topic Re: Question About Remote Wipe and Other Features in Norton Mobile Security

Question About Remote Wipe and Other Features

rlin5741 — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:35:51 GMT

I am considering moving into the Norton Mobile Security solution from Wave Secure. I have also been trying Lookout. My primary reason for moving is that I noticed that Wave Secure does NOT perform a factory reset to wipe the phone, instead it simply deletes sms, contacts, calendars, emails, etc. This leaves all your sync information intact, any social media apps remain logged in, etc. A pretty worthless wipe if you ask me. It does, however, come with uninstallation protection – there is a separate app that will lock the phone if it detects the main app is uninstalled, and vice versa, a pretty elegant solution

Lookout does provide factory reset when remote wiping, but being a smaller company I am not sure how much I trust their service and their backup servers. Its backup solution also only backs up call history (all other stuff listed is in the cloud already, so no need to back that up). Also, the remote lock appears to just activate a temporary Android native lock, rather than doing a more comprehensive lock and displaying a message allowing anyone who finds the phone to return it.

My question is, does Norton Mobile Security:

- Provide for a true factory reset when remote wiping

- Allow a custom message on the lock screen when remote locking

- Have any sort of uninstallation/stop process type protection

- How does it take commands – SMS or email or “always on” data connection?

Thanks

Re: Question About Remote Wipe and Other Features

Chris_Qing — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:45:33 GMT

Hi,

Norton Mobile Security doesn't provide a factory reset when remote wiping, but we will improve our remote wipe function as possible as we can. We will allow the customize message on the lock screen and will support uninstall protection, and we are improving the commands related remote function now, please look forward our next release. Thank you very much. :)

Re: Question About Remote Wipe and Other Features

rlin5741 — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:05:14 GMT

So do you mean to say that you currently do not support message on lock screen, remote wipe via factory reset, or uninstall protection? Or do you currently support a subset of these requests, but not remote wipe via factory reset?

Thanks

Re: Question About Remote Wipe and Other Features

erik_carlstrom — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:28:00 GMT

Currently the product does not support the customer lock screen message, but that will be in a future release. A factory wipe is not possible as it requires root access and we cannot assume a device is rooted. As to uninstall protection, we are looking into that for a future release.

Re: Question About Remote Wipe and Other Features

cpetemn — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 19:02:16 GMT

As a recent owner of the full version, didn't realize there was no uninstall protection. Would hope that this feature would be a HIGH priority. If nothing else require a pw to uninstall.

Thanks...

Re: Question About Remote Wipe and Other Features

DistEd2 — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:30:58 GMT

Erik, any chance you could offer a configuration option where users who HAVE rooted devices could check a box so the wipe WOULD do a factory reset? This actually IS a pretty significant issue, for the reasons rlin5741 notes....

Re: Question About Remote Wipe and Other Features

erik_carlstrom — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:37:19 GMT

It's definitely something we're looking into, but I can't say when we would get this in.

Re: Question About Remote Wipe and Other Features

rlin5741 — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:10:05 GMT

Did Norton implement a factory, full wipe method for the phone? Due to amount of cloud computing these days, simply wiping some info is not workable as a security solution.

Re: Question About Remote Wipe and Other Features

Andmike — Fri, 11 May 2012 07:56:25 GMT

Hi rlin5741.

You may like to look at this earlier thread in this forum where I explained what the wipe features were.

One of the reasons I assume it does not do a factory reset is so that it can leave NMS active so that it can remain locked to any stranger and you can continue to track the device, and hopefully recover it. :-)

I hope that helps. If not come back and I or others will try again.