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Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition is an all-in-one security suite that leaves most of the protective decision making for adware and spyware blocking and removal up to the user. One wrong choice and your system may continue to spy on you or dish up ads. It's one hefty product too, consuming over 300Mb and installing 11 services, 3 startup items, 2 Toolbars and 2 BHOs - thus it may be less than ideal for already taxed PCs. It's an anstonishing statistic but one that should not be taken so lightly. According to IT security provider Panda Security, over 30 million people have been tricked into installing fake antivirus software. If you have surfed the Internet, you know what I am talking about. If not, they usually appear as pop-up ads that disguise themselves as helpful computer diagnostics, claiming you have a computer virus or problem. If you click on them, they let you install software, for a fee of course, and then supposedly remove the problem from your system. The only thing they are removing, however, is good money from your wallet. Unfortunately, the fake antivirus software scam appears to be a lucreative one at that. Ryan Sherstobitoff for Panda Security says, "The information we have at present suggests that approximately 3 percent of these users have provided their personal details in the process of buying a product that claims to disinfect their computers. Extrapolating from an average price of $68.31, we can calculate that the creators of these programs are receiving more than $13,666,000 per month." Of course if you are giving scam artists your credit card number, who knows what else they could be charging to your account? The best method to follow when on the Internet is to be suspicious at all times. Buy your own antivirus software from a box and keep it up to date. And if you are ever surfing the net and a pop-up window tells you that your computer has a problem, don't believe it. If in doubt you can always run your own antivirus software that you purchased to scan for potential issues. Norton AntiVirus 2009 provides fast, responsive defense against all types of malicious software including viruses, spyware, worms, and other software threats. It protects your system without slowing it down. Rapid pulse updates every 5 to 15 minutes help to ensure that you're protected from the latest threats. Working quickly and quietly in the background, Norton AntiVirus requires little memory and system resources. The new Norton Insight relies on extensive online intelligence to target only those processes at risk, resulting in faster, shorter, fewer scans. And the new Norton Protection System employs a multilayered set of security technologies that work in concert to detect, identify, and block attacks. Version 2009 improves on product performance. Product featuresNorton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition offers a fairly generic collection of features, including antivirus, antispyware, firewall, spam prevention, and privacy controls. The firewall is a blend of packet filtering and permission-based controls. Some sites that required our logging in were blocked by Norton and permissions had to be manually configured. In other cases, we found a wide range of carte blanche permissions had been granted - including the dubious Windows Messenger Service (not to be confused with MSN Messenger, the chat client). The Windows Messenger Service is most frequently targeted by adware and spyware purveyors to push unwanted advertising popups onto unsuspecting users' systems. We did not test the spam filtering capabilities, a feature now offered by most major ISPs. And while its antivirus capabilities are as robust as most of the other major antivirus products, the update schedule is not. Typically, Symantec releases new updates on a weekly schedule unless a new threat is deemed medium level or higher. Symantec tends to be pretty conservative in this regard, and thus a new threat could circulate hours, days, or even a week before signatures are released. Second-guessing for better protectionThe newest feature in Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition is, of couse, spyware and adware detection. To test its spyware and adware removal, we installed a variety of adware and spyware on our test systems, logging and monitoring 70 key components to see how well Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition addressed them. While the overall results weren't bad (Norton nabbed 79% overall), we achieved this score only by second-guessing the product's recommendation. Had we followed Norton's suggestions, our overall adware and spyware removal would have been much lower. Test Results
Our 70 tracked components installed by various adware and spyware included 27 active running processes and services. Of these 27, Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition nabbed 22 (88%). Eleven out of fourteen Browser Helper Objects and Toolbars were removed, for an overall score of 79%. Only 70% of Registry Run keys and Startup links were removed. However, Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition did fare better with our browser start and search page changes - correcting 100% of these. Repeated warningsThough Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition recommended we keep several of our adware and spyware infectors, when we tried to follow its advice it often led to an endless loop of warnings with a recommendation to ignore or allow the infestation. On the plus side, the constant loop of warnings might annoy even those folks who would otherwise follow the Symantec recommendations - causing them to override the recommendation and remove the adware or spyware. But at $80, Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition doesn't offer the ease-of-use or the protection of some competing products. Be sure to check out our Top Picks for Windows Antivirus Software and our Top Picks for Spyware Scanners for those we deem to be the best. Tags: Norton AntiVirus 2009, free Norton AntiVirus 2009 download, Norton AntiVirus, AntiVirus 2009, Norton 2009, security software, pc protection programs, Norton AntiVirus 2009 reviews, Norton AntiVirus 2009
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