Review by William A. Levinson

This is based on my experience with Norton Internet Security 2002. Symantec’s products are of low quality, and technical support might as well be nonexistent. Furthermore, Symantec has a nice trick to force you to buy new versions of NIS every few years; it cuts off your ability to download virus updates for older ones.

I am currently relying on Frisk F-Prot for virus protection, so I no longer need Norton Antivirus (part of the NIS package). However, I am unable to uninstall it. If I disable the executable file (e.g. by changing the extension to NULL), it freezes all my Microsoft Office applications like Word, because they still request virus scans from Norton Antivirus.

In 2004, a Live Update from Symantec apparently caused Norton Internet Security to take over a good 99 percent of my computer’s CPU while bringing Internet performance to a crawl. Symantec’s technical support people ignored more than a dozen E-mails, and a fax to the tech support manager also went unanswered–thus suggesting that Symantec’s contempt for its customers comes from at least middle management if not higher.

On the basis of my experience with this product, Symantec is permanently disqualified from selling me anything whatsoever in the future. Its contempt for its customers is quite obvious from its marketing practices (cutting off your ability to buy virus updates for older versions), not having any meaningful technical support, and peddling products that cannot even be uninstalled.