfinity internet.
As part of the service, Norton 360 with constant guard is free to download.
What is your opinion of Norton 360?
Any suggestions for different antivirus software? Free is always good.
Are there any sites I can go to that tested and rated antivirus software?
All suggestions are helpful!
If you can figure out how the age of hardware has a bearing on its level of vulnerability to malware, please let me know.
Assuming that you're talking about whether they're running a currently supported version of Windows, the vast majority of the computers I encounter are. Furthermore, I'd say that I encounter maybe one computer a year that isn't running up-to-date anti-virus software.
Again, if AV vendors knew how to stop zero-day threats with such a level of accuracy that av-test claims, much bigger companies would have either bought them out or licensed their "zero-day detection code" by now. Also, every OS would have anti-malware software in regularly recommended and active use if this was the case. Hopefully you understand what zero-day threats actually are, they're not "new viruses" or something similar.
So, 97.2% industry average chance of an AV product picking up a zero-day threat, 99.6% chance of catching malware discovered in the last four weeks, yet 32% of computers infected worldwide (and bear in mind if that figure is vaguely legitimate, it will be "known to be infected", so add on another significant percentage of infected computers after that to reflect the likely reality)
I now use 360 Total Security Essential and haven't had any issues. I am on the internet alot and use the PC for a few other things, hence the high end gaming machine. In my opinion I would steer away as far as possible from Norton. The people having problems with it are well documented and a search will turn up many sites and threads. From my research and searching , most people now or days seem to have lots of success with the ones mentioned above by others Panda, AVAST, 360 Total Security Essential, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware ect.