Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
A few months ago I bought the latest Norton anti-virus/anti-spam general computer security update. I’d been using the firm’s products for a couple of years, in conjunction with Spy-bot and Ad-aware, and together they seemed to do a reasonable job of fighting off the attacks.
Then I installed the upgrade, and it was an instant nightmare. My CPU was continually running at 100 per cent, making any operation a mix of staccato bursts and long pauses. The programme kept refusing to acknowledge I’d registered. It put a large percentage of my real mail in the spam folder, and most of the spam in my inbox. “Teaching” it “this is not spam” seemed to have no effect whatsoever.
After putting up with this for a few months I’d had enough, and after some research tried the ZoneAlarm Pro 15-day free trial. Instant relief! I had a CPU back again, the right emails were directed with about 98 per cent accuracy into the spam box (and I haven’t found a real email in there).
It is a breeze to operate – giving you quite comprehensible (well by computer standards) guidance when asking if you want to allow programs to do things (with colour coding that helps you to decide what to do about it), and easy-to-follow directions that allowed me to sort out WordPress operation that it affected with a minimum of fuss.
All I’m trying to work out now is if I still need to remember to run Spy-bot or Ad-aware.
No, I haven’t bought into the company, but if you are looking for security solutions (for a PC at least – can’t comment on a Mac) it could be $40 well spent.
