I shall start this off by stating Norton has been removed from all devices in this home. Coming to this decision was not completely based on the few bugs I encountered, but more along the lines of spending just the right amount of time in this forum and watching this Corporate business do what they do best, and that is collect money while ignoring their customers needs and wants.
I have been in several Internet Security support forums, and have many a time, witnessed Developers in these forums working hand in hand with their customers to solve issues or adjust products. This is not the case here in this support forum. When you first come into the forum on its home page, drop down the advanced search and along the right hand side, you will see in the research results (40,826) "I need a solution" threads, obviously unanswered. This not only shows the lack of caring, but an unorganized community. I have seen many post already a month, two months old, where the user is still waiting for replies. With 11,000 + Employees, you would think Norton could handle this a little better, especially when privately own smaller security solutions can manage to be among their users and work with them, not relying on the kindness of Volunteers that can only make suggestions or forward things that are not dealt with until it becomes such a huge problem that the company has no choice.
This part being said, I am the go to guy around my area when people get infected and or want advice on what security to use and how to set it up. I can no longer advise users to use Norton when I clearly see this lack of regard from the company itself in dealing with issues quickly and proficiently. Now above I stated, I took NS off all devices this morning, one thing instantly stood out upon doing so, after uninstalling, Norton placed in my start menu a in "recently Added" a short cut, that turned into after a period of minutes, Norton Security Scan, which upon opening told me I had time left and suggested I reinstall the product Hello, your a security company and what I just witnessed, seems much like spam, a malicious action. I just uninstalled it and was cleaning up to have this forced back into my system.
I could never with clear conscious, advise my users to use a product that does this, nags their users and in ways, is almost as bad as spammers. Now I shall present you with a list of things I noticed while using your products, and when I say use, I also tested, quite heavily in a VM with malware. Before I list these, I will state, that Norton over time has become quite solid at stopping newer threats, especially with the reputation system, that is the fail safe to lack of signatures with newer samples, this was a good move on your part incorporating this. It is mainly the lack of caring and fixing the issues that end up being long standing that has altered my desire to use or recommend your products..
1. Norton Security: With the newest Creators update, there have been many issues reported, the main I seen personally was the issue either with Fast start up, or the security center upon installation, where NS is not recognized by the security center, this, is a big ouch, when a user witnesses this happen it does not instill faith right away. The Norton Toolbar is still present "No one should be using Toolbars at this period of time. The safe search feature, is powered by Ask, seriously, you can not find a way to incorporate another engine such as maybe, Bing/Google. Ask delivers up more malware then other search engines, and is highly associated with a bad taste in the mouth left by Ask, some time ago. The security Portal for users, has some serious syncing issues, this has also left many frustrated, and was not taking seriously until pushed, and even now, not fully resolved.
2. Norton Wifi Privacy: Upon first installation I could not even sign into my account, why you ask, because no automatic rules were created in Nortons firewall for the application and it was being blocked from connecting out bound until I went into the firewall/program control and manually created a rule and allowed it. How many of your non techy customers would figure that out? The desktop "PC" version has loading "Sync" issues with its servers at times, and when it does, it impacts the speed/performance in an extreme manor. When enabled, I literally would have only 1/4 of my ISP speed. Normally I hit around 120 to 130 mbps, with NWP enabled, I'm lucky to hit 30 mbps, and if you think for a minute, could you imagine if your on an ISP that only has 15 to 18 mbps speeds available or affordable how bad this would affect performance. Now on mobile devices, connection problem seems worse, and is very slow, especially if your having over lapping wifi signal issues in your area, constant dropping and loading occurs and makes it extremely difficult to do anything. Testing to see if my ISP was indeed throttling my speed intentionally produced no results, as I switched Firewall protocols with the same effect on both. It is not my ISP, it is your severs in need of some serious tweaking.
All of the above has been my perspective on this company and its products, while not known here very well, I'm am known in Security Forums out in cyberland, I am proficient enough to figure out most issues, and help those that I do, but I can on my end, only do so much, and this is where Norton as a company fails, and has earned my side stepping of this company altogether. I have gone back to smaller but privately owned companies that still realize that without their customers, they are nothing, and treat them with great care because of.
Take care Norton, I do hope at some point you will consider all of this above, and make a change, that will not only benefit your users, but yourself also.