Slashdot Mirror
Symantec Support Gone Rogue?
DigitalDame2 writes "PCMag Security Analyst Neil Rubenking has always praised Symantec's tech support. Lately, though, a number of readers have reported problems with chat support, so he investigated. Rubenking was trying to install Norton 360 version 3.0 on a malware-infested system when the computer crashed with a blue screen error. He connected with Symantec tech support and was told that they could fix the problem, but for a fee of $100! (Here is the transcript and screen-captures of the chat.) Even more, Symantec support suggested that he use a malware-removal tool that wasn't even made by Symantec."
The computer was simply too infected to allow the Symantec software to install. This is not an abnormal occurrence. Symantec offered to have an engineer remotely access the system and clean it, which naturally costs money, since you're paying for a person's time to fix your computer, in addition to the license for the software. Symantec can't guarantee that your Windows installation isn't too badly damaged to allow their software to install, and they just offered an alternative to telling him to take the computer to be serviced. This is a non-story.
There are scads of free options.
Try a linux alternative
Like this.
Or this.
Hell even an online scan may work well enough, http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
I had to help someone clean up a popup problem and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (which is free) eliminated not only the adware but also identified and removed a trojan that an up-to-date Symantec Anti-Virus didn't even find. I was really surprised.
His complaint was not the use of a non-Symantec tool, but the claim (in chat) that the non-Symantec tool was in fact a Symantec product.
Taking credit for other peoples' work is Not Cool.
Actually Malwarebytes is free, the paid version just gives you "realtime protection, scheduled scanning, and scheduled updating".
Hello,
/MBR switch, SYS and so forth).
I have worked in the antivirus industry for about nine years (with about another nine years doing networking things), starting with the technical support department at McAfee Associates (now McAfee). Even in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were times when we had to run other companies tools to assist in detection or removal of computer viruses, or to obtain a sample. Peter Norton Computing's Norton Utilities Disk Editor and Sybex' Teledisk come to mind, as do various Microsoft MS-DOS utilities (DEBUG, FDISK with its then-undocumented
A few years ago, I re-entered the anti-virus (or anti-malware, as classic replicating infectors account for a few percentage points of what is seen these days) industry and it was and is not uncommon for our technical support people to help people remove rootkits, various Trojan downloaders and other pieces of malware that are either not detected or detected and not properly removed by our own software. One thing we make sure of is to get copies of any objects like files and registry entries so that our virus lab can add detection (or removal) in a new virus signature database update.
Sometimes, customers do get upset when they are sent download links to a third-party tool to assist with removal because they assume that one tool will protect them against all threats, however, with the shear number of unique pieces of malware being released every day by organized criminal businesses no one tool is going to prevent, detect or remove every piece of malware, every time, even with the best heuristics and generic detection technology. This is something which all anti-virus companies have to deal with, not just Symantec. On the plus side, we just started deploying our own supplmentary tools to detect and remove threats that the mainline products do not, and that will help wean our dependence on third-party programs.
That is pretty much how things stand with recommendations for the use of third party software by anti-virus vendors, now.
As far as selling support goes, well, fifteen years ago it was not unusual to sell support contracts or service level agreements to enterprise customers offering them priority round-the-clock access to technical support. Free, unlimited support via telephone, fax, electronic means (email, BBS, CompuServe, et cetera) was provided, but it was on a first-in-line basis. That started to change in the mid-1990s when the anti-virus companies started to generate substantial revenue and get taken over by professional business people instead of engineers, but when a company becomes publicly-traded, it switches from being technology-focused to being focused on maximizing stakeholder value every quarter, and that means looking at things which cost money like having to pay salaries for support engineers and turn them into things which generate revenue. At that point, I was leaving the company, and really did not care what they did with my department. I have been told by a couple of people who stayed on after me said that Bill Larsen used to give motivational speeches like, "I would fire you if I could." and "I don't understand why we have to provide support to customers, after all, we've got their money." to the support staff, but even if they are not actual quotations, they certainly are reflective of the culture at that time. At a publicly-traded company, loyalty to the shareholders usually takes precedence over loyalty to the customers. Some companies figure out that customer loyalty actually translates into more value for shareholders in the form of increased revenue from license renewals, customers who purchase new products or services from the company, et cetera, but it seems there are plenty who are unable to make this evolutionary leap in understanding how their business works.
These days, my current employer does provide free, unlimited technical support via phone and electonic means and
Dexter is a good dog.