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Symantec Competing Unfairly Against Spybot?
frankbaird writes "Symantec has been claiming for months that the anti-spyware program Spybot-Search & Destroy corrupts Norton Ghost images. Spybot has tried to convince them this is a false positive. After having been ignored, and this is the second time Symantec has claimed a false positive against Spybot, the makers of Spybot have gone public. They claim that rather than compete fairly with quality products, Symantec is resorting to libel."
If symantec was not the biggest antivirus (or virus) making company, they would not have done such a thing.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
Symantec asserts that SpyBot is corrupting Norton Ghost images - well, is it, or isn't it?
I mean, this isn't like determining the existence of god is it? The image is either corrupt, or it is not. So which is it?
Anyone?
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
But...But...But Symantec is part of the Anti-Spyware Coalition. They would never lie about something like this...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Symantic's Norton and Spybot being considerd competitors is quite a streach in my opinion. Spybot was "country before country was cool" in the anti-spyware arena. The Symantic folk have an uphill battle convincing many folk (like me) that current versions of Norton bloatware are not a plague upon RAM, CPU cycles, network communication, and Winblows in general.
A wise man once said: "Never pick a fight with a man who buys his ink by the barrel."
Or an example of really clever free press.
I can't help but think that no matter which way this goes, Spybot is the one clearly coming out ahead; they'll loose some enterprise business if they really are corrupting Ghost images, but otherwise, a lot of people will hear about 'em. If Symantec was engaged in libel, then there is a whole David vs. Golliath thing going on. If Spybot was making up the whole thing, everyone grumbles a bit, but a lot of people checked out their website and/or decided to give the software a try.
All of which will make proving damages in court rather...interesting :-)
Please help metamoderate.
One of the first things I do for any system in distress is REMOVE Symantec. Of course, it's a pain since they are like a plague. They infest the registry like lice and do not remove themselves when you run their deinstallation tool. Bottom line, they are big, but they hogs.
Sysmantec can whine, but no one who knows anything is listening or buying.
I donate to Spybot and promote McAfee.
ay
We've been deploying images with Ghost 8, AV 8, 9, and now 10 with SpyBot for at least a year and a half now and have never had any problems.
I know, I know, anecdotal evidence and all that, but still we've never had a corrupt ghost image in all that time.
Unfortunately, Symantec keep buying nice software (Paragorn Partition Magic was the last one I remember) and making it suck... I always remember the gold times of Norton Utilities in MS-DOS where they had a enhanced command shell, and the encrypted disk [diskreet IIRC] and a surface test, NDD that did worked... those where the day, but after Peter Norton sold all those cool progs to Symantec, everything changed and now they suck (and I think even MORE than Microsoft).
p.s. where would you put the
in my post? =oP
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Are Symantec trying to tell us 'Dont use Spybot' or 'Use dd instead of Ghost'?.. Out of Ghost and Spybot I know which I consider more disposeable.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Everything is possible, but if Symantec had reasonably good processes in place they should have been able to provide the orginal reasons and symptoms that caused them to write that knowledgebase article, however incomplete, along with "we will investigate this matter further"
Well I emailed Mr. Guido Sanchidrian and asked him to validate the truth about the article. His email is in the article and I'm sure his mailbox will fill up over the weekend. :)
/HH
Haven't had the chance to test this issue yet but it sounds highly unlikely that a scan would corrupt a file. I've gave up on Symantec a couple of years ago and have been using alternatives such as AVG and Mcafee. As such, I still find that 2-3 products run in conjunction work best. Speaking of issues, there is one nagging issue I still have with Symtantec NA (version 8/9) for work. We use a content management tool called Teamsite (made my Interwoven) and they don't work well together (short summary). We called Interwoven and they said Symantec is the problem. We called Symantec and they told us that Interwoven has to fix it. Sigh... So you can imagine how far this problem has gone in being resolved.... Frustrating to say the least...
A week should be sufficient time to pop down to see the developers, ask them to look up in the version control system who added this detection rule and why, and to even chat with that particular programmer. This should give Symantec's representative plenty enough detail to provide a competent reply to Spybot, but for some reason they haven't done so.
In my opinion, anyone who has been attentive to the computer industry in the last 8 years has seen plenty of evidence that Symantec is to be avoided. Such a person would have seen the amazing number of serious bug reports. Often Symantec is even worse than Microsoft in attentiveness, and that is extreme.
We stopped using Symantec software, other than to buy copies and test them, many years ago when a Symantec technical support representative cheerfully explained that the very misleading operating system error message we were getting was due to Symantec software being corrrupted by another program. The other program? Symantec WinFax Pro.
In recent years, Symantec technical support has been very angry and adversarial. It is not difficult to guess that things are not going well inside the company.
My experience is that Symantec has a high percentage of employees who know almost nothing about technical things. Such employees are cheaper to hire; I imagine that is the reason.
It's interesting that the few posts here that say they've had no problems with Ghost/Spybot have been using Ghost 8. As I mentioned in another post, Ghost 9 and 10 are repackaged versions of Drive Image, which were obtained from PowerQuest. They have nothing to do with prior versions of Ghost except for the name. Does anyone here have any experience with Ghost 9 or 10 and Spybot?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Based on my experinece, symantec is certainly a resource hog (scanning outgoing email with pdf takes FOOOOOrever), and each edition has a less clear interface, but is macafee any better ? the new dells at work come with macafee, and I cant even figure out how to update the stupid thing - why do people on /. claim it is better ?
These programs are also a significant cost, which suggests, finally, a way for linux to gain market share on the desktop: tell people about the 5 yr tco of anti spy ware.
I tell you what, remove your Symantec Ghost and use a better and free (as in beer and speech) product called QtParted.
garbage indeed, check this. I uninstalled it, but macafee (also removed, deleted etc) was still bugging me so i checked msconfig yet again. well then. Macafee was hidden within that rootkitted hidden norton recycler folder and was still running, well both programs and that hidden folder are now gone (showing hidden files/folders did not show it up, i had to type it in. Regedit to remove the recycler folder i presume, so far i just removed what was in it. yes norton uninstall DID NOT remove that folder)
Isn't it great when companies use AC posts on Slashdot to astroturf? We really have grown up. For thje record, if a huge competitor was libeling my better, and FREE, product out of existance for its' own gain, I'd give it 7 minutes, not 7 days to correct itself before taking more agressive action, and the /. community should be right behind them. Syamntec had the business, and moral, obligation to verify this fully before saying word one, the fact that they didn't gives greatest weight to the charge that this is just a tactic to destroy a superior competitor.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal...
If Symantec has in their knowledgebase that Spybot S&D corrupts Ghost images, one would assume that they would be readily able to prove that it does, in fact, corrupt Ghost images. It doesn't take a week to say, "Well, yes, it does, and here's the scenario(s)." Unless of course, it doesn't corrupt images or they cannot prove that Spybot is the program/issue corrupting said images.
It is relatively simple.
Not only do they suck but they are shutting down all the decent software. My favourite free personal firewall - Sygate has just been bought out by Symantec and guess what:
;-)
Important Notice: Effective November 30th, 2005 all Sygate consumer firewall products will be discontinued.
Well they'll have a hard time stopping me from using it. If anyone else thinks it was a good product too grab it from their site before they realise it's still there
Yea.. god forbid a company that size can respond to a virii threat in 24 hours.. there's no way they could post up their proof given a week. :D
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
I must say, I am shocked, shocked to hear that Symantec might have said something untrue in order to promote their product or malign a competing product. Clearly they have always shown in the past that they hold themselves to the highest of ideals.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say your statements about Microsoft installing spyware with Windows update are just patently false. If you're really seeing what you describe, you haven't done a good enough job of cleaning spyware from Internet Explorer before you run Windows Update. Try using Spybot S&D in addition to Adaware, and be sure to use all of the immunization features.
Breakfast served all day!
You are kidding, right? It has been years since Norton Utilities did anything useful. The AV scanner and firewall let far too much through, and everything else they install is useless... The spyware scanner is a sieve used as an umbrella, the system cleanup utilities was useful on 98 but now just call software that comes with XP, crash protection takes a ton of resources and never works when you need it to, uninstall is about as successful as the regular windows uninstall routines, etc.
The only really good utilities are premium and expensive anyway, Partition Magic and Ghost. The average user will never need these, which is fortunate as the average user never buys these.
For Antivirus, use AVG. It is solid, low-resource, and free, and people have been using it successfully for many, many years. For a firewall, you want either Kerio Personal Firewall or Zone Alarm. Either is a small, robust, and far more secure than Norton firewall. Kerio is a little more powerful, Zone Alarm is a little simpler. Both are free, and have been around for years.
No antispyware software (especially commercial applications) catches everything, so a cocktail is usually in order. The two I recommend are Ad-Aware and Spybot. They're both classics, they both take low resources and are easy to schedule, and they have different search methodologies and as such catch different types of spyware. They also don't run unless called, so they don't take up any system resources. Combined, the two catch just about everything.
I have heard good things about Counter-Spy, but with just an 85% catch rate, it is still good to run a second application along with it. Likewise, with a 20 dollar yearly service fee, it isn't "fire and forget," and I've seen far too many systems that were unprotected because the credit card on file with their software service company expired.
Take all of the above utilities. Put them on a disk. Write a very small shell script that automatically launches the installers on insertion of the disk and clicks through everything (try PTFB, which can be launched and run from the disk automatically) and adds scheduled tasks to run the software. This shouldn't take you too long. Then whenever a crapflooded machine comes into your office with an expired copy of Norton, just clean it up and pop in the disk. I can't tell you how many machines I've installed AVG, Kerio, Ad-aware, Spybot (or some variant thereof) on, and have never regretted it.
There is a lot better stuff out there. Surprisingly, a lot of it is free. And while people seem to like to pay for software because it gives them a false sense of security, they also like the fact that you can whip out a disk right there and be done in five minutes, hassle-free.
The ______ Agenda
Whenever someone asks me what antivirus/antispyware/security package to buy, I tell them
that the LAST product you should get is anything with 'NORTON' on it. Norton products
bog down the system and are very difficult to get rid of once installed...
Not to mention the nuisance of Dell installing Norton antivirus on every new computer, which I have to manually remove (to be replaced with ClamWin free antivirus software).
So, Symantec? Just Say No!
--frank[at]unternet.org
While this is all quite suspicious and Slashdotters love the very idea of a conspiracy, I'm not yet in Spybot's camp here. First of all, one week to investigate and respond to an issue is way too short for a company as large as Symantec. Who does Spybot think they are to demand a one week response. Even the Department of Justice couldn't make such a demand, and if the DoJ did Slashdotters would be all up in arms over the evilness of it all.
..... wtf do they think they're doing?
Absolutly NOT true. If Symantic had done enough investigation to make sure that they were right when they named Spybot on their site in the first place, the evidence would be handy.
And if they *don't* have the evidence handy
Norton used to be great. Remember those days? I am computer consultant for small and medium sized businesses and each time I see norton installed I suggest my clients to use an alternative. One client recently exclaimed "After I installed Norton, I ended dealing with Norton this, Norton that, I just want my computer to work." If Norton has an issue with a third party app, perhaps they should patch their software.
I see what you're saying, and I agree that in some cases there would be no other choice but to publish an incompatibility, but I find the fact that they haven't produced any evidence very suspicious. Especially when the majority of Ghost-users on here are saying that they've had no problems.
To know recursion, you must first know recursion.
I've used Kerio Personal Firewall (free to home users) for the last several years with no problems. I used version 2.1.5 which is less intrusive than the latest versions which tend to have too many features that are nagging. You can get the last freeware version 2.1.5 here
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
you've been employed by Symantec for how long now?
if your little homebrew test did indeed have that result, that's very far-fetched. This doesn't take into account the fact that Winblows XP whines with a BSOD/reboot if you replace parts in the system that weren't there at the time of installation. This means that not only do(es) the target system(s) have to be IDENTICAL in hardware configuration, in order to run a ghosted XP image, but because the hardware in the target PC (recieving the image) has to be identical for Winblows XP to even BOOT, I can't envisage Spybot finding so many changes to make, unless your image is chalk-full of garbage that you inadvertently left behind.
If your result was indeed as you posted and you can claim that all software registry entries/files/etc were indeed legit (read: NOT spyware-dependant P2P applications and the like), then yours could simply be an isolated case. But from personal experience, although I have not (and will not) attempt to recreate this user's test, I can say that this claim is unverified, unduplicated rubbish.
One test does not a confirmation make.
About those people you phoned: Had you stopped to think that maybe they were PAID to say what they said?
In a perfect (or at least better) world, Symantec would recognize Quality software and work with it, rather then compete with it. I look forward to the day Symantec executives begin jumping en masse from helicopters, sans parachutes.
how is babby formed?
Whoever modded your post 3, Informative - must not have read it carefully. If your post is not tongue in cheek, I call BS.
"I'm very well versed in Norton Ghost, but I have little experience with Spybot S&D. So, I decided to test out the application."
"Q: How familiar are you with Spybot?
A: Very familiar."
So, which is it - do you have "little experience with Spybot" or are you "Very familiar" with Spybot?
And your post just gets worse from there. Spybot corrupts the OS? Problems with Spybot installing toolbars?
What the hell?...Many of us here have used Spybot and have recommended it to users. Trust me when I say we would not do so were it to have all the problems you speak of.
That being said, IMO, Symantec products have sucked for a few years now. We switched to AVG and Acronis True Image years ago and have been much happier since.
My experience with the newest version of Acronis is that it is far better than Ghost.
Acronis is not perfect, but much less stupid than Symantec, in my experience.
This guy is full of complete and utter bullshit. Almost every helpdesk I've had any dealings with, and two I've worked at, recommend SpyBot and Ad-Aware incessantly. I've never seen it damage a system. The only problems I've ever had with either is that they occasionally can break winsock when removing some particularly annoying spyware. There's utilities that easily fix the damaged registry keys however.
Plus, this persons example makes NO SENSE. Why would spybot go crazy after an image was restored, but not before, unless Ghost (AKA Drive Image) did something wrong when making/restoring the image? Not to mention that Ghost 10 (Aka Drive Image) has a long history of generating corrupt images when making them while running the system. This is a documented problem on many Ghost and Drive Image forums and Symantec has demonstrated that it doesn't care. (See http://ghost.radified.com/) Hot-imaging is a non-feature prone to making bad images.