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Symantec Exec Warns Against Relying On Free Antivirus
thefickler writes "Clearly, the rise of free antivirus is starting to worry Symantec, with one of their top executives warning consumers not to rely on free antivirus software (including Microsoft's Security Essentials). 'If you are only relying on free antivirus to offer you protection in this modern age, you are not getting the protection you need to be able to stay clean and have a reasonable chance of avoiding identity theft,' said David Hall, a Product Manager for Symantec. According to Hall, there is a widening gap between people's understanding of what protection they need and the threats they're actually facing."
If there were any high-quality for-pay alternatives, I'd say he might have a point.
Unfortunately, most antivirus software sucks, with Symantec more or less epitomizing how good ideas on paper can turn into terrible/buggy/bloated security software that actually increases your exposure since it adds another node malicious code can attack. Symantec's argument-from-assertion notwithstanding, there doesn't seem to be any correlation between antivirus software being for-pay and higher quality.
From my experience, there's really bad antivirus software (such as Norton, which I have zero confidence in and would never let touch my machine), and slightly less bad antivirus software. What went wrong? Why does this industry suck so badly? Anyone have any insight?
Of course they say that. They are in the business of scaring people into buying their crap so they think they are safe -- when in actuality their vict^Wcostumers get pwned by exploitable holes in IE anydangway.
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
If Symantec's "security" security programs were worth a damn, the "free" products wouldn't stand a chance. So far, that hasn't been the case eh?
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
If there choice were only: install Symantec or get a virus, then that's a really difficult choice. I'd be inclined to risk the virus, since Symantec invades and slows your system in a worse way than many infections.
Fortunately, there are many free anti-virus products that work better than Symantec. It's a no-brainer choice. Free is cheaper and better.
I have no understanding of how Symantec remains in business. There's something deeply wrong with that.
If I grew bananas, I would warn everyone that free bananas could be detrimental to their health. After all, consumers have no idea how hard it is to grow good bananas. Free bananas could leave them lacking in any number of impossible to define vitamins and minerals.
As a software author, I've found that free anti-virus, like Avira and Avast, pretty good, given my understanding of computers, email, spam, and security threats. Symantec are just creating FUD. I used to use Norton Security software, but found that it just slows down a Windows XP machine far too much, guesstimate 15 to 20%. The UI would take ages to load. Symantec might be good for the peons, but for experts the performance hit is too much. Expert users can find better, cheaper, and faster working solutions.
And *that* is a crap statistic; it does nothing to describe the severities of the vulnerabilities, the vendor response, or the amount of time each was left unpatched. Who cares if FF had 184 vulnerabilities and IE 1, if the FF ones were hard to exploit and patched within a few days and the IE one was left open all year and readily attackable by script kiddies?
Symantec provided a removal tool because their idiot programmers couldn't be assed to write a proper uninstaller for their shite product.
So basically what you're saying is that the idiot programmers used their ass to write a shoddy piece of code that you need a third party uninstaller to remove?
Yeah that sounds about right actually. And I'm finding the whole of the article, including Hall's bullshit spew to be absolutely hysterical, given that their product runs like a 5,000 pound pig in a 300 pound pig pen. Perhaps if they weren't so bloody quick to obsolete their products on a year to year basis, and trying to push out a new version every year that has even more bloat in it than the last year -- perhaps people wouldn't be so quick to rely on "free" anti-virus solutions as an alternative
"The truth points to itself." - Kosh, Babylon5
"Symantec provided a removal tool because their idiot programmers couldn't be assed to write a proper uninstaller for their shite product."
Symantec products used to be good in the DOS early windows 95 days, now they are just garbage and add no real value, I could never defrag my hard drive in XP using later versions of norton defrag, etc, because of hard disk locking issues because the way their clueless programmers could not figure out NTFS.
I also hate what they did to partition magic when they bought out powerquest. It seems to me anything that gets aquired by symantec turns to shit.
They used to be a good company, now one only uses their products "at arms length" I hate installing their anti virus software and usually only run it from CD/DVD.
They had a few good programs: Their old dos norton utilities and the DOS versions of Ghost - quick, clean simple utilities, what I wouldn't give for someone to make good utilities again.