Do people still use norton on PCs? Is it helpful?

I am keen to hear from people who use microsoft as their regulator OS.

(basically I have about 2 hours to try to find out why my mom’s PC is so slow, it’s old mostly but I wonder if norton is a waste of money)

@futurebird what version of Windows is it? Norton installs a lot of crap, where Microsoft Defender may be the only thing you really need on there, and its free.

@neurovagrant @futurebird While completely agree Defender's periodic scans can badly impact systems, esp. with HDD's, just like any other AV. My impression is that vendors put the bar for acceptable disk I/O pretty high assuming SSD's and no other disk-intensive jobs on consumer PC's.

@futurebird Norton has been bloatware for ages. It slows computers and fucks em up. AVG is what I use and it’s free. Microsoft PCs tend to get slow with age but try checking what is booting on startup. You dont need 20 programs starting and then continually running in the background. That tends to be a major source of slowness in old PCs. Also, uninstall any unused programs. And turn off unnecessary services, like downloading in background for updates (adobe update services is often a bad one for this). After removing all the extra crap, then use the in-windows tool to defrag the hard-drive if it is an HDD (just type defrag in search bar to get to it).

Most of the “software” to “make your computer run good again” is useless bloatware. You can do all this without more software.

@neurovagrant @futurebird same - third party AV has a long history of security and stability issues, and AV in general is only going to catch easy threats because the good attackers test offline and tweak their attacks until they’re not detected before hitting the target.

For older relatives, I mostly worry about phishing - the recordings of people being convinced to approve bank logins are pretty depressing about technical measures.

@acdha on this I have to mention a brand since it helped a family member prone to be a phishing victim, on Windows and Android: BitDefender (sorry, can't remember the exact name, it's the product they have without a full-on VPN, the one that works on several devices for a low price). Any malicious link or website was preemptively blocked or "it seems to be a phishing/malware website, do you want to visit?" would appear on screen (depending on the chosen configuration, I locked everything up on Android, gave a little bit of leeway on Windows). Yes, the computer ends up a little bit slower, but never "Norton/McAfee slow".
@neurovagrant @futurebird

@Myotis_cuniculus @futurebird
Antivirus software is basically a rootkit. If the computer is running Windon't 10 or 11, Microsoft Defender is generally good enough.

If your mom is up for learning something new and if there are versions of the programs she uses available for it, then "switch to Linux" is a genuinely viable option these days, especially in light of Microsoft's craptacular 2024.

@drakenblackknight @Myotis_cuniculus @futurebird Microsoft defender OS indeed enough for most users but do this in conjunction with a small number of carefully chosen browser extensions that block ads and most ways malware would come through a browser.

I read most of these replies to my mom, and I think it's helped a lot. She got Norton way back in the 90s when it was the thing to do and has *never* believed me when I've explained it's making her PC slower. After all why would it be "good" to get rid of "anti-virus" ?

But I wanted to check if spending $300+ a year was even worth it. In status monitor it's the top program using the most processing power, and the most memory.

Thank you for the responses!

@futurebird I just use Windows Defender. It's fine.

"The hospital (now defunct) sent me a letter three years ago saying there was a data breech and the letter said that I had one year of free protection from hacking due to their data breech. But only if I had anti-virus software, so that's why I didn't get rid of Norton the last time you told me to get rid of it."

THIS is what I'm dealing with.

That letter was a legal CYA, no one will EVER get to use that "insurance" but things like that do keep some of these outfits in business I suppose.

@futurebird That is a special kind of stupid. Whether the user has antivirus software or not has literally nothing to do with if the company was breached... (Plus as others pointed out, Windows already has Windows Defender.)

I bet they used some service from Norton after the breach and were basically paid/required to push Norton's software.

@nazokiyoubinbou

The more terms the insurance has the less likely they will ever have to pay out. That's all that's about. They lost a law suit over the breech and this was in the court-mandated penalty. They are going through the motions.

Really such letters are almost better ignored. Well except as inspiration to refresh passwords, and more carefully monitor cards.

@futurebird i declined to answer your OP because my instinct has for decades been "if you see the name 'Norton' anywhere, DROP AND RUN" but the fact of the question now itself made me doubt that long-unupdated wisdom

i see it is still current

@apophis

This is also my instinct but I wanted to verify that it was based on the experience of people who use microsoft, which I don't use very often at all.