Shame on Norton Antivirus ! - Scam Alert

[87Burban]

Mods: I'm not sure where this goes, but I want other members to be aware thanks



Folks,

Be aware of this. I purchased a new computer last year that had a factory install of Norton Antivirus. I installed Avast and used it and deleted the Norton and never thought about it again.

Today I had an automatic renewal charge of $54 on my credit card. There is an automatic renewal hidden in the software registration. I did not sign on to anything or click a box for this to take place.


I say shame on Norton. I won't use any of their products, and want others to know of this automatic renewal scam.

 

[RevDevil]

I hear this many, many times every month. What I always tell customers is that the computer itself has no way to reach in their waller and pull out their credit card and charge the service on its own. More often than not, people do not take the time to read the screens on what they are in effect "agreeing to". You did click something to subscribe somewhere along the line, I mean how else could they have charged you for it?

 

[bamahabir]

^ Pretty much what he said. Depending on how much your spending and your purpose for the computer you may be better off just building your own. It's like putting pieces of legos together. Either way, most of the software that comes prepackaged on PC's nowadays are terrible and you should look for the free alternatives.

 

[majigy]

Buying factory made computers almost always comes with lots of bloatware, and other crap. If you bought it from Best Buy or the like, they usually tell you that charge will happen, or that you have to pay Geek Squad to remove the software and cancel any agreement with that software. As was already recommended, best to build your own. By doing that, you not only know exactly what is on it, but you can buy individual parts with their own warranties, and not have to worry about Dell or HP or whoever working on your machine as a whole.

 

[Cougar Allen]

By clicking on the button to close this window, you agree to let me bill your credit card $54 every year until you cancel the agreement in writing with notarized signature.

Guess what my chances of convincing a judge to enforce that "contract" are.... LOL!

They got your credit card info somehow -- when you bought the computer, or when you bought some software of some kind, there was a "contract" like that buried in fine print somewhere. Of course it's legally unenforceable. Tell your credit card company that charge is not legitimate; they will yoink the money out of Norton's account and also a $25 chargeback fee, with additional fees if Norton tries to dispute it (they won't). If everybody did that the thieves would go broke.

 

[Planterz]

Dispute the charge. While you're at it, go into your Control Panel and remove all the software from companies you don't want anything to do with. It's hard to know what's essential and not, especially if it's a laptop we're talking about.

Norton is as much a virus or malware program as those it claims to protect against. If installed, it imbeds itself into your system and is like a weed trying to get entirely rid of it. When it's running it' a drain on your resources.

 

[KennyB]

Yeah, they try to catch you like this. Probably got your card info when you bought the computer as others have said. If it's worth it to you, I would just buy a brand new copy of Windows and reinstall before you get too much going on the computer--that way it'll be nice and clean and free of bloatware.

Also, in case you're looking for a good, low-resource, "lite" virus scanner "ClamWin" is great. It's a Windows version of the Clam Linux/Unix virus scanner--basically the same stuff that most email providers use to scan their email so don't worry about it not detecting as much stuff as Norton. Best of all it doesn't have a billion other features you don't need ( I hate how every anti-virus software tries to come with a firewall and malware remover and a registry tuner and all this garbage ).

Otherwise I'd suggest AVG free, but that comes with almost as much bloat as Norton.

 

[shunsui]

I've got an old win2k box that won't die. That Clam anti-virus program is about the only one that still supports win2k. Not the greatest, but they still download updates every day. Got so tired of all the various programs, I'm just using Windows' anti virus program on my new box. You can spend a lot of money, but they say it won't do any good against the kind of hackers out there today.