Dealing with Symantec

[xanter]

ok i just got off the phone with symantec for the 4th time tryin to get this problem fixed. this fourth time they tried to tell me they were gonna charge me to fix the problem as some of you know i tend to blow up fairly easy and this was no exception i started off polite and all but that didn't last long i won't repeat what i said as it was not in the least bit nice but to make a long story short i am in the market for a new antivirus and i informed symantec what i thought of their service and software i am gonna check out this avg

[roswell_r]

ENTROPY: what were you hoping symantec would do? exclude your server address from this threat? They cannot remove detection of this threat as it is a serious threat.

make the detection more accurate?

false positives and false negatives are bad, and they should accept neither. the ideal anti-virus will detect all virii (no false negatives) and not misdetect valid programs (false positives).

it's understandable that it may not work properly (what complex code does always work right, let alone the rapidly changing virii-scape), but not acceptable that they won't work with the game owner and head coder to make their detection more accurate

 

Well as a developer im sure you know a company like symantec doesn't have time to talk to developers of a MMORPG game because their software is producing a false positive. It isn't a false positive as the detection process says it is.

 

Secondly their software chews so much CPU power and resources(this is their first problem) that having their security software do a analysis of threats would make things worse.

 

A WARNING to people who are using norton and are reading this thread and are inclined to try AVG FPROT or something else BEAWARE that free things aren't as good as things you pay for. The saying goes you get what you pay for. AVG & FPROT and other companies offer free security software and been free they cannot put as much effort in to making it as good as a huge corperate company like symantec. So dont be suprised if Viruses and Attacks get through.

 

If you are here to address your Security(firewall) issue then I may suggest researching products before spending money on them. There are other companies that offer free version of their software which pisses all over symantec's security.

[m_bee]

ENTROPY: what were you hoping symantec would do? exclude your server address from this threat? They cannot remove detection of this threat as it is a serious threat.

make the detection more accurate?

false positives and false negatives are bad, and they should accept neither. the ideal anti-virus will detect all virii (no false negatives) and not misdetect valid programs (false positives).

it's understandable that it may not work properly (what complex code does always work right, let alone the rapidly changing virii-scape), but not acceptable that they won't work with the game owner and head coder to make their detection more accurate

 

Well as a developer im sure you know a company like symantec doesn't have time to talk to developers of a MMORPG game because their software is producing a false positive. It isn't a false positive as the detection process says it is.

Dude, that is pure crap, if they were the guys from Blizzard, Norton would have time to talk with them for sure. It is their responsability that their product can differ a virus free product, like these, from any other thing. Theirs, and not anyone else's responsability.

 

I'm also a programmer, and that is not about being an uber dev, or an expert programmer. It is more basic, is is about having clients -persons who rely on your capacity to solve a given matter- and listening to their needs and complains. If they are giving you complains about one of your products cause it does not work well with any other given product, it is their responsability to find a way to solve it. That might, or might not, include talking with the propietary of the other product (in this case Entropy, and Roja). But it is not about attending the complains from the EL owners, but about attending the complains from the EL users wich are also Symantec users.

 

A WARNING to people who are using norton and are reading this thread and are inclined to try AVG FPROT or something else BEAWARE that free things aren't as good as things you pay for. The saying goes you get what you pay for. AVG & FPROT and other companies offer free security software and been free they cannot put as much effort in to making it as good as a huge corperate company like symantec. So dont be suprised if Viruses and Attacks get through.

 

Hehehe, well, so, you are saying that iptables/netfilter, and openbsd, to put a few examples, are bad in security? They are free and have far better security records than any windows based solutions... And their flaws are public, and solved fast (and rarely, critical), not hidden until the trojan is into your house like some others like to do...

 

You want more? Look, most web servers are Apache (free) for a reason, -sorry for those using MSIS-. Want more? Mysql? Postgres? PHP? yes, php, and not asp, wich is propietary.... Well, you get the idea. Free products dominate (like in freedom, not necesarily free in money charge) the net, and they do it for a reason. To start with, free products do not hold spyware. I would NEVER, use something which source code I don't know to secure my box (there is nothing that you can do to convince me that Symantec is not using they "protection" software to retrieve data from my computer, the same for all the MS products, im not saying it is a fact, im saying it is perfectly possible).

 

That possibility is there, and since I can't be sure -cause I cant look at the code- I will never use such solutions to protect vital data.

 

In one thing you have the reason, fprot is not better is such respect, cause it is free like in money, but not free like in freedom (you have not the source, and the licensing model is nothing like gnu), if you were referring only to freeware stuff, then sorry. But if you are talking about free like in gnu and other open source stuff, you were plainly wrong

Edited June 10, 2006 by Entropy

[bkc56]

A WARNING to people who are using norton and are reading this thread and are inclined to try AVG FPROT or something else BEAWARE that free things aren't as good as things you pay for.

A correction here. AVG/Avast is NOT free. They have a number of products for sale. They just also offer a one year (renewable) free license for personal use at home. But that is not the same thing as freeware.

[Learner]

A WARNING to people who are using norton and are reading this thread and are inclined to try AVG FPROT or something else BEAWARE that free things aren't as good as things you pay for.

A correction here. AVG/Avast is NOT free. They have a number of products for sale. They just also offer a one year (renewable) free license for personal use at home. But that is not the same thing as freeware.

So far I haven't been able to work out a group price for F-Secure. At this time it would have to be individual boxed products for people. The untrusted nature of the end users is a limitting factor.

[ttlanhil]

Well as a developer im sure you know a company like symantec doesn't have time to talk to developers of a MMORPG game because their software is producing a false positive. It isn't a false positive as the detection process says it is.

they have a responsibility to make their software do what they say it's supposed to, though. what would happen if radu sued them for libel? by accusing the EL team of sending malware, and refusing to resolve the problem, there might just be a case in that... EL isn't huge, but over a thousand people online each day (as a conservative estimate) means it isn't that tiny either

Secondly their software chews so much CPU power and resources(this is their first problem) that having their security software do a analysis of threats would make things worse.

erm... they already do analysis to detect stuff. it should only take a refinement of the existing rulechain, might be a slight increase in complexity, meaning a slight performance hit, but not much of one

 

 

Hehehe, well, so, you are saying that iptables/netfilter, and openbsd, to put a few examples, are bad in security? They are free and have far better security records than any windows based solutions... And their flaws are public, and solved fast (and rarely, critical), not hidden until the trojan is into your house like some others like to do...

that's only half of the firewalling issues. the half decent windows based ones also have program access setup straight from the box, which is important (and yes, I agree, it's not as important on *nix boxen where you have those ones built into the kernel)

it's also a lot harder for a virus to be able to mess with the *nix based ones too... one, it's more locked away in kernel space, and *nix boxen have better security using a multi-client design, and two there's a lot less attacking of *nix OSes (but as they do become more popular, that will change)

[Entropy]

Well as a developer im sure you know a company like symantec doesn't have time to talk to developers of a MMORPG game because their software is producing a false positive. It isn't a false positive as the detection process says it is.

I really feel sorry for your end users, and I hope you will never be responsible for writting critical software.

 

 

Secondly their software chews so much CPU power and resources(this is their first problem) that having their security software do a analysis of threats would make things worse.

What????

Dude, the very point of an antivirus is to do a analysis of threats!

 

A WARNING to people who are using norton and are reading this thread and are inclined to try AVG FPROT or something else BEAWARE that free things aren't as good as things you pay for. The saying goes you get what you pay for. AVG & FPROT and other companies offer free security software and been free they cannot put as much effort in to making it as good as a huge corperate company like symantec. So dont be suprised if Viruses and Attacks get through.

You are not the brightest lightbulb in the room (to put it mildly). You have no idea about the companies behind F-Prot and AVG, you have no idea about those two products, but you try to scare people with your FUD. How about doing some research next time you talk?

[Arnieman]

A further retort to roswell, but probably not needed at this point:

 

I used to use and trust Norton - it was a good AV program in the past. However, I had regularly had to wipe and reinstall my entire computer to combat the virii that would invade my computer at least once a year - and often more often than that. I have not had to do this since fall of 2004 - about the time I decided that Norton was junk and that I would try AVG-Free. AVG caught the virus that SEVERAL scans by both Norton and TrendMicro's online tool had missed, AND was able to delete the file (it was uncleanable, and unneeded).

 

A few months later, after I had told my brother about this and he kinda flippantly ignored me and still swore by Norton, my brother starts telling me about this nice free tool that had caught a virus on a computer that Norton too had missed - that tool was AVG-Free.

 

Needless to say, I have full reason to feel sorry for you - you are so sold out to garbage.

[roswell_r]

Well as a computer technician I hate norton with a oath. I know that it consumes resources, causes computers to crash, and doesn't even uninstall properly. However I also know that virus scanners pickup things each others dont and consumers would be better off with a virus scanner which had more funding behind it. Therefore it would have more of a virus base to scan from.

 

I also am well aware and you would see in my previous post that I mentioned the free versions of AVG and FPROT. Free meaning I already knew that there were payed for versions.

 

Not all of symantecs security precautions(mainly firewall) do not always scan or analyse the traffic some of their checks are merely based on small things. Id be interested to see if Symantec does contact Entropy to discuss and sort out this problem but I doubt it will happen.

 

Been a computer technician I have my assortment of software that I would recommend to people but I wont because I do not want to lead people down a path that they might regret. If people change from norton to avg or from norton to another security package they might regret it. Not knowingly.

 

What it boils down to is that there is no software that will gaunrantee protection and people dont realise this. My post was to warn people not to change unless they know exactly thats what they want to do.

 

Id like to see what other technicians have to say about this. Not gamers.

[Entropy]

You don't have to be a computer technician to realize that AVG is better than Norton Security.

Well, AVG is just an antivirus, while Norton Security bullshit is supposed to be also a firewall. Nevertheless, AVG is good, and many companies use the not so free version (the corporate version).

F-Prot is also VERY VERY good, a lot of people swear by it, including me and Learner (Learner is a technician as well, among other things).

[ttlanhil]

Id like to see what other technicians have to say about this. Not gamers.

I'm not a technician, but I am a final year computer science student at university... and judging by the stuff other students say and do... I knew more before I started at uni than they will when they leave (which I find rather depressing)