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review of PRIVACY CONTROL (Symantec)
by Donald Rosenfield, cardar@home.com NOCCC - September 07, 2001 at 17:36:07:
PRIVACY CONTROLBy Donald Rosenfield, cardar@home.com NOCCC
Norton's Privacy Control (NPC) warned me, saying I had a High Security risk, that (berkeley.edu) was trying to access my Social Security number. That was the first such attack I've known on my system. Since those first two attacks, I have had hundreds of them. Servers around the world (or outboard hackers bouncing data off those servers) have tried to download my Social Security number, my Credit Card number, my Bank Account number, and my Address and Telephone numbers. If I had more such numbers at risk, they too would be attacked.
Each such warning advises me of the type of onslaught by the on screen printing (when I ask for the Details of the attack) of just part of the affected number, such as the last four digits of my Credit Card number or the digits in my Address. One such concerted attack by one of the sites I didn't want to give up was fixed by a couple of nasty messages from me to the Webmaster of that site.
I suggested that if the attacks didn't stop I would publicize their address in this review article. While I continue to be attacked by admonitor.com on their site, I just routinely block those attempts. The Webmaster says that he has no control over that and, indeed, I have had no further problems with the basic site. You can see what other folks think about the practices of admonitor by searching for that name on Deja.com.
I don't even remember asking for this product. Symantec sorta just sent it to me. I think they liked my previous reviews of their product line. It is called Norton Privacy Control and is included in Norton Internet Security 2001 Version 3.0(NIS). Also it is included in Norton Personal Firewall 2001 Version 3.0(NPF) and Norton AdBlocker, which I installed but, after finding that it blocked necessary banners in a couple of the sites I access each day I just turned it off. If I didn't use those sites, I would turn it back on as it quite efficiently gets rid of unwanted ads.
I was not unhappy to get NIS because even though I was already using Norton AntiVirus 2001(NAV) which NIS 2001 just overwrote, the product also has Norton Personal Firewall 2001 Version 3.0 which overwrote my copy of NPF 2000. Of course, I deleted Norton AntiVirus 2001 when I installed NIS 2001
"What's that, Donald? You deleted NAV 2001? Why did you do that?" Because Symantec had just sent me Norton AntiVirus 2001 Professional Edition.
Two of the advanced tools included in NAV 2001 Professional Edition are Wipe Info and UnErase Wizard. Back in our salad days, we had our choice of unerase utilities but they seem to have gone away. Wipe Info is used to permanently erase programs and files infected with viruses from our hard drives. As most of us know, simply deleting a file just hides it from us; it is still on our hard drive. UnErase Wizard can undelete any file that is still on the hard drive save those written over, even if they are no longer in the Recycle Bin. Another feature is NAV for Palm OS(r), which I don't use but you might.
Symantec calls their privacy control software Intrusion Protection with AutoBlock. As we shop on the Internet - which is so easy to do - our computers store our private numbers. As it turns out, they aren't so private anymore. Bad folks spam probably every computer connected to the Internet in the world, searching out those numbers and addresses in order to steal our identities and rob us of our property/finances.
My brothers are protected against those perfidious people. One of them has no computer at all; his identical twin, who writes books/articles on financial reporting on his computer doesn't use a modem. He refuses to be connected to others, even to his family such as me. If he wants to talk to me he just picks up the telephone and calls me.
But surely most of my readers are connected to the Internet! Protect Thyself! Get this program! Go To www.symantec.com and feel your way around there.
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