Last month, I installed Norton Internet Security 2009 on my primary desktop PC, a Dell XPS-420.
I received the software from Edelman, Symantec’s PR agency in the UK, and I’m using it in that PC instead of McAfee Security Center that I’ve been using on all my PCs for the past year.
Once you’ve installed your security software, you tend not to think about it any more. It’s a bit like the alarm system or even the door locks in your house: part of the fundamentals, the peace-of-mind infrastructure, that you know is protecting you.
It’s actually a good frame of mind to be in. Who wants to think about anti-virus software or a PC firewall more than when you first install or upgrade it? Not me!
A few days, ago, though, I had cause to think about such protection when Norton blocked an intrusion attempt as the screenshot above illustrates.
An “HTTP Fake Codec WebPage,” it said, which Symantec’s Security Response page describes thus:
This signature detects web pages displaying download prompts or fake scans to lure the user into downloading misleading applications.
Interesting that the Symantec page lists the versions of Windows it says are affected by this attack, but doesn’t include Windows Vista: that’s the one running on my Dell.
Anyway, I know exactly what I did that produced the alert – clicked a link in a page of results from a Google search on something I was researching for a blog post. As I recall, the link I clicked was the third or fourth in the Google results and that action immediately produced the Norton alert.
More importantly, the alert is a notification to say that security wasn’t breached, the software had done its job and no action on my part was required.
Would the McAfee product also have produced this result if I’d still had it installed? I’d certainly have expected so.
But what I have installed right now is the Norton product and it did its job well. That’s what I like about peace-of-mind infrastructure.
