Norton AntiVirus

Jul 15
08:23

2015

saracooper

saracooper

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Norton AntiVirus, developed and distributed by Symantec Corporation, was providing malware prevention and removal during a subscription period. It used signatures and heuristics to identify viruses. Other features included in it were e-mail spam filtering and phishing protection.

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Symantec distributed the product as a download,Norton AntiVirus Articles a box copy, and as OEM software. Norton AntiVirus and Norton Internet Security, a related product, held a 61% US retail market share for security suites as of the first half of 2007. Competitors, in terms of market share in this study, include antivirus products from CA, Trend Micro, and Kaspersky Lab.

Norton AntiVirus was running on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Windows 7 support was in development for versions 2006 through 2008. Version 2009 has Windows 7 supported update already. Versions 2010, 2011, and 2012 all natively support Windows 7, without needing an update. Version 12 is the only version fully compatible with Mac OS X Lion. With the 2015 series of products, Symantec made changes in its portfolio and discontinued Norton AntiVirus.

In May 1989, Symantec launched Symantec Antivirus for the Macintosh (SAM).SAM 2.0, released March 1990, incorporated technology allowing users to easily update SAM to intercept and eliminate new viruses, including many that didn't exist at the time of the program's release.

In August 1990 Symantec acquired Peter Norton Computing from Peter Norton.Norton and his company developed various DOS utilities including the Norton Utilities, which did not include antivirus features. Symantec continued the development of acquired technologies. The technologies are marketed under the name of "Norton", with the tagline "from Symantec". Norton's crossed-arm pose, a registered U.S. trademark, was traditionally featured on Norton product packaging.However, his pose was later moved to the spine of the packaging, and eventually dropped altogether.

By early 1991, U.S. computers were invaded by hundreds of foreign virus strains and corporate PC infection was becoming a serious problem. Symantec's Norton Group launched Norton AntiVirus 1.0 (NAV) for PC and compatible computers.Ads for the product, with suggested retail $129, featured Norton in his crossed-arm pose, wearing a pink shirt and surgical mask covering his nose and mouth.

With the 1998 version 5.0 update, SAM was renamed Norton AntiVirus (NAV) for Macintosh

 

Product support:

Retail customers report slow and indifferent service on bugs. Examples include a faulty error message stating current subscriptions had expired.Users received an error stating "Your virus protection cannot be updated." This error occurred after an update to the software and refused to allow daily updates.Though the bug was reported in 2004, it was not corrected for the 2005 or 2006 versions.

Another incident occurred in May 2007, when Norton AntiVirus flagged components of the Pegasus e-mail client as malicious, rendering the program corrupted.Symantec customer service addressed the problem by running through a checklist of troubleshooting steps which were not always successful.