Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition

Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition is an all-in-one security suite that leaves most of the protective decision making for adware and spyware blocking and removal up to the user. One wrong choice and your system may continue to spy on you or dish up ads. It's one hefty product too, consuming over 300Mb and installing 11 services, 3 startup items, 2 Toolbars and 2 BHOs - thus it may be less than ideal for already taxed PCs.

Product features

Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition offers a fairly generic collection of features, including antivirus, antispyware, firewall, spam prevention, and privacy controls. The firewall is a blend of packet filtering and permission-based controls. Some sites that required our logging in were blocked by Norton and permissions had to be manually configured. In other cases, we found a wide range of carte blanche permissions had been granted - including the dubious Windows Messenger Service (not to be confused with MSN Messenger, the chat client). The Windows Messenger Service is most frequently targeted by adware and spyware purveyors to push unwanted advertising popups onto unsuspecting users' systems.

We did not test the spam filtering capabilities, a feature now offered by most major ISPs. And while its antivirus capabilities are as robust as most of the other major antivirus products, the update schedule is not. Typically, Symantec releases new updates on a weekly schedule unless a new threat is deemed medium level or higher. Symantec tends to be pretty conservative in this regard, and thus a new threat could circulate hours, days, or even a week before signatures are released.

Second-guessing for better protection

The newest feature in Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition is, of couse, spyware and adware detection. To test its spyware and adware removal, we installed a variety of adware and spyware on our test systems, logging and monitoring 70 key components to see how well Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition addressed them. While the overall results weren't bad (Norton nabbed 79% overall), we achieved this score only by second-guessing the product's recommendation. Had we followed Norton's suggestions, our overall adware and spyware removal would have been much lower.

Test Results
Our 70 tracked components installed by various adware and spyware included 27 active running processes and services. Of these 27, Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition nabbed 22 (88%). Eleven out of fourteen Browser Helper Objects and Toolbars were removed, for an overall score of 79%. Only 70% of Registry Run keys and Startup links were removed. However, Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition did fare better with our browser start and search page changes - correcting 100% of these.

Repeated warnings

Though Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition recommended we keep several of our adware and spyware infectors, when we tried to follow its advice it often led to an endless loop of warnings with a recommendation to ignore or allow the infestation. On the plus side, the constant loop of warnings might annoy even those folks who would otherwise follow the Symantec recommendations - causing them to override the recommendation and remove the adware or spyware. But at $80, Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition doesn't offer the ease-of-use or the protection of some competing products. Be sure to check out our Top Picks for Windows Antivirus Software and our Top Picks for Spyware Scanners for those we deem to be the best.