Why is that? They continually get great scores across many AV testing websites, they have been around longer than most other popular anti viruses, and they are one of the cheaper options. Yet if you recommend it on this subreddit, you get downvoted and told you’re wrong and Norton is a resource hog virus itself. Literally the most brain dead response with no source or facts.
Ive been using them for over a decade, multiple computers and no issues outside some pop up ads that can be disabled. What’s the deal with this subreddit if all we can recommend is kaspersky and bitdefender? Maybe mods need to rename the subreddit to r/kaspersky&bitdefender?
Back in the day, Norton was the de-facto standard that all other anti-virus programs were measured… Peter Norton was very good and demanded that level of quality… Once he sold to Symantec, corporate greed took over and sweatshop programming is king… No quality just quantity, lets do everything and just make it run, don’t worry about quality… All the BIG Anti-Virus companies are this way and they are resource hogs, slow, crash a lot, they constantly nag you to extend your subscription, if you uninstall they leave stuff behind to pop up later or to advertise… They will continue to charge your account until doomsday unless you beg them or threaten them… Support is a joke with them…
Defender is good enough for someone that is competent in what they do and install… But, for the average user, there are several free alternatives that do a better job that Norton or McAfee… If you have a fast PC and want to bring it to a crawl install one of the big ones…
Watch it. It’s less than a minute. There’s a reason why the general consensus is that it sucks. He explains simply why it’s unnecessary and why it sucks
I would say Norton is not the worst, that crown should be reserved for McAfee. However, I still would never use it on my personal system. While Norton scores fairly well is some lab tests, it does have a very high number of false positives, take a look at this test from AV Comparatives, Norton scored second worst in terms of false positives. Also, Norton’s behavioural protection is just not as good as Kaspersky or Bitdefender. Not to mention the whole scandal with the crypto miner bundled with Norton.
There are plenty of much better options out there, i.e. Kaspersky, Bitdefender, ESET, F-Secure or Sophos Home.
We do our best to remove posts that violate rule #8No Low-Effort or Off-Topic Posts, amongst other rules. Some posts slip by, but when they’re noticed they are addressed. We see this more often with McAfee than Norton, and if a thread gets too out of hand with rule #8 violations that thread is locked along with the violations removed. If you see a post that violates rule #8 or any other rules, submit it to us under a comment report. Moderating a subreddit requires not just work on part of the moderators, but also those of the community who notice these things.
That being said, there is no problem with Norton. It performs well in AV tests and if it works for you then great. Same goes with any other solution.
This subreddit is more geared towards malware-related support inquiries, not overtly supporting one vendor over another. We cannot control the opinions of the community, we can only enforce the rules of the subreddit.
It is also worth noting that a majority of the moderators do not use those two products mentioned in your last paragraph. Which isn’t a hit on them, but we are not in the business of providing preferrential treatment to different companies here - including vendors that we ourselves use.
There are much better free options than Norton, and it absolutely is a resource hog. I’ve had to borrow a laptop that had Norton on it before and it was constantly using the hard drive making it incredibly slow. For the average person all you need is Windows Defender.
I have been using Norton on my Windows PCs for 14 years. I moved to it after being annoyed by the way Kaspersky slowed down my system. I use Brave as a browser and recently started using Proton VPN which says that it filters malware, ads and trackers. I am quite happy with the setup, the system is performant and I have not had a virus in all these years.
The Norton ads are annoying but I accepted that as I though it was still protecting my PC. Do you think this is such a bad setup?
I have Norton and honestly I have been loving it. I tried to switch to Bitdefender earlier and it made my PC unstable with blue screens so I switched back to Norton. Bitdefender and Norton are my #1 choices I’d be willing to pay for. #2 on my list would be either McAfee or Avast. Yeah I’d probably get Avast free antivirus rather than pay for any of these two.
Norton is consistently on the top of the list with literally all reviewers. I run Malwarebyte and Hitman Pro for second opinions/fast scans. I think it syngergizes well with these 2 since it uses a different and reputable malware database.
Yeah I do all my online banking on my computer and can’t afford to have a virus sneak through.
For starters, it was sneakily installing a cryptominer with the software. There was also a case where there were vulnerabilities in the software itself (though they were patched out soon). But these do make you consider why one should pay such a high price when there are better products available for cheaper.
It also has this history of dubious business practices, bundling unwanted software. Then there are all these notifications and prompts which are very intrusive and annoying. Like sometimes it will want me to call an expert to remove a file i can simply delete on my computer. A lot of its features are bloatware and it always has a very high impact on the system.
Recommending Kaspersky is insane. It’s on par with recommending North Korean or Chinese software. I would particularly not recommend it to a Russian citizen, but strongly warn against it. Especially with the latest developments.
I have run nothing but Windows Defender for 15 years.
My mom’s computer, which I manage, has only used Windows Defender for 10 years, and she calls me every week with fake Chrome virus warnings (she clicks on everything).
Every person I talk to, I recommend Windows Defender.
You know how many viruses I’ve seen hit any of these PCs in these time frames? Zero.
That’s why no one recommends Norton (and I would argue, why BitDefender and Kaspersky are also useless). They may show higher detection rates in synthetic tests, but my real world anecdotal experience with this stuff invalidates said numbers.
The bottom line is that most people looking for paid AV are doing so only because they think they have to. The thought of going without it isn’t even a valid consideration. Therein lies the problem.