I am asking you at Norton to please do NOT delete any files, temporary or otherwise from my computer without my permission when you do a scan. and I do not want any APP updates done either.
anon743:... I'm not surprised that even you (as Community Guru) are critical of NLL's current approach to client software, especially on the unnecessary bloatware deployment which most customers find way too intrusive....
Hi anon743:
Just to clarify, I'm not a Norton Guru. These users have a blue icon on their profile badge that says "GURU" (see Andmike's Norton Community Ranks and Levels) and they have special privileges that other Norton users don't have. NortonLifeLock only offers the status of Norton Guru to a small number of hand-picked experts.
That being said, I've seen many Norton Gurus posting their own concerns in this forum about some of the bloatware being added to Norton products these days. NortonLifeLock has spent spent a huge amount of money acquiring companies like Aviria to obtain technology for cryptominers, software updaters, system optimizers, etc. since their parent company Symantec was purchased by Broadcomm in 2019 so they must feel they can increase profits by charging customers for these additional features in Norton 360 products. I think the best users can hope for is that NortonLifeLock will eventually give their customers the option to decline the installation of Smart Scan (an aggressive system optimizer that can also purge temporary Windows and browser files) and other bloatware like they did for Norton Crypto a few months ago (see Gayathri_R's Jan 2022 announcement Thank You For Your Feedback on Norton Crypto) or at least make it it easier for customer to disable unwanted scheduled background tasks like browser cleaning and disk defragmentation.
@lmacri
Thanks for the detailed observation, suggestions, and other input; there's certainly information I can put to use as well. I'm not surprised that even you (as Community Guru) are critical of NLL's current approach to client software, especially on the unnecessary bloatware deployment which most customers find way too intrusive.
I do feel sad about this entire situation, as we customers don't seem to have a choice but to be continuously manipulated by NLL, on top of (already) high subscription fees I do think NLL should concentrate its efforts as a core security software entity (just like in the Symantec days), instead of stepping into other software/service territories, most of which are half-baked and have resulted in customer dissatisfaction etc. I only learned about Norton Crypto from a recent computer magazine report, and I'm totally disgusted. To secretly exploit customers' computer power for such mining purposes, without the control and concent of the customers, is simply unacceptable. Meanwhile, Disk Optimization is another annoyance especially to those running their C: drives on SSD (which are more prone to premature failure these days).
As for FF, again cleaning should be at the discretion of the actual user, NOT NLL.
I only hope the admin here do take an effort to read out posts, for critical customer feedback. Unfortunately, most of the time they won't listen, and continue to do what they please. There are indeed a lot of bad apples working in tech entities like these, and such problem needs to be addressed across the tech industry.
Ronnie Wells:I am asking you at Norton to please do NOT delete any files, temporary or otherwise from my computer without my permission when you do a scan. and I do not want any APP updates done either.
Hi Ronnie Wells:
See the support article Learn More About Automatic Tasks for a list of scheduled tasks at Settings | Task Scheduling | Automated Tasks that Norton runs in the background to clean temporary Windows and browser files and optimize (defrag) disks, as well as Turn On or Turn Off Automatic Tasks for instructions on how to disable these background tasks. User bjm_'s 12-Nov-2021 post in Internet Junk File includes a screenshot of the settings for these automatic tasks as well as information on Norton's File Cleanup feature at Performance | File Cleanup.
I dislike all the unnecessary bloatware that NortonLifeLock has added to their products in recent years (e.g., Norton Crypto, Norton Software Updater, etc.) so I don't use Norton 360 on my Win 10 machine, but when I used a legacy Norton Security product on my old Vista SP2 machine I disabled ALL of the scheduled tasks at Settings | Task Scheduling | Automated Tasks, including Disk Optimization. Note that if you want to prevent Norton from optimizing your hard drive(s) there is a second automated task that must be disabled at Settings | Administrative Settings | Idle Time Optimizer as shown in SoulAsylum's 11-Feb -2022 post in Last Update is Constantly Slamming My SSD.
If you have a Firefox browser, I believe there are separate settings at Settings | Administrative Settings | Firefox Cleanup that must be disabled, although someone with a newer Norton 360 product would have to confirm if this is still true. Note that Norton's Firefox Cleanup settings will be disabled (greyed out) if you use custom settings in your Firefox browser (e.g., Tools | Settings | Privacy & Security | History | Firefox Will: | Use Custom Settings for History) because the settings in Firefox take precedence over the settings in Norton (or at least that was the case with my legacy Norton Security product). See my 29-Jan-2019 post in Norton Firefox Cleanup for further information.
Sorry to hear. As a struggling legacy software version user I can feel the pain. The more concerns the customers make and reflect, the more those irresponsible staff will ignore. They only care for pushing everything forward, killing off and breaking all legacy compatibilities, while downgrading all products and services, and make all customers comply. Is this how they (and the rest of the tech industry) make money out of customers? Truly pathetic.
As for an NLL product deleting files and such, absolutely unacceptable. The users should have more control over their computer systems, configs and such, NOT being commandeered by software companies (NLL, M$ etc. etc.). Simply put, the better days of computing tech (since the mid-late 2000s) have been long gone, and we all are living in dire times now, dealing with an uncertain digital future......
As a sidenote though, even a Norton product from the Symantec era could occasionally mess up in a similar way. For example, with NIS21.7.x, sometimes the scans would create false positives that would end up quarantining legitimate program applications files and such. When this happens I'll have to check the logs, unblock and whitelist any quarantined files in question, before those programs can run properly again.
the only thing the program is doing is scanning you computer if not reindstall it whit Norton Remove and Reinstall tools