Privacy considerations when posting Norton Help file links

While posting links to relevant Norton Online Help file documentation is useful when responding to forum member's issues, please be mindful that any Norton Help file links that you post that were directly generated by your installed Norton product will contain specific information about your Norton installation and your software/hardware environment.

 

I've recently seen a couple of posts containing links to Norton Online Help files that indicate that forum members may not be aware of this issue.

 

To circumvent this issue, copy and paste the Norton Help file link from the Address bar of your browser into MS Word, Wordpad or another text editor. The only parameters that your need to retain from your link text in order to create a valid link for posting are the following:

 

The first part of the link that activates the Norton Online Help system:

 

https ://www-secure.symantec.com/norton-support/jsp/help-solutions.jsp?

 

Delete all text between the above and the start of the 'docid=' parameter eg:

 

docid=v57755763_NIS_Retail_2012_en_us

 

Merge these two items together and you will have a valid Norton Help file link that you can post that doesn't disclose any specific information about your system:

 

https://www-secure.symantec.com/norton-support/jsp/help-solutions.jsp?docid=v57755763_NIS_Retail_2012_en_us

 

This feature does have a useful benefit however. Forum members often ask 'How do I confirm that my virus definitions are up to date?'. Users are then directed to the Norton 'Virus Definitions & Security Updates' page which displays information like the following:

 

File-Based Protection (Traditional Antivirus)

 

Definitions Created: 3/24/2012

Definitions Released 3/24/2012

Extended Version: 3/24/2012 rev. 19

Definitions Version: 140324s

Sequence Number: 132803

Number of Signatures: 17,375,441

 

Users are then asked to look for a folder on their system with a name that's similar to the 'Extended Version' text highlighted in blue above eg: C:\ProgramData\Norton\{0C55C096-0F1D-4F28-AAA2-85EF591126E7}\NIS_19.1.0.28\Definitions\VirusDefs\20120324.019

 

An alternative to the above is to ask the user to open the main Norton interface and click Advanced > Support > Help. When the browser opens with the Norton Help information, click in the Address bar and copy the link. Open MS Word, Wordpad or any other text editor and paste the link. Then perform a 'Find' on the string 'curdefs' without the quotes. This search will return the following results:

 

curdefs=20120324.019

 

This is a quick way to confirm the current definitions set.

 

Hope you find this information helpful.