Message from Norton re. unknown service starting on Mac

Thanks Jeff, Allan, CSound1 most helpful. I have no idea how you get points, and I'm not interested in collecting any - just wanted to help. I'm assuming now that it's done through posting.

I won't offend again, apologies.

No, it is not done by posting, being right is the method (simplification)

being right???

Points are gained when you provide the originator of the head with a correct answer and he awards you points for doing that.

fortunately for me this helped me

thanks

Thanks Rocket Man this did help me a lot. I couldn't find any other reference but here and I am thankfull!

Allen,

You suggest that, to protect ourselves, we remove Norton, which is supposed to protect us. I don't know you or Norton well enough to judge which to trust. So that I can make a wise decision, can you please give me some background as to your span of expertise on this? I am not a programmer. I do not work for Norton nor Apple.

Thanks

Norton/Symantec are hopeless, their software is so bad it is almost malicious. Get rid of it all.

Back before Norton was bought out by Symantec, I was a user of their software and it was very good.

After Symantec bought it they managed to drive it it into the ground. Turning it from a good tool into something that was far more of a problem then what it was claiming it was going to protect you against. Their support very quickly became equally bad.

That was the time that I dropped them and have not used any of their junk since.

If you do a search on ASC, you will find numerous others that are equally adamant about the hazards of using anything from Symantec.

Search the forum.

I'm still unconvinced. I see abundant advice to get rid of Norton, but I do not know the credentials of the folks offering that advice. Am I getting advice from a qualified professional who is staking their professional repuation that deleting Norton does not incur any risks, or I am getting advice from friendly computer users who are relaying information they read somewhere?

Regarding the advice "search the forum." Can you please be more specific on which search terms should I use to determine if I am getting advice from a qualified source or just friendly computer users?

Just_a_RocketScientist wrote:

I'm still unconvinced. I see abundant advice to get rid of Norton, but I do not know the credentials of the folks offering that advice. Am I getting advice from a qualified professional who is staking their professional repuation that deleting Norton does not incur any risks, or I am getting advice from friendly computer users who are relaying information they read somewhere?

Regarding the advice "search the forum." Can you please be more specific on which search terms should I use to determine if I am getting advice from a qualified source or just friendly computer users?

Then you will never believe anything posted pro or con in these forums. Suggest you find a different source of information.

If you want to continue reading, then start with

How does Mac OS X protect me?

<http://www.thesafemac.com/mmg-builtin/>

OS X provides the protection services. The 3rd party anti-virus vendors are either redundant or they spend all their time looking for Windows viruses (which are not going to affect the Mac).

And in many cases the anti-virus products are just repackaged Windows products that have been poorly ported to the Mac platform, and cause kernel panics, system slow downs, or in some cases decide some essential OS X files is defective and quarantined it such that OS X is now damaged and does not function properly.

And as has been suggested, if you do not want to believe the people that have been long time contributors to the forum (see point scores on the left under each contributor's forum name), then these forums for other posts on the anti-virus product of your choice. I'm sure you will find a lot of cases of the product causing problems that were resolved when the product was removed.

But we cannot force you to follow any of the suggestions. We can just suggest. The rest is up to you.

Searching for "Norton" should do it.

I'm still unconvinced.

As is your perfect right.

However, notice as you search the reputation points of the people making the posts on the forum. These can only be gained one way. Users like yourself find the advice gained from a poster to be useful. It's an internet forum. That's how it works.

Allan Eckert wrote:

Back before Norton was bought out by Symantec, I was a user of their software and it was very good.

After Symantec bought it they managed to drive it it into the ground. Turning it from a good tool into something that was far more of a problem then what it was claiming it was going to protect you against. Their support very quickly became equally bad.

That has been my experience also. I used Norton Utilities with System 7, so we are talking about a long time ago. A couple of years later, I tried to use the Symantec incarnation with some version of OS 8 and it caused major problems, so I had to abandon it. There has been no reason to run it or anything like it since moving to OS X. However, I am careful about what I download or click, and I don't use torrent sites or torrent software.