Symantec Anti-Virus Supresses Privacy Tool

salimfadhley writes "Symantec's 'Norton Antivirus' now attempts to remove Freegate, a program designed to help Chinese internet users view websites blocked by the government firewalls. Symantec offered no reason why the program (which is not spyware) was marked as a 'trojan' in Chinese versions of the software, however even an unattuned conspiracy theorist will guess that this was done at the request of the Chinese government. "

Comments

Where's the follow up with Symantec?

[Wanderer1]

I'd certainly like to see the official line on this one. Probably a bit like Cisco - "Hey, anything to make a buck, right? We don't have no scruples." Similar issues appeared with web censorware which were illuminated by the organization, PeaceFire a few years back. Not only were the censorware lists blocking "legitimate" websites but also blocked sites that could (without imagination) be construed as agendas beyond the scope of "protecting children" against sex. Outsourcing your software increases the risk of being subjugated by others. It is unfortunate that we need so dearly the protection that antivirus software provides - but we're putting our trust in corporations that do not hold honor over profit (few do, nothing special about this one.) The same struggle with subjugation appears in the Digital Rights Manglement issues, where Microsoft chooses what you do with your computer. Fortunately as we've seen with the adware war, Freegate and friends will continue to evolve. Let us hope that the antivirus vendors have as much trouble blocking Freegate as they do catching legitimate malware! Bill

Norton is a No-No

[BinaryOpty]

No one should be using Norton anyway. I jumped Norton's ship (after using it for free for a month) after discovering you need to pay for updates past that point and it annoys you daily about it (and even offers a "remind me after..." prompt where the only choice is 1 day). The only way to stop the annoyance is to uninstall the program or buy a year subscription. I did what they didn't want me to do. Take that Symantec. Hello Grisoft.

They are catching up to fark.

[Sevn]

In so much as having no sense of humor. That and the blatant censorship is starting to happen. I've actually noticed "politically incorrect" posts disappearing completley. I got my first warning about posting as an AC today. That's kinda the point of posting as an AC. So everyone else can ignore it. If things keep up, it will be just like Fark where everyone is scared to death to speak their mind for fear of bans and censorship.

Re:I'd say bouycott any software that doesn't suit

[Kris_J]

I personally believe anti-virus it a waste of time.

Not true. Our email attachment rules (ie; no .scr, .pif, .exe files, etc) are pretty good at blocking malicious content while letting the legit stuff through, but being able to detect a known virus makes things a lot cleaner. If it's just whatever.scr, we bounce it, but if it's whatever.scr with a known virus we blackhole it.

Re:I'd say bouycott any software that doesn't suit

[tod_miller]

I have to say I half agree with you.

Our email attachment rules - block all that content. f course people zip up some of that content, so maybe unzip and block, this is email attachment filtering.

Checking for knwon virus signatures, yes this is an application of virus detection that is not used as a security measure, but as a decision maker, or audit trail.

Outlook is causes 99.99999* of virus problems, allowing someone to send email as you, with viruses in it - embarrassing!

I still cannot believe people use that....

Knowing a file is a known virus is ok, and useful, but you are right in saying that mail attachment filters are better. Remove anythign remotely hazardous.

Send a link to a file if you want someone to d/l it, and then use the trust rule, and fallback on the behavioural checking.

Never be in a position to run code that you have been assured by a virus checker that it is not a virus.

Of course, my approach would stop trojans, worms, scripts, anything that has this efect (each application can extend the security layer into its own realm, so openoffice could have a protect sandbox that would test scripts and if it crosses a line, like tries to embedd itself, or open a new document, or search or something ,notify the user.