Symantec employee Nate_C posted an announcement here for a new beta version of Norton Power Eraser (NPE) v. 4.3 that includes an "Unwanted Application Scanner" feature. He later confirmed in message # 9 of that same thread that "PUPs, PUAs, Unwanted Applications, Browser Plugin Hijacks, are all targets for the Unwanted Application Scanner." This new NPE scanner will launch KB aritcles with removal instructions for unwanted applications that do not come with their own uninstaller.
I haven't tested this beta version of NPE but I'm not clear why Symantec chose to add PUP/PUA detection to NPE, which I consider to be an aggressive system recovery tool for finding rootkits and other deeply embedded malware. If the Norton model doesn't include real-time protection to prevent PUPs/PUAs from being installed on my computer in the first place then I'm not sure what value it adds above and beyond a free on-demand MBAM or SUPERAntiSpyware scan.
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MS Windows 32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox 29.0.1 * IE 9.0 * NIS 2013 v. 20.5.0.28
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
I would like to add my voice to those who would like to see Norton/Symantec come out with Adware proction. I got Pureleads and SearchProtect on my machine recently and it was a pain to get rid of them. How did I know I got them? All three of my browsers stopped working. So to say these things don't harm your sytem, is not entirely correct.
I too echo what other posters have said: there needs to be real time protection against PUPs.
I try to be fairly diligent if i'm downloading a program not to add on 'extra features' (ie PUPs) that i don't want. But i may slip up, or there may be programs installed without my knowledge. I want a program to proactively help me avoid slip ups, or the installation routine working around me, and frankly, that's what i expected from the Norton product i have, 360.
I've used Norton Power Eraser, but in my case of browser hijacking, it removed the threat, only to have it return a short time after. This is without me installing any further programs. So i guess the hijacker installed some kind of buried kernel that reinstalls the program after it's been removed. Norton is not helping me if i have to spend time investigating how to do a better job of getting rid of these hijackers.
The other thing about Norton Power Eraser is that it used a very disruptive process, requiring me to shut my pc down, restart and run the program, shut down again, then restart to remove the problem. This took time and stopped me from working on other things.
PUPs may generally not be damaging to the system, but they are so annoying and may take time to get rid of (eg in finding solutions). In my case of browser hijacking, the hijacker replaced my default search engine, and also seemed to bring up ad related pages when i clicked something else. So i'd click something to look at it further, and an ad page would come up which i'd have to get rid of first before i could look at what i wanted to originally. This is not to mention other less visible 'features' of browser hijackers.
So again, please bring on real time monitoring of PUPs!
I'm still don't know what a PUP is other than what it stands for. If Norton were to give an option whether or not to instal the program how would we know if we should allow or not?
My elderly father has had a number on his laptop over the past few years and he is very careful about what he does, they are found when I run Malwarebytes scan. He does take care when he goes online and rarely downloads anything other than Windows and Norton updates, what would he do on the odd occasion he would see this.
I mention my father but I wouldn't know what to do. Malewarebytes found PUP's on an odd accasion on my laptop, I would have no idea how they were installed at the time they were I am very careful wha I do online making sure all programs are completely upto date.
This is not to say the original idea is not good and helpful, just a plea for all of us who have no idea what PUP's are and their usefulness or need on a computer.
Michael