Norton '12 Cybercrime Numbers Lower Than Last Year's — But Just As Bad 46
Curseyoukhan writes "Norton released its annual cybercrime report on Wednesday, and the company put the 'direct costs associated with global consumer cybercrime at US $110 billion over the past twelve months.' Last year's report put the total 'at an annual price of $388 billion globally based on financial losses and time lost.' That's more than the estimated value of the global black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined ($288 billion), the report said. But Norton makes no mention of the vast difference in 2011 and 2012 numbers. That's because last year's number was entirely fictitious." Something tells me that the scare-monger number-wavers aren't as embarrassed by this sort of logical deconstruction as they should be.
Norton (Score:1)
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There are only 3 AV products I recommend (and i do this for a living), and NIS isn't one of them. Neither is Macafee.:
1. Microsoft security essentials
pros: free, does what it does with VERY little interaction, VERY low resource footprint
cons: average(read: SHITTY) protection.
2. Comodo Internet Security
pros: free version available, most comprehensive system protection I know of (I install this w
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"V Comparatives and other independent testers (e.g. CNet, PCMag, etc.) show NIS at the top in terms of detection, removal, low-system resource utilization, etc. "
They also know which side of their bread the butter is on.
"Norton" brand software products started going downhill the moment Peter Norton sold his interest to Symantec. I watched it happen. It got gradually but steadily worse. The last "Norton Suite" I ever used (years ago) installed so many resident programs and other JUNK that my system slowed to a crawl, and did not supply enough configurability for me to just run those that I wanted.
I reamed every last trace of Symantec software off my hard drive,
Last Line (Score:5, Insightful)
Thankfully, Norton's security products are generally better than its reports.
Yea, and their security products suck donkey balls, so what's that tell you about their reports?
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Thankfully, Norton's security products are generally better than its reports.
Yea, and their security products suck donkey balls, so what's that tell you about their reports?
Citation?
Do the hours upon hours of my life wasted on fixing the issues caused by Norton's crap-tacular malware, er, "anti-virus," only to eventually be forced to completely remove any semblance of said malware, er, "anti-virus" to get the damn machine working again count?
How did a contentless one-liner like this get modded +5 insightful?
Perhaps because I'm not the only slashdotter who has experienced the unholy abortion that is Norton/Symantic AV?
Nortan's security products are pretty good.
I know it's just a typo, but if you're gonna shill, at least get the name of the company you're shilling for right. Sheesh...
Sure, they had their low point about 5 years ago, but their products are actually really good these days. Just google for some reviews and you will see that they are highly well reviewed, like this one for example:
http://download.cnet.com/Norton-AntiVirus-2012/3000-2239_4-10592477.html
Yea, bec
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Last year's figures weren't fictitious. (Score:4, Funny)
Did my job (Score:2, Funny)
I was paid to come up with numbers for the marketing campaign. Why should I feel ashamed? I did a great job. We sold *a lot* of product with that number!
Friend hacked[tm] my e-mail... (Score:4, Insightful)
...deleted discussion of my $1 trillion idea, so I never got to put it into action.
Norton's figures are thus way too low.
Excluding this, though, Norton may be including the media industry association criminals who overvalue the loss of copying bits representing a Britney Spears wailing lament, or whatever the cool kids are listening to these days.
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My first thought too. If last year's numbers are entirely fictitious, where did this year's numbers come from?
Re:Vast Improvement! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, first you have to go to the BPA to find out how much software is pirated. The answer: the GNP of Brazil.
Next, you have to go to the RIAA to find out about music piracy. The answer is: the GNP of Brazil times a fudge factor of 1.5.
Then, you have to go to the MPAA to get the number of how much movie theatre and rental/royalty losses that they suffer. This is the GNP of Nigeria, times a factor of 7.233.
Finally, if you're in the systems protection business, you have to talk about the losses from break-ins, data loss, user-down time due to StuxNet (they left Iran out of the figures) which is the GNP of Greece times an amazing 294.888.
Go on check my figures. Be scared. Be very scared.
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Well, first you have to go to the BPA to find out how much software is pirated. The answer: the GNP of Brazil.
So... nuke Brazil and software piracy will be eliminated?
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Whatever the math says, man. Numbers don't lie.
Except on Thursdays.
Has it ever gotten better? (Score:2)
if I understand this, it says: (Score:4, Insightful)
This years made up numbers lower than last years made up numbers.
next years made up numbers might be even lower.
Is that a good thing?
Poor Norton advertising? (Score:2)
If this is true, why are they advertising this negative attention instead of just quietly improving their software?
Must be incomplete figures (Score:2)
They are doing it wrong! (Score:3)
When lying with statistics, you get credibility for being overly precise. "110" looks like an estimate, while "388" does not. I also think they should have managed to manufacture an increased level of damage and at the same time a decreased level for Norton customers.
So here are my numbers:
- 2011: $388B for all, $9.36B for Norton customers.
- 2012: $652B for all, $8.72B for Norton customers.
This conclusively demonstrates that Norton is the right choice. Norton did manage to improve security for all its customers, even to a higher degree than these numbers show, because more organizations finally decided to be protected by the one true choice in security services. Norton achieved this impressive feat while the general situation deteriorated, with a massive increase of loss suffered due to attacks on IT infrastructure by ever more competent criminals.
After all, if you drop all ethics and just let the amoral beast that you are run the show, why not do it right?
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Norton is a virus (Score:3, Insightful)
But everybody blah blahs about the death of the desktop but what I think perverted the whole thing was when companies like Dell, HP, ACER, and most of the rest changed their business model to where they sold a desktop for little or no profit in the hopes of getting commissions from sales of the trialware they put on their machines.
Is it any surprise that people are buying Apples desktops, laptops, and iPads when the only thing apple really tries to sell you is iCloud? I am not Apple Fanboying here I think that any company that made a point of telling people that their machines were trialware free would make some serious gains in the market.
My old policy with family was that they would send their new laptop over and I would wipe it clean put a good AV product, Open Office, and iTunes on it and send it home. That stopped when laptops cut the left shift key in half and put the \| key there. This was some cost savings thing for foreign keyboards but for me it was the straw that broken my tech support camel's back. I won't touch one of those keyboards. Plus wiping these systems is a nightmare of drivers some of which put some bloatware back.
So for Norton to be scaremongering people into buying their crap product doesn't surprise me in the least; it just isn't their worst crime. As I said their worst crime was to be one of the biggest proponents of this trialware bloatware business model of lower end computers that has basically poisoned the PC market.
And the solution is .. (Score:2)
And the solution is to move to Linux [wikipedia.org]
Problem with basic plausibility (Score:2)
Does anybody around here buy the basic story? That 46% of consumers are victims of cybercrime each year? And what are they defining as cybercrime? Is any crime that uses electronic means cybercrime? Nigeria scams? Fake charities? Phishing? ATM card duplication? Submission of fake bills via email?
Lets see a definition restricted to the kind of malware that Norton is designed to prevent.
'12?? (Score:1)
Why anyone feels the need to abbreviate "2012" is beyond me. Just makes the headline even less intelligible.
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