We’ve used Norton’s (Symantec) Security Suite for many years and found it to be reliable and trap most everything.

It has on the odd year, seemed to slow down low memory systems, but since 2009 this seems to have been resolved and it is now very slick.

However, another issue has surfaced. Their virus checker seems to be flagging loads and loads of perfectly reputable and fine software as “suspicious.insight”.

At first glance given the nature of Norton – it being a virus checker amongst other things – this would seem to be highlighting a virus or some sort of malware. But this IS NOT THE CASE.

The flagging of software with this particular “comment”, merely means that this software has not been sold to millions of people. Could have been sold to tens of thousands in the past though!

We know it is often true that is is better to be ‘safe than sorry’, but in this case Norton/Symantec have taken this concept way too far.

They are not saying the software that they are flagging with this tag have any kind of virus or malware associated with them – just that as they don’t know of the software being used by millions of people, then maybe it might, just might – even though their own virus validation systems have already checked it and found nothing else to highlight!

Hey – even we could write virus checking software that flags everything as ‘possibly having a virus’ unless it’s made by Microsoft, Google or Adobe! Easy! But not very useful.

This is SO harmful to software vendors who may lose tens of thousands of sales over this ridiculous attitude from a once well respected security company. Symantec have got the balance completely wrong here in the fight against the virus.

Here is Symantec’s view of their  ”Reputation Based Security. Way OTT.