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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.
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!
While you personally don't like Norton or their products, AV Comparatives and other independent testers (e.g. CNet, PCMag, etc.) show NIS at the top in terms of detection, removal, low-system resource utilization, etc. Empirical evidence shows its very good at what it does. I've used NIS for a few years and I like the GUI, the speed, and the way it works but I didn't like the price which is why I switched to Avast but it's hard to say NIS isn't effective and efficient at what it does unless you're letting your emotions take over.
...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.
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...
My first thought too. If last year's numbers are entirely fictitious, where did this year's numbers come from?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Empirical evidence presented by well-known rent-a-journalist websites does not trump personal experience.
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.:
1. Microsoft security essentials
pros: free, does what it does with VERY little interaction, VERY low resource footprint
cons: average(read: SHITTY) protection.
2. Comodo Internet Security
pros: free version available, most comprehensive system protection I know of (I install this when I'm having paranoid days and I need to find those NSA keyloggers I "KNOW" are there somewhere...)
cons: HIGH resource footprint (makes my home computer run slow, which is a fucking feat... about the same as NIS and Macafee), and VERY user-unfriendly.
3. TrendMicro
pros: slightly above average protection, moderate resource footprint, few false alarms, no popups or dialouge boxes unless something is actually wrong
cons: all around average. not really a con... doesn't excel at anything, but doesn't suck at anything either.
FYI TrendMicro goes on all of my company's client's computers.
I've heard Kaspersky is very good.. but I've also heard Kaspersky has dealings with black hats in the russian mafia. So fuck 'em.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
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
Well, first you have to go to the BPA to find out how much software is pirated. The answer: the GNP of Brazil.
Next, you have to go to the RIAA to find out about music piracy. The answer is: the GNP of Brazil times a fudge factor of 1.5.
Then, you have to go to the MPAA to get the number of how much movie theatre and rental/royalty losses that they suffer. This is the GNP of Nigeria, times a factor of 7.233.
Finally, if you're in the systems protection business, you have to talk about the losses from break-ins, data loss, user-down time due to StuxNet (they left Iran out of the figures) which is the GNP of Greece times an amazing 294.888.
Go on check my figures. Be scared. Be very scared.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.
I use a computer for a living and I have found NIS to be very good. Don't need to be a professional computer person to know if something's good or not.
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.
Well, first you have to go to the BPA to find out how much software is pirated. The answer: the GNP of Brazil.
So... nuke Brazil and software piracy will be eliminated?
Whatever the math says, man. Numbers don't lie.
Except on Thursdays.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"V Comparatives and other independent testers (e.g. CNet, PCMag, etc.) show NIS at the top in terms of detection, removal, low-system resource utilization, etc. "
They also know which side of their bread the butter is on.
"Norton" brand software products started going downhill the moment Peter Norton sold his interest to Symantec. I watched it happen. It got gradually but steadily worse. The last "Norton Suite" I ever used (years ago) installed so many resident programs and other JUNK that my system slowed to a crawl, and did not supply enough configurability for me to just run those that I wanted.
I reamed every last trace of Symantec software off my hard drive, and never went back. And never regretted it.
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.
If I give you the job will you PLEASE leave my office...
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
"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.
Why anyone feels the need to abbreviate "2012" is beyond me. Just makes the headline even less intelligible.
I was actually poking fun at the fact your post reminded me of someone desperately seeking employment (in a way represented at least a few times in TV and film, and usually worked...) but I guess it was too esoteric. :P
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.