Norton antivirus

charlies_mum

Our norton antivirus was due to expire yesterday so we bought another one and tried to install it on our laptop. It came up with a security message and wouldn't load

We phoned the number on the screen and someone took our number so that someone could call us back. The guy who called took control of our laptop and said we had the Alureon virus and spent an hour trying to persuade us to buy better protection and tech support which would cost £149 + VAT.

At one point a Symantec screen came up on the laptop, and after a google search it looks like it may be a scam.

Has anyone had a similar experience ? We're taking the Norton product back today but not sure whether they will replace it, or if that would solve the problem

RumRat

If you have Windows 10 just use the inbuilt Windows security.

Or you can install any one of the many free packages available.
No requirement for you to pay for AV.

charlies_mum

Thanks. Which free one is best to use ?

dipsomaniac

Where did you buy it from?

dipsomaniac

i am assuming you are using windows and if paying for av (you didn't need to) you have first updated your os to win10 so windows defender (built in and free) is the best av imo.

if it was my laptop i would also do a fresh install of the os as you don't know what nasties they have left behind after you gave them access

giraffe69

This has all the feel of a scam. As above, if you are on Windows 10 then just use the unbuilt windows defender. If you are on an earlier version of Windows use one of the free anti virus pieces of software such as Avast.
You may have some difficulty in getting a refund on a piece of software so tell us (for better directed help) as asked above
1. What is your operating system (Windows 10 Windows 7 something else
2. Where did you buy your copy of Norton Anti virus.

I would, at the very least, both run a complete scan with my new AV software and also download and run something like Malwarebytes (free) to check on anything left behind. I would also make sure i had fully uninstalled Norton before doing any of this.

charlies_mum

The Norton was bought from Currys yesterday. We have run a full scan and found nothing.

It is totally unusable because as soon as you enter the licence number, the error message comes up along with the phone number to call.

We were asked for our phone number, name and email address which we refused to give. The "tech" was telling us that the virus had come through our Virgin internet.

EveryWhere

charlies_mum wrote: »

Our norton antivirus was due to expire yesterday so we bought another one and tried to install it on our laptop. It came up with a security message and wouldn't load

We phoned the number on the screen and someone took our number so that someone could call us back. The guy who called took control of our laptop and said we had the Alureon virus and spent an hour trying to persuade us to buy better protection and tech support which would cost £149 + VAT.

At one point a Symantec screen came up on the laptop, and after a google search it looks like it may be a scam.

Has anyone had a similar experience ? We're taking the Norton product back today but not sure whether they will replace it, or if that would solve the problem

You should have asked here first....
All in all, some very poor decisions.
If you really wanted to keep using Norton, the advice would have been to simply use the product keycode, costing under £10.. No need to install anything.

It may be time to run a Reset/Refresh of the operating system or to use the opportunity to swap over to a solid state drive.

donnac2558

My big brother who lives in Canada always buy Norton when the sales are on after the new release so gets it on a great deal as he says. He is still using Windows 7.


Last year he could not get the new Norton disc to upload and phoned the number on the packaging for help. Got a guy on the phone and he got him to do whatever and it uploaded. But for some reason, quite a few of the favourites and saved sites disappeared. So he phoned Norton again and got a different person who sorted it all out for him. Now the interesting part is the second Norton agent had no record of the previous problem on their records and this was days after the first call. The second guy insisted they must put a record of each call and the problem and if it was sorted.



To this day my brother thinks there was something no right with the first agent.

charlies_mum

EveryWhere wrote: »

You should have asked here first....
All in all, some very poor decisions.
If you really wanted to keep using Norton, the advice would have been to simply use the product keycode, costing under £10.. No need to install anything.

It may be time to run a Reset/Refresh of the operating system or to use the opportunity to swap over to a solid state drive.

Thank you for your patronising reply. We purchased the product from a reputable store, and when the error message came up we believed it to be genuine.

Update : Returned to Currys and a full refund given

EveryWhere

charlies_mum wrote: »

Thank you for your patronising reply. We purchased the product from a reputable store, and when the error message came up we believed it to be genuine.

Update : Returned to Currys and a full refund given

Good luck with that attitude. It seems that you didn't understand anything and now somehow think you have got one up on me because Currys refunded you. Sad.

Talk about missing the point....