ShareThisBy MIKE BERMAN
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
I'm not sure if it's Halloween or the Harvest Moon that attracts them, but developers of products designed to keep us safe and happy while computing have decided that this is the time of year to introduce their new lines of products.
Symantec, McAfee, Grisoft and Panda have all released new versions of their Internet security products using the months when our attention turns to goblins _ and turkeys _ to make us aware of all the new threats that await us in cyberspace.
Norton Internet Security 2007 ($69.99 for one year), Norton Confidential ($29.99), McAfee Internet Security Suite ($49.99 for one year), Grisoft's AVG Internet Security ($69.99 for two years) and Panda Internet Security 2007 Platinum Edition ($43.95 for six months) have all hit store shelves or can be ordered via the Internet. And truthfully, except for a few subtle differences, they all do their jobs fairly well _ blocking viruses, splattering spyware and filtering spam to the best of their abilities. But there are a few differences.
The offerings from Norton and Panda are the least intrusive, allowing you to go about your everyday tasks with a minimum of interference, but they don't seem to be as effective in picking up adware and spyware as the products from McAfee and AVG. Rescanning my test computers using McAfee and AVG products revealed several nasty files were still lurking on my computer and had to be blasted into oblivion.
Unfortunately the McAfee security suite interfered with my being able to upload pages to my Web site and produced a few other minor annoyances. Also, because it's less flexible than its competitors, I had to disable either the program's firewall or the computer monitoring process to complete my tasks. These instances were rare, but it would've helped if I could have configured the firewall, etc. to allow these tasks.
On the plus side, the McAfee suite includes McAfee Site Advisor, which tells you how safe _ or dangerous _ every Web site is based on spam, adware and online scam safety tests. It also delivers full reports on the sites at the click of a button. Another nice feature is its ability to rate sites when you perform a search using Google or any other search engine.
Norton Confidential takes a different approach to surfing safety. This product will tell you if your personal information is secure when you shop in cyberspace _ green is good and red is bad. It does this by searching for key loggers and other nasty stuff that may be attached to shopping carts or may have taken up residence on you computer. These programs serve only one purpose _ to steal any information you enter into any online form, ranging from passwords to credit card numbers.
It will also keep track of all of your login names and passwords, warning you when you use the same combination for multiple sites.
There's also a new offering on the horizon:
Cyberdefender (www.cyberdefender.com), which will become available Nov. 20, is a free alternative for PC security and is the only product that will work with products from any of its competitors. I've played with a beta version of the product and it seems to do an adequate job of zapping all of the nasty stuff we don't want on our PCs.
For more information on these products, visit www.symantec.com, www.mcafee.com, www.grisoft.com, www.pandasoftware.com or www.cyberdefender.com.
E-mail Mike Berman at jocgeek(at)earthlink.net or visit www.jocgeek.com.
