I have a confession to make. I’m a 30-something photographer’s daughter. This may not mean much to you, but to me it means that I have to contend with a brown envelope full of embarrassing photographs of me as a child which my father took with the ends of film from his sporting photography jobs. However, this envelope is safe in my parent’s home, the paper contents shown only to family members or friends in a trusted environment. While my embarrassing photos are indeed embarrassing (and I share one here with you!) for the most part they stay private. Spare a thought then for today’s babie...

Guest Post by: Richard Clooke   It’s decision time for Android users. Over recent months there’s been a phenomenal rise in the use of ad networks by app developers wishing to earn some cash from their creations. In many cases, this isn’t a cause for concern. Ad networks are a legitimate method for app developers to make a living. However, there is a side-effect to ad networks being integrated with mobile apps. The consequence quickly becomes apparent after a short period of time... Mobile adware, or madware as it has become known, can be damned annoying! Ad networks come in various shapes...

I attended the 1983 US Festival – the second music and culture festival sponsored by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak – and it was truly one of the highlights of my college years. We saw an array of stellar performances and toured exhibits with cutting-edge technology. Back then, we bought our tickets at a ticket broker’s office, carried our wallets and loaded 35mm film in our cameras. Only days later, after the film was developed, could we show people our photos. Today’s “modern fan” has a very different experience thanks to smartphones. For example, photos are shared on social media chann...

Guest post from Simon Ellson. As I went gift shopping over the festive season, I found that most adverts I walked past on the London Underground had QR codes.     I think most people are familiar with QR codes but if you aren’t; QR (Quick Response) codes are a type of matrix barcode that companies add to adverts and posters that, if scanned using a QR reader on a mobile device, take you to a website for further information related to the advertisement or poster on which the QR code appeared. QR codes were created and originally used by the automotive industry as an efficient way to track...

I joined the Mobile Retail Summit (#mretailsummit) in central London on Wednesday 24th April, to gather insights on mobile commerce (m-commerce) from attendees including UK retailers and leisure companies, mobile technology and marketing specialists. What struck me, as I listened to case studies of retailers moving very rapidly to deliver relevant experiences and offers for customers on their smartphones, was the lack of awareness of security on these phones. When one considers that  6.6M Britons made mobile purchases during January this year, with 42% using Android smartphones, that’s...

Hello reader and welcome to a new blog on the Norton.com community, @Norton_UK Security The blogs on this site offer the perspective of Symantec and Norton UK employees on Internet security, mobile security and online family safety, along with other issues which impact UK internet security industry. In this introduction, I’d like to address a common misconception about Norton, namely the belief that Internet security equals PC anti-virus, and that anti-virus equals protection. While protecting a PC against viruses is important and at the heart of what Norton does, full Internet security ...

Guest post by Andrew Ford I was excited to upgrade my Android Smartphone recently and was thoroughly enjoying the latest functionality and apps. It was much less clunky that the earlier model, and I had spent time setting-up my social media and other apps. I had also added a password to make sure my details would be safe if my phone were to be lost or stolen. During half-term, I had a lovely time with my daughters, taking a number of photos using my Smartphone during days sat the seaside and in London. I was taking great care, as I had heard that users had dropped similar Smartphones and...

Holiday surfing advice from us at Norton, the internet protection expert Long cold winter nights; it’s that time of year when most people just want to lock the doors and curl up in the warmth (often with their favourite tablet or mobile device). With so much time spent at home, online activity tends to increase considerably as more evenings are spent surfing the internet, indulging in some online retail therapy, playing games online or keeping up with friends via social media. In September this year Deloitte estimated that online sales now account for the equivalent of more than 60 millio...

When were you last bullied? Maybe you were lucky and have never been bullied. Chances are that for today’s kids bullying can be a constant threat and when a kid leaves the school gates bullying doesn’t just stop there. Bullying comes in many forms and is no longer just a verbal or physical act. Bullying has, with the rest of the world, made the switch to online, in the form of cyber-bullying, a word which has even found its way into the Oxford English Dictionary. The advancement of smartphone and tablet technology gives children more ways to connect, socialise, and create than ever before....

Guest Post by Marian Merritt: Norton Internet Safety Advocate I know you’re probably thinking; ‘boring old passwords’. It’s true, password tips aren’t a fancy bit of technology to keep you safe online, however, weak passwords are one of the easiest routes for someone to access the things you would never want them to. Passwords are always a hot topic for that very reason. Passwords should be your first point of call when protecting your stuff and it’s important to make them as secure as you can. From an early age we discover passwords are not always as safe as we think they are. Kids at s...

Guest Post by: Richard Clooke - Manager, Marketing Programs, Consumer Business Unit, Symantec Corporation We’ve all experienced poor PC performance at some point in our lives - from slow-ups and clutter to constant system freezes. A sluggish computer can be a major source of frustration for many and according to new research, we are reaching the end of our tethers - with a survey of 1,000 Brits revealing that 16% would prefer to visit the dentist’s chair than fix a slow PC! I don’t know about you, but I don’t recall any good memories from my visits to the dentist. The research, which foc...

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that disables the functionality of a computer in some way and demands a ransom in order to restore the computer to its original state. Recent variants use law enforcement imagery to add legitimacy to the warning messages. The malware uses geo-location services to determine the location of the computer it is running on and then, after locking the computer, displays a message appropriate to that country. The message usually claims that the user has broken the law by browsing some illegal material. Figure 1 is an example of a ransomware variant that ...

Guest Post by: Samir Patil, with thanks to Anand Muralidharan for contributing to this post. One of the most devastating Superstorms in decades, Hurricane Sandy, hit the US East coast in October, causing the loss of lives and damage to businesses, leaving countless people without electricity and in need of support. Now, unfortunately Sandy has now added spam to its list of misery. We are observing spam messages related to the hurricane flowing into Symantec Probe Networks. The top word combinations in message headlines are "hurricane – sandy", "coast – sandy", "sandy – storm", and "sandy –...

Working on the move is becoming increasingly common, and organisations are responding to the need to provide a remote working solution for employees. Remote email and desktop access are solutions to this but all come with their own problems. However, with a small amount of careful thinking it’s easy to reduce the likelihood of unauthorised access and breaches of privacy and make sure everything is safe that needs to be. Your company should have already thought about the security of the way it provides mobile working , and it should therefore have already secured the network with a firewal...

Guest Post by: Anna Sampson Symantec Website Security Solutions is proud to announce its sponsorship of Get Safe Online week. Throughout this week, we are supporting the online safety initiative in its goal to spread the word about being secure whilst online. Symantec industry experts will join a tour bus around the UK, and we are also providing Symantec and Norton information to bus visitors. This year Get Safe Online wants everyone to ‘Click &Tell’ - that is to check out the advice on their website, pick up a few online safety tips and pass them on to friends, family, colleagues, ne...

Guest post by: Richard Clooke The realm of smartphones and mobile applications is an endless universe that is ever growing and expanding. Gone are the days when your phone was only used for making calls or occasionally using the calculator or calendar. Now you can download all kinds of weird and wonderful apps like ordering takeaways straight to your door, reading the latest news and social media headlines, booking hotels, mixing DJ tracks and even tracking NASA space missions! ‘Viruses’ and ‘malware’ are not words traditionally used when discussing mobile phones. However, with more and m...

Young people are growing up as digital natives and in a very different world to the generations before them. Not only is there a world IRL (in real life), but now there are multiple ones online, including the worlds of gaming, video and mobile apps. Videos such as the one below where a 2 and ½ year old is given an iPad and speedily interacts with it without any difficulty, might be a bit concerning for grandparents who are not familiar with this type of tablet technology. As technology advances at such a quick pace, some grandparents may not always understand what children and young people...

Guest post by Marian Merritt: Norton Internet Safety Advocate The Norton Cybercrime Report is out for 2012! Cybercrime continues to have far-reaching effects and is increasingly a problem on mobile devices and in our social networks (where we seem to be less vigilant). After surveying more than 13,000 consumers in 24 countries, the researchers found that the numbers of online adults increased by 20% from last year, and that cybercrime impacted just under ½ of them in the previous 12 months. The total direct consumer cost was calculated to be £69 billion, slightly down from last year’s £7...

Marian Merritt, our Norton Internet Safety Advocate, has put together 12 useful tips for mobile phone safety for your kids. We all acknowledge the benefits of staying in touch with your children but have we taken all the measures to ensure they are protected against the most common risks? Take a look at the slideshow and find out how you can help your kids stay safe on their mobile.     12 tips for cell phone safety for kids from Marian Merritt 1. Set a password – It’s basic, but can prevent bullying, sexting, or breaches of private information. 2. Tape a recovery phone number to the m...

Guest post by: Deborah Preston Most of us leave the terror of trolls behind in early childhood, however for many young people ‘trolling’ has become a Grimm reality. The term ‘Troll’ has been resurrected in recent years from the back pages of Grimm’s fairy tales and reinvented as the new name for a particularly virulent and aggressive form of cyber bullying. Trolling is defined as the attempt to humiliate or harm someone online. As technology has transformed our online lives, the number of ways in which a troll can target their victim has rapidly multiplied, and bullies often use multiple...

Guest Post by Marian Merritt, Norton Internet Safety Advocate One of the great “joys” of home ownership is home maintenance. You know what I mean, because you already work hard to keep your Ranch, your Colonial, your mid-century Modern, in tip-top shape. That means regular housekeeping and bigger chores like cleaning the gutters, painting the exterior, and re-roofing. What would it be like if maintenance could be done automatically or even by a free service that’s included when you bought your home? Wouldn’t that be sweet? Technology does just that, helping you keep your electronic gadge...

Guest post by Deborah Preston We share so much of our lives online nowadays, it has become second nature to share a video clip of friends having fun, or documenting a holiday as a video diary. Those of us who have grown up with the internet may feel like we know how to use it safely and how to protect ourselves online. However, even regular users can slip-up, possibly from being lulled into a false sense of security having previously had nothing bad happen. Just because we are used to everything being ‘ok’ in our online world doesn’t mean that will always be the case. It is important to b...

Guest post by Deborah Preston A large number of people share home movies online or have used one of the share sites; whether it be to watch a tutorial, a music video or a funny cat movie, but what you might not think about is how much personal information you give away in doing so. Movie and video sharing sites have grown from small communities to the massive ones we know today, and overtime video creators have come and gone, with some having left due to safety threats. In the past year and a half I have noticed a trend that more and more video creators are increasingly sharing their pri...

Guest post by Simon Ellson These days, children often seem to know their way around the internet better than their parents and although this is great news for their development, freedom on the web also exposes children to a wealth of threats; ranging from cyber grooming, bullying, accessing inappropriate content to exposing their or the household PC and other devices to viruses, and hacking. In fact, research conducted by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety in 2011 demonstrated that 18 per cent of children have come across harmful or inappropriate content online and a third of childr...

A guest post by Kim Shaurd. The papers and news headlines seem to brimming at the moment with spine-chilling tales of how our children are open to all kinds of physical and mental threats when surfing the net. Then there has been the continued issue that, as a nation, we are quite oblivious to the fact that a few simple clicks here and there in the midst of procrastination can fast become a security risk. So when the following email from 12 year old Joe Smith landed in our inbox reviewing our internet security software Norton 360, we were pleasantly surprised to read that someone so young...

Guest Blog: Andrew Ford A friend of mine shared an interesting story with me; A week ago she unfortunately dropped and broke her smartphone but fortunately she had taken out insurance. So a quick visit to the original supplier resulted in a replacement phone two days later. Before collecting her replacement phone she diligently backed everything up... except her photos. The shop assistant said not to worry because he could download the photos, from her damaged smartphone, onto a USB key (via a laptop in the store). She could then upload the images onto her own PC at home. As the download ...

by Simon Ellson Like most of us I appreciate, or rather expect, good customer service when I’m buying or deciding whether to buy something. If I’m going to part with my hard-earned cash I want good service and if I also receive a service which is above and beyond, I’m more likely to go back to the same supplier. Over the weekend I was pondering that customer service has come full circle in a lot of ways and how online retail gives companies the opportunity to offer good old fashioned customer service; It was during Edwardian times that shopping came of age. The customer service and custo...

Guest post by Marian Merritt, Norton Internet Safety Advocate With more than 900 million registered users, Facebook has long been everyone’s favorite online location. We update our status, check in to our favorite shops and restaurants, play social games, post family photos and live our lives increasingly in the top global social networking space. With this popularity, Facebook has realized they can do more to help educate members about the best ways to remain protected while enjoying everything Facebook has to offer. Today, Facebook and Norton by Symantec announce a great partnership. F...

Guest post by Kevin Haley, Director of Symantec Security Response   I live in a city whose motto is “Culver City, The Heart of Screenland.” “Gone with the Wind,” “Citizen Kane” and “Raging Bull” were filmed here. It’s estimated that 1 in 8 residents of Culver City work in the entertainment business. Culver City is also home to one of the largest computer security research centers in the world. That’s where I work. What I know of about the movie industry I learned from the big screen and in the papers. There really hasn’t been any cross-pollination, any intermingling between the two industr...

Guest post by Fran Rosch, Vice President of Identity and Authentication, Symantec Today, the VeriSign seal got a new look and became the new Norton Secured Seal. One of the questions we get asked the most is why make this change to one of the most recognized trust marks on the Internet. Our response, it just makes sense for us and for our customers. By combining the power of the VeriSign checkmark with the industry’s most respected Norton brand, we are creating the most valued and highly visible security seal on the Internet. Businesses will experience the same high security standards ...

By Simon Ellson If your family is anything like mine you have multiple devices around the home. It can mean that protecting the stuff on those devices can be costly and time-consuming. I know I am biased, working for Norton, but when Norton One was announced last week I was so impressed I had to write a blog about it. Norton One is simple and easy to use. These are two key points for my family and me. Norton One is the industry’s first security membership service which makes managing the security for all of the devices in your home easy and understandable. If you’re anything like me th...

Post by Simon Ellson Everyone who follows me on Twitter will know that I am an avid reader. I also love movies and will be among the thousands of people who will be heading to the cinema this weekend to watch, The Hunger Games. The dystopian world of The Hunger Games has already captured the imagination of millions of fans around the world and cybercriminals are watching. For cybercriminals causing havoc over the internet is no longer just about fame. It is about fortune. They constantly look for opportunities to cash in on our online behaviour, meaning that we need to remain vigilant. T...

Blog post by Simon Ellson. Last month, Norton teamed up with Sperling’s BestPlaces, an independent research firm, to uncover Europe’s ‘riskiest’ online city. Sperling looked at consumer lifestyle habits and Symantec’s cyber crime data to understand the various factors that put a consumer at risk. They then determined the per-capita ranking by examining several consumer behaviours, including the frequency of PC’s and smartphones accessing social network sites through potentially un-secured Wi-Fi hotspots. The research found that: Manchester was Europe’s riskiest online city. Not only did...

Post by Andrew Ford, Consumer Marketing Director The annual Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona is an excellent way to see what the key players in the mobile market are planning and prioritising. The who’s who of the mobile world were present at this year’s MWC; Samsung had an enormous stand that was dedicated to showing how the android tablets and smarthphones could enhance consumer lifestyles. Artists were on hand to draw caricatures of attendees, showcasing how easy the Samsung devices can be turned into creative tools that can be used for work or fun. HTC were also at MWC. The Ta...

... and introducing Jatinder Shetra, Norton’s Senior Systems Engineer It’s been an exciting few weeks for Norton! Last month Norton announced Norton One, Norton 360 version 6.0 and pre-announced Norton 360 Everywhere. Jatinder Shetra , one of our product experts, met UK media recently to share details about the new features that are in the updated version of N360 and what N360 Everywhere offers families who own multiple devices. He also announced Norton One, a security-industry first, that allows consumers to buy and manage their security software through a cloud-based management console....

Guest Post from Deborah Preston, Norton Online Safety Advisor Earlier this month it was Safer Internet Day, an EU initiative which aims to increase online safety, particularly for children and young people. This year, the aim of Safer Internet Day was to connect generations and to encourage families to be more open with one another about what they are doing online. With the rise of social networks, an increased availability of personal information in the cyberspace, and the ability to interact with strangers, this aim is growing in significance. Usually, when parents have ‘the chat’ with ...

Guest post from Simon Ellson. I read an interesting article on the BBC technology pages about fighting phishing attacks. In the article, a spokesperson from an online payment company points out that the most vulnerable part of the security chain is the human. I agree with him. Unless we decide to protect ourselves from online threats, no one else will do it for us. Whether we choose to: use a strong password, safely scan QR codes, shop safely online or use up-to-date security software, the decision to do so is ours. It is our responsibility to do the right thing, for our families and ourse...

It has been a little while since I last blogged. My apologies – so, what happened? Well, I changed job and continents – literally and figuratively: new horizons. I am writing this blog from here in Los Angeles, California. I took up the exciting offer of moving over here to head up the Product Management effort in establishing Norton in the brave and different world of Mobile. I have not been disappointed, in either my choice of new job, nor my new country. The past months have been head down focused on building a team, on building technology and building products. It’s been quite a ride....