Slashdot Mirror
Norton '12 Cybercrime Numbers Lower Than Last Year's — But Just As Bad
Curseyoukhan writes "Norton released its annual cybercrime report on Wednesday, and the company put the 'direct costs associated with global consumer cybercrime at US $110 billion over the past twelve months.' Last year's report put the total 'at an annual price of $388 billion globally based on financial losses and time lost.' That's more than the estimated value of the global black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined ($288 billion), the report said. But Norton makes no mention of the vast difference in 2011 and 2012 numbers. That's because last year's number was entirely fictitious." Something tells me that the scare-monger number-wavers aren't as embarrassed by this sort of logical deconstruction as they should be.
Great way to get some cred in prople who don't know squat about security. Cause people who know the products know how crap your products are, and, unfortunately, THEY DONT CONTROL THE MONEY.
Thankfully, Norton's security products are generally better than its reports.
Yea, and their security products suck donkey balls, so what's that tell you about their reports?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Norton prefers to say that they were colonically extracted.
I was paid to come up with numbers for the marketing campaign. Why should I feel ashamed? I did a great job. We sold *a lot* of product with that number!
...deleted discussion of my $1 trillion idea, so I never got to put it into action.
Norton's figures are thus way too low.
Excluding this, though, Norton may be including the media industry association criminals who overvalue the loss of copying bits representing a Britney Spears wailing lament, or whatever the cool kids are listening to these days.
This year's made-up numbers are less than 1/3 of last year's made-up numbers. In a few years they may go away altogether!
Has a computer security firm ever said things have gotten safer? No? Then it's safe to ignore them.
This years made up numbers lower than last years made up numbers.
next years made up numbers might be even lower.
Is that a good thing?
-- Sig under construction...
Is because non-Windows machines are handling more day to day stuff, so reducing the effect of the fact that your Windows PC is a virus infected POS.
People taking this comment seriously will be first against the wall when the revolution comes
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
So let me get this straight. Norton are saying that the number of people reporting Norton as criminal (due to bloated and buggy virus-esque software presumably) has dropped from previous years?
If this is true, why are they advertising this negative attention instead of just quietly improving their software?
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
"Empirical evidence presented by well-known rent-a-journalist websites does not trump personal experience." - by Killall -9 Bash (622952) on Thursday September 06, @05:19PM (#41253683)
See subject-line above, & when YOU PERSONALLY have created a BETTER antivirus & entire security suite than Norton/Symantec has? Get back to us...
Then, you'll have a HELL of a set of evidence backing you, as a voice of REAL experience, in creating such a ware...
(See - I really dislike when others who are techs "put down" the hard work of others from the commercially available software realm... especially in anti-virus work!)
I don't dislike *YOU* personally - I don't even know you, but that set of statements from you? Irked me... that's all!
On "rented journalists"?? They don't last long IF & WHEN they do that... but, they DO happen too, by the same token, admittedly.
---
"There are only 3 AV products I recommend (and i do this for a living), and NIS isn't one of them. Neither is Macafee.:" - by Killall -9 Bash (622952) on Thursday September 06, @05:19PM (#41253683)
See - I also "do this for a living" professionally in MANY varied roles, since 1994 from out of the 16 bit world of Client-Server, into the 32-bit one we're transitioning out of now, &Âtly into 64-bit ware creation work here...
Plus:
---
1.) The degrees (B.S. MIS & also straight CSC, heading past AAS level 60 credit hours & 'chipping away' @ the B.S. in CSC currently with 90/120 credit hours done for it now)
2.) 17++ yrs of professional experience behind & beyond that here in CSC/MIS, working my way up through the field as:
a. A techie in college 1991-1993 (working for IKON & others)
b. Network admin 1994-2000
c. Splitting time doing code on everything from freeware/shareware 1995-2000
(Some of it security related no less like this recent release from me -> http://start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5851:apk-hosts-file-engine-64bit-version&catid=26:64bit-security-software&Itemid=74 )
Up thru smallish departmental database systems, all the way up to millions-of-lines "enterprise class"/"mission-critical" systems...
d. Programmer-Analyst title from 1997-2005 or so
e. Software Engineer 2005-current
---
I'll agree on McAfee & Norton ( + others listed below WITH GOOD REASON, personal experience that others like Dr. Mark Russinovich a former "coworker" of mine for Sunbelt in the mid to late 1990's selling our wares thru them, plus Nir Sofer as well of NIRSOFT have ALSO had... not a good experience either...)!
Albeit, in 1 regards: FALSE POSITIVES only, their wares DO work (too much OOP use though imo is what slows up their wares... objects have overheads in instancing AND memory usage).
Both ( and 2 others) called the app above a "malware" that bore a trojan!
So, I confronted them on it!
(With backing from the security community in fact in Mr. Steven Burn of malwarebytes/hpHosts)
Simply to prove otherwise....
In the end?
McAfee, Symantec, Comodo, ArcaVir, & others recanted it, and gave it a CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH!
I only released it last month 8/2012, but it was actually READY in 4/2012 - that crap HELD ME BACK!
Was I pissed? Yes, you bet...
Especially since the app is designed to help users get more speed/bandwidth, security, reliability, & even "anonymity" to an extent vs. DNS request logs... so yea, I was ticked off, but... I KNEW I could prove them wrong, & did so!
I did the SAME with CA years ago as well (now THEY pissed me off, but got sold off in the end, caught by the SEC in felonious accounting scandals, & reduced an app I
That number sounds really low to me if you include people trafficking in copyrighted files. If you included that, the number would be closer to a googol (by RIAA and MPAA estimates) than a mere $110 billion.
I read the internet for the articles.
When lying with statistics, you get credibility for being overly precise. "110" looks like an estimate, while "388" does not. I also think they should have managed to manufacture an increased level of damage and at the same time a decreased level for Norton customers.
So here are my numbers:
- 2011: $388B for all, $9.36B for Norton customers.
- 2012: $652B for all, $8.72B for Norton customers.
This conclusively demonstrates that Norton is the right choice. Norton did manage to improve security for all its customers, even to a higher degree than these numbers show, because more organizations finally decided to be protected by the one true choice in security services. Norton achieved this impressive feat while the general situation deteriorated, with a massive increase of loss suffered due to attacks on IT infrastructure by ever more competent criminals.
After all, if you drop all ethics and just let the amoral beast that you are run the show, why not do it right?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
When family call me over to fix up a slow machine and I find Norton AV on it I walk away. I can't tell that bloated sack of crap from the malware it is trying to stop. I don't care how good it might be as all it does is pop up and pop up and demand money. How about NOD32? The last time I had my own Windows box that thing rocked. If it popped up then you had a problem that it was stopping.
But everybody blah blahs about the death of the desktop but what I think perverted the whole thing was when companies like Dell, HP, ACER, and most of the rest changed their business model to where they sold a desktop for little or no profit in the hopes of getting commissions from sales of the trialware they put on their machines.
Is it any surprise that people are buying Apples desktops, laptops, and iPads when the only thing apple really tries to sell you is iCloud? I am not Apple Fanboying here I think that any company that made a point of telling people that their machines were trialware free would make some serious gains in the market.
My old policy with family was that they would send their new laptop over and I would wipe it clean put a good AV product, Open Office, and iTunes on it and send it home. That stopped when laptops cut the left shift key in half and put the \| key there. This was some cost savings thing for foreign keyboards but for me it was the straw that broken my tech support camel's back. I won't touch one of those keyboards. Plus wiping these systems is a nightmare of drivers some of which put some bloatware back.
So for Norton to be scaremongering people into buying their crap product doesn't surprise me in the least; it just isn't their worst crime. As I said their worst crime was to be one of the biggest proponents of this trialware bloatware business model of lower end computers that has basically poisoned the PC market.
"Every single statement in the above post needs a "[citation needed]"." - by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06, @10:21PM (#41256229)
That need the "[citation needed]". per your claims & I'll supply it when & if possible, + from various sources, as is needed...
* Thank you!
(Afterwards, I'll ask YOU to provide the SAME, for the exact same areas, to do a "compare & contrast" then, YOU vs. MYSELF... fair enough?)
APK
P.S.=> Why do I bother with an OBVIOUS TROLL like yourself here on this account? Well, "We do DO requests here..."
... apk
"If I give you the job will you PLEASE leave my office..." - by sarysa (1089739) on Thursday September 06, @10:48PM (#41256373)
From the "trolling likes of you"? A blowjob - & you better be female + up to my standards!
* Additionally/Lastly: THEN Afterwards when your "services have been rendered"?? I'd pay you minimum wage for it, since an OFF-TOPIC obvious troll like yourself only merits that rate-of-pay, lol!
(By the way - the street corner you're standing on? Doesn't COUNT as an "office"... lmao!)
APK
P.S.=> Now, do us all a huge favor, & go back to your hole, you off-topic troll: Thank-You...
... apk
"Norton released its annual cybercrime report on Wednesday, and the company put the 'direct costs associated with global consumer cybercrime at US $110 billion over the past twelve months.
...
And the solution is to move to Linux
AccountKiller
Does anybody around here buy the basic story? That 46% of consumers are victims of cybercrime each year? And what are they defining as cybercrime? Is any crime that uses electronic means cybercrime? Nigeria scams? Fake charities? Phishing? ATM card duplication? Submission of fake bills via email?
Lets see a definition restricted to the kind of malware that Norton is designed to prevent.
I've been working desktop support for the last 7 years and have notice that in the last 2 years the number of users infecting their work machines has gone down. I wonder if the proliferation of tablets and smartphones that people are using for the personal web surfing is to thank? People are using devices that are mostly immune to the common viruses floating about and/or are infecting their personal devices with their bad surfing habits thus sparing the work machine from infection. The most common situation i've seen where someone gets infected nowadays are parents who let their children use their work laptop on occasion.
Sadly, cats are killing more and more laptops each year, the silent threat.
I'm surprised they've recently embraced the Norton name even more in the last couple years. Back when I worked at Symantec, they were really doing whatever they could to minimize the use of the Norton name and try to emphasize the Symantec name in an effort to wean the public off of it. They have a good reason to do that, as their license with Peter Norton to use his name means that they hand over about 2% of the profits for anything that has the Norton name on it. Their original attempt to drop the Norton name from the products completely caused their sales to plummet, as the Norton name was all that most people seemed to remember about the product.
Why anyone feels the need to abbreviate "2012" is beyond me. Just makes the headline even less intelligible.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3099593&cid=41257825
APK
P.S.=> Your downmods? Useless... this brings it right back into view!
... apk
Plus, the "best" my 'detractors/naysayers' (trolls like you) had was unjustifiable down mods + off-topic trolling, & nothing more...
* Just a lot of TALK, about how "bad" the hard work of others is, when the UTTERLY HILARIOUS PART is, they have nothing of their own to compare with those works/wares they're putting down, or rather, attempting to...
(Imo @ least, it takes REAL NERVE to put down things others have done, especially IF/WHEN you have NOT DONE BETTER or the same, yourself...)
Bottom-Line: Anyone can be a critic - However, it takes quite another type of person, to be the chef...
(All my detractors/naysayers had was effete "retaliation" in down-moderating my posts, but nothing of real substance... only trolling b.s.!)
Put it THIS way: A former co-worker of mine, Mr. Scott Davis -> http://www.rbj.net/article.asp?aID=190588 from Odyssey Software now works @ Symantec nowadays - & trust me on this: He's as GOOD AS THEY GET in the art & science of computing & I severely DOUBT anyone on this forums can even BEGIN to touch his skills + experience in programming...
I certainly can't & not even 10++ yrs. later now admittedly!
(We co-wrote an "enterprise-class"/"industrial strength"/"mission-critical" system together in 1999-2000 that is STILL RUNNING STRONG (cross platform from Windows XP to Oracle 11 on Sun Solaris) - He helped me become BETTER THAN I WAS BEFORE on projects of that scale & nature in fact! If Symantec's got THAT KIND OF TALENT onboard? They have some of the best that I've ever seen/met & that's after a nearly 20 yr. career in this field on that level, with quite a few decent accomplishments of my own, & me? I am NOT that good... I can "get the job done", that's MY personal estimation of myself, no more!)
APK
P.S.=> That's why you & those LIKE you, will always be nothing more than trolls in this life... you know it, I know it, & now? Everyone else does also - period!
... apk
Plus, off-topic trolling, & nothing more...
* Just a lot of TALK, about how "bad" the hard work of others is!
When the UTTERLY HILARIOUS PART is, they have nothing of their own to compare with those works/wares they're putting down, or rather, attempting to...
(Imo @ least, it takes REAL NERVE to put down things others have done, especially IF/WHEN you have NOT DONE BETTER or the same, yourself...)
Bottom-Line: Anyone can be a critic - However, it takes quite another type of person, to be the chef...
(All my detractors/naysayers had was effete "retaliation" in down-moderating my posts, but nothing of real substance... only trolling b.s.!)
Put it THIS way: A former co-worker of mine, Mr. Scott Davis -> http://www.rbj.net/article.asp?aID=190588 from Odyssey Software now works @ Symantec nowadays - & trust me on this:
He's as GOOD AS THEY GET in the art & science of computing & I severely DOUBT anyone on this forums can even BEGIN to touch his skills + experience in programming...
I certainly can't & not even 10++ yrs. later now admittedly!
We co-wrote an "enterprise-class"/"industrial strength"/"mission-critical" multi-million line system together in 1999-2000 that is STILL RUNNING STRONG (cross platform from Windows XP to Oracle 11 on Sun Solaris)...
He helped me become BETTER THAN I WAS BEFORE on projects of that scale & nature in fact!
(Thus - If Symantec's got THAT KIND OF TALENT onboard? They have some of the best that I've ever seen/met & that's after a nearly 20 yr. career in this field on that level, with quite a few decent accomplishments of my own, & me? I am NOT that good... I can "get the job done", that's MY personal estimation of myself, no more!)
APK
P.S.=> That's why trolls here go off-topic, critique others work but don't have shit to show for themselves to compare to it of the same nature, & those LIKE them also?
They will always be nothing more than trolls in this life... they know it, I know it, & now? Everyone else does also - period!
... apk
Citation troll, where are you? Running away like usual -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3099593&cid=41257659 ??
(Absolutely... ROTFLMAO!)
* Figures - just like the TYPICAL AC TROLL always does &/or will, you RAN from a simple request, question(s), or challenge...
APK
P.S.=> I'd easily "back up" what I stated, & all you had to do was make requests on WHAT EXACTLY you'd like to have backing citations attached too from my original statement you "replied to" (attempted to 'troll' is more like it, actually)...
... apk