Strongly encouraged to erase Norton Antivirus and PIFTS.EXE from your system

[PrimeObjectif]

Originally Posted by lithos

AVG.

And not screwing around on the internet.

--Word up.--

[ryan s]

My dad's been using McAfee for like 4 years now, and he bought a copy of Norton a few weeks ago

Thank goodness I'm getting him away from both and converting to AVG And he got his money back for Norton...

[Wildnsyko]

It seems they came back with an answer to everyone's question:

Norton product patch "PIFTS.exe" and Norton Users Forum - Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus - Norton Community

[Damn Brit]

Originally Posted by Wildnsyko

It seems they came back with an answer to everyone's question:

Norton product patch "PIFTS.exe" and Norton Users Forum - Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus - Norton Community

It reads like someone being caught with fingers in the cookie jar to me. They got caught doing something and suddenly it was human error.

[dadipentak]

From CNET:
Symantec creates havoc with unsigned Norton patch | Security - CNET News

[Fl_Gulfer]

AVG Free version for 6 years and never had a virus. I had a little cold a few years ago.

[xs400]

I dumped Norton many years ago, then dumped McAfee last year, now I use Avast anti-virus (free version) on all my computers. I've never had a virus problem since using Avast.

[Damn Brit]

Originally Posted by dadipentak

From CNET:
Symantec creates havoc with unsigned Norton patch | Security - CNET News

Yeah right they had a spammer my a**, you'd think they'd at least make their system secure. Maybe they need to use VBulletin.

[J.Scott]

My son and I ran a small, home-based computer retail sales company for 5 years. I strongly discouraged customers from using Norton as it is very resource demanding and extremely intrusive; just like a virus.
I've been using AVG Free for several years and haven't had an issue with viruses (viri?). Trend Micro is a good (again, free) on-line virus checker if you need one.

[newmikey]

I stopped using Norton years ago and moved to Avast. Then I stopped using Windows altogether and moved all of the PC's in the house to Linux (PCLinuxOS2007). Never looked back and the PC's that I thought would have to be junked because of their age received a new lease on life.

Even a 7-year old Dell is purring away happily, being tortured by a 13-year old with presentations, biology projects, MSN, heavy internet usage. It also runs the occasional Windows based educational software under Wine emulation where it can do no harm to the OS. The email programs are all equipped with self-learning, smart spam filters and malicious attachments lack any hooks into the system, they simply appear as text files.

No more bloated antivirus, anti-spyware and anti-spam software for me! This latest proof that yet another company thinks it is ok to invade the privacy of my home is no more than confirmation that computer users should stand up and fight back. Just refuse to buy and they will be out of business soon. I really do not get how people are willing to put up with this.

Mike

[danielchtong]

Originally Posted by ftpaddict

PIFTS
Public Internet and File Tracking System

It goes offshore because there's no law forbidding sending it to foreign governments. If governments want to spy on their own citizens, it is normal for them to have foreigners do it in order to get around normal restrictions about spying on their own people.

This is why there have been reports of the file sending data to Africa.

There have also been reports of it accessing your internet history.

If you find it, DELETE IT.

Source: Norton community forums.

All threads asking about pifts.exe are immediately erased from the symantec forums and the user is instantly banned. All attempts to contact technical support result in customers being put on hold indefinitely.

Norton Antivirus copies PIFTS.EXE on your system via LiveUpdate and from this point on CANNOT BE CONSIDERED SAFE ANYMORE. Immediate removal of all Norton products is strongly advised if you care about your privacy.

I've quickly gathered some links to this whole conundrum on my blog:

What the hell is PIFTS.EXE? Weblog Of The Everyday

No clue if you are right . But the first thing I have bought any system (for the office) is to delete the crap. Period.
They pay big time to pc manufacturers to have those crap in the comp.

Daniel

[cardinal43]

Originally Posted by séamuis

Kaspersky.

We use Kapersky at work, and I bought and installed it on my home pc. Good thing about it is that I can put it on 3 computers, so I put it my both of my kids' pc.

[KrisK10D]

Originally Posted by reeftool

I got rid of Norton about 3 years ago because it became such a resource hog.

Couldn't play an online game to save my life with Nortons. I switched to AVG about 5 years ago for that reason.

I nearly died when I found out they actually paid money for it for our work network bout 6 months ago. Told them they were morons for being taken by a sales pitch

Can't wait to tell them about this

[Wheatfield]

I'm running a fairly high end Asus based system ( Asus MB and Asus/ nVidea graphics card). I generally don't bother with AV software, I just try to stay careful.
Periodically, I would install Norton AV, check my system and then uninstall it, as I find it to be a resource hog.
The last install I did (Norton AV 2008) caused my computer to lose it's video driver and corrupted the net framework components of my OS.
Unhappy I was.

Now this may have been a coincidence, but I have a hard time believing that a computer that has ran just swimmingly for a year and a half would just coincidentally start having major OS issues after a software install without that software having something to do with it.

Anyone who says that Norton is not malware is going to have a hard time convincing me.

[LouisARE]

Hello everyone -- I work for Symantec's public relations firm, Edelman. Just wanted to quickly point out that if you want more information on the PIFTS issue, you can go to Symantec's user forum at Norton product patch "PIFTS.exe" and Norton Users Forum - Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus - Norton Community

Louis Cheng
Edelman Public Relations