A message popped up on my screen indicating that I had several drivers out of date, so I clicked on the link to update them. I ended up at a screen that asked me to pay ~$29 for a 1 yr subscription. The site had a logo that said they were a Noeton partner. I paid and downloaded the software but Driver Manager required that I get an Authorization key and gave an 877 phone number to call. When I called it, the person on the other end said that he would have to install it for me via something similar to Norton's Live Chat support where the person on the other end tales control of your system. I am usually EXTREMELY reticent to do something like this and asked if I could install it manually, but was told that it would be best if he did it in case the connection got lost. Since they had advertized that they were a Norton Partner, I allowed him to do it. The next thing I knew, I was sent to a site with another 'technician' telling me that many of my services were stopped, and that Norton 360 was not running properly because it beleived that it was running under what it beleived was XP SP3. This is just plain false since I run Win 7 Ultimate and have never had Norton 360 indicate anything different. Then the pitch.. they could fix all my problens for a one-time fee of $170!! What a scam! Just about everyting they said could be seen to be bogus to anyone who knows anything about Windows 7, but the shame of it is that an uneducated user might well have bitten on this scam,
So I ask again, what does being a Norton Partner mean, and does Symantec do any investigation of the business practices of who it partners with??
Needless to say, I ran Power Eraser after this whole episode. Luckily I found no malware.