Norton Neo Browser(neobrowser.ai) |
Norton Neo Browser(neobrowser.ai) |
Why would anyone use Norton? It's just malware.
It'd be nice if shoutouts included time spans, thusly:
"In my travels, I always had my copies of Norton [1981-1989] books and utilities."
I respect any artist (creator) that manages to get paid, so I don't begrudge the sale/merger with Symantic. It's just too bad Things Fall Apart because number must go up.
Many cases of this happening too, people loved and celebrated for years/decades, then does something that just absolutely tarnishes everything they would have been remembered for. Philippe Pétain comes to mind as an extreme example, one of France's greatest national heroes up until late in his life, he became head of the Vichy regime and collaborated closely with Nazi Germany.
If this is Norton, why wouldn't they be aware of how people see the very name "Norton", and avoid slapping it on any new products?
If this is NOT Norton, same applies, why would you include a term that almost causes gag-reflexes among large parts of your supposed audience?
Norton is owned by Avast owner which sold data for ads.
(in my day we were warning people off Avast on account of its similarities to Norton)
I have no idea why anyone would install and use their browser.
Blasting out my PC speakers at 2am...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Model_77_Dominator
500cc version of this reviewed 600cc variation: https://www.classicbikehub.uk/buying-guide/article/norton-mo...
By all reports a sound bike, save for some quirk that might fire both cylinders on the first catch giving a starting kick from zero to rocket in under unprepared reaction time.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight-twin_engine
They had a lot of models, some were famous for racing and hill climbs.
Personally, the landing page itself hurts my trust of the goal.
Why?
When we think of a browser, before anything. We want something that feels snappy and performant. Even if the browser IS snappy. the fact that this page feels unresponsive in a way on my MacBook Pro M1 Pro. already raises concerns of performance.
For my sanity, I've tried Vivaldi's website, Brave's website. All feels "light" and scrolling is a breeze on Safari.
Those are just my few cents, but I'm pretty sure others might feel the same when making a landing page for any product where it should feel responsive.
Not that I expected any better from Norton tbh, but it's a shame to see a beloved brand from my childhood days fall so far from grace. Norton Utilities for DOS/Win9x used to be the bomb... NCD, NDD, SPEEDISK etc. My last good memory of it was introducing me to Darude Sandstorm. But now... sigh.
I wonder what Microslop would think if a pre-installed antivirus decided to set this browser as the default over Edge.
Symantec / Norton:
• Longstanding consumer complaints about aggressive upselling, scare-style scan warnings, auto-renewal, and hard-to-cancel billing
• Product often came preinstalled on PCs; many users treated it as unwanted bloatware
• Mixed reputation: lab detection scores often decent; customer-service and billing scores often poor
• 2011–2016 class action (Symantec and Digital River): alleged hidden “download insurance” / extended download service added at checkout; settled for about $60 million
• Canadian class action over alleged defects in an older Norton “decomposer” component (software sold roughly 2010–2016); later settled for tens of millions
• 2013–2022 Columbia University patent case: jury found willful infringement of malware-related patents and awarded $185 million; case later settled
• False Claims Act / GSA contracting: Symantec accused of hiding extra commercial discounts from the U.S. government; 2023 trial findings plus a 2024 Gen Digital payment of $55.1 million to satisfy the judgment LifeLock (bought by Symantec in 2016; later NortonLifeLock / Gen Digital)
• 2010 FTC settlement: about $12 million for deceptive identity-theft advertising
• 2015 FTC action: about $100 million after LifeLock violated the 2010 order (weak security program and more false claims)
• Recurring criticism that protection/reimbursement marketing overstated what the service actually did
• 2022–2023 credential-stuffing attacks on Norton Password Manager / LifeLock logins using reused passwords from other breaches; company said its own systems were not hacked; thousands of accounts had some personal data accessed and hundreds of thousands of logins were targeted
NortonLifeLock / Gen Digital
• 2021–2022 Norton Crypto: Ethereum miner bundled with Norton 360; company said it was opt-in and took a cut; users and researchers criticized it as inappropriate in a security product; later dropped
• Ongoing complaints about subscription renewals, refunds, and support after the Symantec → NortonLifeLock → Gen Digital rebrands
• Privacy/tracking investigations (alleged sharing of site/app data with third-party analytics such as Quantum Metric); not a final court finding
• Separate consumer suits alleging LifeLock failed to alert users or honor “dollar-for-dollar” identity-theft reimbursement promises
I'll never begrduge anyone for "selling out" until I'm given a similar opportunity to do so myself.
Peter Norton clearly had interests other than running a software company, and I can't say I blame him.
Speaking as a fan of Norton's books and utilities in the DOS era.
Interesting point, I've even has a Lenovo Legion and some ThinkBooks install McAfee autonomously after I installed Windows 11 Pro.
In enterprise environments it's a different story, McAfee and the like have similarly named products for the enterprise which actually do useful things for corporate security (like blocking unauthorized USB devices, blocking unauthorized software, reporting incidents to a central SOC system, etc.)
On the fence about trying Kaspersky AV Linux. Wouldn't install their suite on Windows though, last I looked at it hooked too many places, causing weird bugs and slowing everything down. Less bad than Comodo, which was able to bork Cygwin, but still.
In enterprise environment: definitely, for both compliance, management and actual security reasons.
> Norton selling his company is exactly like Pétain collaborating with Nazi Germany
I wish I didn't say that, but what can you do.
Sometime y'all need to probably chug a glass a water and re-read the comment you're about to reply to.
He picked the wrong side obviously, but is it also possible he did what he though was best for France? Both things can be true.