Norton and other PC antivirus

I’ve just uninstalled Norton from my laptop because the daily, hourly marketing push to upgrade to this or that amazing/must have/your (brand new) laptop is “at risk”/“needs a repair to a program” BS is driving me crazy.

I couldn’t figure out how to unsubscribe as the “link” to the setting to do so was not working and I had to force close the page just to get back to my work. I’m sick of it and would rather risk infection than have to put up with this crap!

Am I alone in this?

@divegeester said
Am I alone in this?

@shallow-blue said
No, you are not. "Norton" Anti-virus is a disgrace to the name of Peter, he of Pink Shirt fame.

I am not a specialist - personally, I prefer to avoid rather than fight viruses, vut if you have teenaged children or elderly parents, that may nor be an option - but recommend Avast, F-prot, or if you can afford it, Sophos.

But under no circumstances Norton or McAfee, not since the early 1990s.

@divegeester said
Thank you…

I’m thinking of no antivirus and just practicing safe surfing. Would you advise that or not?

I appreciate your knowledge in this area.

@shallow-blue said
I don't know enough of your technical understanding to advise or disadvise that. Then again, I'd rather advise it for someone who realises that safe surfing is a thing than for someone who clicks on every link and responds to every spam mail and relies on his anti-virus, so, yeah, you might, with some care.

I think, if you yourself are uncertain, I'd recommend getting ...[text shortened]... ps". See how it goes. If nothing goes wrong: go for it, you have proven that you can trust yourself.

@divegeester said
Thanks again.

I’m really careful with my browsing and when I’m not then I have an old tablet for porn-scrolling, which is cheaper to run than maintaining Norton.

Norton is still trolling me with fear-mongering pop ups even though I’ve uninstalled it.

@a-unique-nickname said
I did away with Norton years ago, used avg for a long time until it also became annoying with prompts to sign up for a paid service.

Bought a new Chrome book last year and haven't downloaded any antivirus software but a good ad blocker is a must. I can say that now after ponying up for a subscription... It'll block a lot of potential malice even before having the ...[text shortened]... th running avg once every 6 months or so, just to be on the safe side... might give that a go later.

I also have a chromebook which doesn't need a virus checker.
We don't even have a virus checker on the pc we bought last year with windows 11
We do have windows defender on there which runs every week and puts up a message saying no viruses found or something like that.
We had a problem once with an advert which wouldn't go away but the free version of malaware got rid of it.

@divegeester

Too much security renders a computer practically unusable. I'm no fan of Norton--scanning for viruses which have already nestled onto your harddisk is way too late to be implementing security. That's like closing the door after the burgler has already entered your property.

There are several things you can do to mitigate risk and still use your computer(s).

1. Get a 2d computer which only surfs and does nothing else; no emails, and no private messaging or private photos or contacts or appointments-calendar apps.

2. All the stuff you don't want google/BillGates/the CIA/KGB/Mossad etc. to know about you, put on a second computer, which never surfs but does all the rest of your emailing, messaging, photo-archiving, memoirs, etc.

3. Put a firewall between the above two machines, to prevent them from communicating directly with each other. Both Windows and Mac OS offer on-board firewalls which are user configurable to block any ip address or host. Then transfer data between them as needed only via USB stick which you can scan for suspicious files manually.

4. Make frequent backups, in case one or the other machine gets attacked with malware or ransomware.

5. For people who know what they're doing and have Mac OS, I recommend Little Snitch -- a firewall stops unwanted traffic coming in. Little Snitch stops it going OUT, and that is actually more important. If malware can't contact the mother ship, it can't trigger a ransom-demand or transmit your bank details or passwords to the criminals, so they won't know you exist.

6. Add a Russian keyboard to your list of installed keyboards. You do not actually have to have a Russian keyboard, just make sure your computer has a Russian keyboard in its list of installed options. The reason is that a lot of ransomeware and password/bank keyboard-sweep trojans are created and propagated by Russian criminal gangs (some of them in the employ of Russian intel services). To prevent them from infecting their own computers, many of them check the installed keyboards on the target computer and, if a match is found, the malware does not attack said target.

7. If your service provider offers firewall protection, use it: let them deal with the constant nuisance of updating the virus definitions, and make sure your router updates its firmware automatically.

8. Never believe it if you get an email which says you must 'verify' your account details or that your account has been blocked because of bla bla and to unblock it you have click on a link. Just delete it without clicking on any links.

@divegeester
You could always install Linux OS or some other OS that is not plagued with viruses. That is what I did. You could do a dual partition to keep Windows OS for compatibility reasons when needed.

@a-unique-nickname said
Bought a new Chrome book last year and haven't downloaded any antivirus software but a good ad blocker is a must.

The crazy thing about Norton Antivirus is that the uninstall option doesn't uninstall it. Supposedly this is a defence against malware auto-uninstalling it, but really it is so they can bug you to reinstall it.
To uninstall Norton Antivirus fully you need to use their uninstall tool - https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v15972972

If you have Windows 10 or 11, turn on Windows Defender after uninstalling Norton. The built in protection in Windows 10 and 11 is pretty good. Something like Sophos, Bitdefender or Malwarebytes are better and give additional security features, such as e-mail scanning.