I also like that Norton offers several scanning options, including a quick and custom scan, and I found it very easy to schedule scans. Download Norton Now. In my exploit testing, Norton detected every single network intrusion, including a few instances that my Windows firewall failed to block. However, if you want to allow any of these options, you can see a full list of Windows services in the Permissions window. Additionally, Norton provides a list of uncommon protocols — these protocols can be used by malware to communicate between devices on a network.
The Safe Web browser extension provides really good anti-phishing protection — it detected almost all of the phishing sites in my testing, including sites that Chrome and top competitors like McAfee failed to detect. The live credit report monitoring gives you notifications about any loans, purchases, investments, rental applications, or credit card applications that include any of your personal identifying information. So if anybody is trying to use your information, LifeLock will notice and notify you.
A VPN hides your IP address behind one of thousands of servers around the world, and it further encrypts your web traffic — helping to increase privacy and protect online activity. Almost any other competing internet security suite is far more limited in numbers of international servers for example, McAfee Total Protection only connects to 23 countries.
VPNs work by sending your internet connection to another server sometimes around the world and encrypting all of your data — this process is always going to cause some slowdown, no matter which VPN you use. But my connection did get a little bit worse when I connected to a server in the Netherlands from my home in the US:. Ping and download speed remained about the same, but my upload speed was cut in half when connecting to this Dutch server. The VPN disconnected the moment I opened up any torrent client.
Again, this is not the best, since there are tons of capable torrenting VPNs out there. It offers the following options:. Cloud Backup works pretty well — it automatically selected 50 GB of my important files, most of which were media files like. After setting up my master password, Norton gave me the option to import my password vaults from Chrome, Firefox, Dashlane, LastPass, or 1Password. After importing my passwords from LastPass , I navigated to my PayPal account — Norton automatically offered me a small icon in the login fields and filled my email address and password with a single click.
Norton surpasses other antivirus companies by also including vault auditing tools in its password manager. The only option Norton gives you is to destroy your vault and make a new one. Some users may appreciate this lack of account recovery options — it makes it impossible for con artists to gain access to your vault — but I think most users would rather have email account recovery or emergency contact options like LastPass provides.
Most antivirus parental controls advertise a ton of features but fail to deliver on their promises. Data brokers harvest metadata from thousands of different sites to build an identity profile, which can include your last several addresses, the names of your family members, your favorite brands, your birthday, and your gender — and these data brokers then sell that aggregated information to the highest bidder.
Fortunately, privacy laws in most of the world forbid data brokers from collecting and selling your information if you specifically ask them to stop. So, Norton searches around 25 different data brokers for your information and asks them to stop.
After you enter your name and date of birth, Privacy Monitor gives you a list of data brokers that have your PII up for sale. This is what Norton offers for device optimization:. Here are some other notable features:. Norton provides 5 different plans for users around the globe, and adds 3 different LifeLock plans for users in the US. While this plan is limited in terms of features, Norton AntiVirus Plus will still do a great job of protecting 1 device from all kinds of malware.
However, Norton Standard is an excellent choice for users that need protection for a single device. It includes all of the same features as Norton Standard, plus:. That being said, I think that most users, including parents and families with 5 or fewer devices, will be really happy with the huge variety of security features included with Norton Deluxe. Norton for Gamers offers all of the features included in Norton Deluxe , plus a couple of extras for gamers, including a game booster Norton GO.
Norton GO automatically detects when your device is running games and then it reallocates running processes to optimize processing power for games. In my testing, Norton GO performed really well — while I was playing Destiny 2, Norton allowed me to increase my graphics settings without sacrificing framerate!
Norton Premium only costs a little more per year than Norton Deluxe, so if you want to add more than 5 devices to your plan, buying Norton Premium is a pretty low-risk investment.
For international users with more than 5 devices to cover, Norton Premium is the best antivirus software on the market.
Norton with LifeLock Advantage offers coverage on up to 10 devices, GB of cloud storage, and improved identity protections from LifeLock, including:. However, the concrete benefits of LifeLock Advantage are apparent in the numbers — users get coverage on twice the amount of devices, 4x more identity theft insurance payout, and GB more of cloud storage than on the LifeLock Select plan. If you have a really large family, a significant amount of assets that need protecting, and you absolutely want the utmost in cybersecurity protection, both online and offline, then Norton with LifeLock Ultimate Plus is the best internet security package on the market today.
Just like with any large software, there is a learning curve when it comes to using Norton — the company made some pretty good design choices to make the program easy to figure out, but there are also a few pretty poor choices that make some features more difficult than they need to be. Norton is simple to download and install. Just choose your operating system from the my. Once you have Norton installed, it gives you 2 options for the user interface: My Norton, and Classic. I found myself repeatedly clicking on the Parental Controls button or LifeLock protections with no success.
The my. I was able to configure my parental controls, access my password vault, look at my cloud storage, and check out my identity theft settings with a few clicks. Overall, Norton is easy to use and intuitive, and it has more features than almost any other competitor. The App Advisor for existing apps lets you know which of your apps have no privacy risks, which apps are installed in the last 30 days, and which apps are using more battery than normal. Norton should include the password manager, LifeLock, and Safe Family app in a single app.
In terms of overall device security, Norton provides some of the best mobile antivirus apps on the market. Norton offers customer support via telephone, live chat, and email. Some of these languages are only available for phone chat during regional business hours, but I was able to live chat with a surprisingly large number of agents in different countries 24 hours a day.
By comparison, competitors like BullGuard and Malwarebytes only offer support in a few languages. My customer service experience with Norton was both good and not good. First, I spoke with a support rep in Bogota, Colombia who was able to access my Norton subscription and add LifeLock to my account when I encountered a bug on the Norton website. However, I also had one of my most annoying customer service experiences a few days later. This experience was out of the ordinary for my overall experience with Norton, and I was messaging them during a particularly busy time of the year.
For the most part, I was connected with a phone or live chat representative within a couple of minutes, and most of the people I spoke with were very knowledgeable and courteous. But even then, in my experience with Norton, this is uncommon. Norton stands above the competition in terms of malware detection, internet security tools, mobile protections, useability, and value.
Norton detected every single malware file in my testing — including newer malware threats like ransomware files, cryptojackers, rootkits, and adware. Its anti-malware engine uses a vast malware directory, advanced heuristics, and machine learning to synthesize the best parts of traditional and modern antivirus detection. Norton also has comprehensive parental controls, a good password manager, and excellent dark web monitoring which uses real people to discover data breaches.
However, the VPN is good for secure browsing, the dashboard is easy to use, and it costs less per year than most standalone VPNs. Overall, Norton is the best all-around internet security suite you can find — it provides unbeatable malware protection, it bundles almost all of the internet security tools available on the market into a single program, and it provides an excellent value for virtually all types of users.
You can try out Norton risk-free with a day money-back guarantee. For users on a budget, the Norton Standard plan offers excellent antivirus protection for a single device. Norton offers a pretty good first-year discount and you can try all of its features risk-free with a day money-back guarantee.
For real-time protection and virus scanning, Norton provides a multi-layered approach, including:. Most antivirus software uses a malware directory, cross-referencing the code of each scanned file against hundreds of thousands of known malware files. Norton also uses heuristics and machine learning to detect zero-day threats.
Heuristics analyze the code of new files against known malware, flagging potentially unsafe files that contain similar code. Norton Deluxe is the best choice for most users. Users looking for the very best protection, with the most identity theft insurance and coverage for unlimited devices, should invest in Norton with LifeLock Ultimate Plus.
Norton provides mobile apps that work for iOS devices, Androids, and even Chromebooks. Norton provides a good value for both individuals and families, and you can try it out risk-free with a day money back guarantee. Ben Martens is a cybersecurity journalist with a background in internet ethics, malware testing, and public policy. He resides in Oregon, and when he's not advocating for the rights of internet users, he's walking with his dog and inventing stories with his daughter. Home Best Antivirus Norton Reviews.
Professional Reviews. Affiliate Commissions. Reviews Guidelines. Ranked 1st from 67 antivirus companies. This article contains. Norton — Frequently Asked Questions. Norton also has: A firewall. Safe Web's Isolation Mode renders the contents of known dangerous sites as read-only.
If you connect to a banking site, Norton runs the browser session in a virtual machine. Unlike other antivirus companies, Norton doesn't tease you with a free limited-data offering and then make you pay for more — you get unlimited VPN data from the get-go. You can hide your location like a digital James Bond, or just stream localized movies and sports as if you were in London or Mexico City. It took us an average of 6. You can set Norton's excellent parental controls , included with Norton Deluxe and above, to block age-inappropriate material, schedule screen time and see the locations of individual children.
LifeLock identity-protection services come with Norton's top three plans, as detailed above. LifeLock is the most comprehensive of the best identity-theft protection services , but its high prices even when bundled with Norton antivirus software may not justify the expense for many people.
However, none of the Norton antivirus packages has a file shredder, a file-encryption tool, a true hardened browser or a file roll-back in case of ransomware infection. Bitdefender and Kaspersky offer all of these. Norton's malware-detection engine takes up few system resources in the background, but a lot during active scans.
You'll want to set your scans to run during off hours. To measure Norton Deluxe's performance impact, we used our custom benchmark test, which measures how long the CPU takes to match 20, names and addresses in an Excel spreadsheet. Our test machine was a Lenovo ThinkPad T with a 2. Before we installed any antivirus software, it took the system 8. The completion time rose to 8. This 4. A full scan raised the benchmark-completion time to an average of It took Norton Deluxe 18 minutes and 20 seconds to run its first full scan and index all , files.
That time dropped to in subsequent scans, after the software learned what to skip. Norton's quick scan took 1 minute and 16 seconds to churn through 12, files. That's a bit longer than Kaspersky Total Security's quick scan, which looked at nearly four times as many files.
Norton's Classic interface has the familiar screen icon with green, yellow or red indicators, while the new Launch interface has a calming picture of a mountain climber on the left and a right-side column of key security tasks, like Device Security, Dark Web Monitoring, Secure VPN, Cloud Backup and Password Manager. In Settings, you can adjust or control just about every aspect of the program. Below the surface are dozens of individual settings that can be turned on and off.
The Norton installation process begins with a 3. Once you accept the product license agreement, the full MB installation program downloads and runs. Installing Norton Deluxe took us 9 minutes and 30 seconds, but it would have taken longer had we opted for LifeLock ID protection. We would have had to enter a lot of personal information and run through a gantlet of questions to establish our identity.
You can contact support technicians by phone, online chat or email. Norton's support site has a slew of self-serve options, including instructional videos. Need even more help? Before antivirus installation, it took us 7 minutes to complete the task. After installation and activation of Norton, the time grew to 11 seconds. As for the speed of scanning, Norton Standard displays the average result: it takes over 1 hour to scan a hard drive, while a quick scan takes 3 minutes and 20 seconds.
You can accelerate the process using the whitelist: add trustworthy files there, and you will limit scanning time only to the potentially dangerous files. After doing so, you can decrease the full scanning time to 20 minutes only. Similar to other antivirus software, Norton offers three layers of protection including signature matching the software is matched to the database of known malware packages. The protection is strengthened by heuristic analysis — it controls the behavior of software and checks the code of new programs to detect unknown malware before it affects your devices.
The extension checks destination headers for web packets for connection with known malicious websites. What about a game mode? Although there is no game mode as it is, you can put the Norton Security application into Silent Mode and reduce the number of updates and user notifications when the full screen and 3D graphics are running.
The interface of the antivirus is intuitive and bright, and it contains all necessary links for simple management. When you open the program, you will see four major security options offered by Norton: Security, Backup, Performance, and Identity.
This option is turned on by default. Norton has recently updated its product and now offers four packages to choose from. Norton Antivirus Plus is a basic package that will protect 1 PC or Mac from all types of malware and ransomware. Smart firewall, password manager and anti-phishing tools are also included in the package. Besides, the package comes with 2GB of safe cloud storage. The Norton Standard package is the next tier for 1 device that is compatible with iOS and Android as well.
It can be disabled if you prefer working with the more familiar Windows Defender firewall. Norton Standard comes with plenty of extra security features, including a subscription to Norton Secure VPN, parental controls, system clean-up and optimisation tools, a password manager, 50GB of cloud storage for your backups and a webcam protection feature that alerts you when anything unexpected attempts to enable your camera.
Multi-layered, advanced security helps protect against existing and emerging malware threats to your devices. What does this mean? The files on your computer will be protected against encryption. Browse anonymously and securely with a no-log VPN. Add bank-grade encryption to help keep your information, like passwords and bank details, secure and private.
Easily create, store, and manage your passwords, credit card information and other credentials online, safely and securely. Automatic, secure cloud backup for PCs to store and protect important files and documents against hard drive failure, stolen devices and even ransomware.
Among other things, you can set times when device access is allowed and set a daily maximum across devices. Add bank-grade encryption to help keep your information like passwords and bank details are secure and private. Norton Standard reverts to a manual scanner that detects and cleans up malware infections only when you run a scan.
Norton monitors and notifies you if they find your personal information on the Dark Web. Think Norton Standard will be a good fit for your home or business?
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