I recently picked up the Relevant Knowledge spyware somehow. There are a few old threads in this community about it, plus endless google articles. All consider it spyware or malware and thoroughly unwelcome. Anything which installs itself surreptitiously and comes with a non-working uninstall option is suspect enough, in my book.
A NIS 2012 'Quick Scan' found no problems. Pointing NIS directly at the C:\Program Files\Relevant Knowledge\ folder, complete with programs inside, found Norton happy there were 'No Threats'.
I think I've now manually removed it. But can someone from Norton tell me if it's as dangerous as the rest of the world believes, and if so, why NIS 2012 (updated, of course) is happy with it?
It may be an annoyance, but it may not be specifcally 'malware' as such. Some people may choose to install such programs (bizarre as that may seem). I agree that Norton should have a setting where such things can be added to scans, but at this stage it appears not to.
In any event no one AV solution is perfect. You should run an on-demand scan from time to time using another piece of software. Super AntiSpyware might be useful.
I agree that there is some debate about Relevant Knowledge. Some consider it an almost voluntary web behavior spying program, but anything which installs itself without permission, bundled with something else, isn't voluntary to me. Plenty of other web posts associate it with real harm & damage. Many other spyware & AV programs, including McAfee (which is rarely recommended by geeks) remove it.
I accept your point that no AV package is perfect, but this is a years-old program, not some sophisticated new threat. At the very least it is a tracking cookie, and my automatic NIS scans by default remove all tracking cookies. So why not Relevant Knowledge?
If anyone from Norton is reading this, I'd really like to know what your policy is on this. I subscribe to NIS so I don't have to go trawling forums for removal instructions.