Norton Internet Security Screws Us

[Alphawolf]

After an unrelated incident with this friggin' software I decided to download Norton Internet Security 2004 Trial for myself.

http://nct.symantecstore.com/fulfill/0001.109

I installed with defaults as most surfers probably will.

Not that this will be a surprise to many of you, but everyone's sites look different while running this.

Nearly all banner ads are stripped:

http://www.silkyerotica.com/tmp/gg&j.jpg

I decided to see how Norton decides what to strip:

http://www.silkyerotica.com/tmp/blocked.jpg

I went though a bunch of the blocked ads and looked at the reasons. They range from flagged keywords within the URL like 'banner', 'sponsor', 'sponsors', adclick' and even typical banner size was a sole reason to remove stuff.

This software is being used pretty heavily and I think it will become used even more in the future.

All of my ads were stripped because I keep the images in a folder named 'sponsors'. so any image that linked to that folder was removed. |pissed|

It may be worth it to download a copy of this thing to see why it strips your banners and make some adjustments.

Text links seem safe. I went to link-o-rama and GG's top tables with images inside had the images removed and overall it looked well, very bannerless...but the text links within the boxes remained.

I think to be proactive I'll be putting descriptive text links under all my banners from now on!

Hope this helps someone out...

[Surfn]

I love my Norton Internet Suite It had to be trained up some that only took a couple days

[urb]

Also I've noticed that images protected with .htaccess do not appear when using some Norton default settings.

[amber438]

I've had so much trouble with nortons and scripts on my server it was not funny. I switched to sygate personal firewall and it's really super.

[Cleo]

OK dumb question…

If you are using a router and you have all the ports closed why would you also need this product?

[hermit]

wow - norton pretty much removes every add from every one of my domains - ouch! thanks for the info alphawolf.

rl

[Alphawolf]

Originally posted by Cleo
OK dumb question…

If you are using a router and you have all the ports closed why would you also need this product?

Frankly, I don't know why anyone needs it. That was why I never looked into it until I got some weird complaints.

Jesus, I never knew there was a friggin' advertisement stipper built into this thing. People who run this product see a very different WWW.

It makes image banners useless. I'm glad most of my stuff is text links. But, given the high rate of people not accepting cookies I'm gonna venture a good bet a high % of people who surf adult sites load up on security settings.

Actually, I can't say I blame them.

Depending upon one's layout, some sites look really stupid with banners stripped. There are just giant ass big blank spaces or table borders with nothing inside.

Cleo, here's your site with NIS 2004 default settings:

http://www.silkyerotica.com/tmp/cleoslinks.jpg

http://www.silkyerotica.com/tmp/cleoslinks2.jpg

Reason: 'adview' or 'adclick' in URL for most blocked.

Just to make it clear, I have no use for this product. I just wanted to see 'our' sites through the eyes of a good % of surfers.

To me this was a big surprise. I did a search and didn't find anything on NIS, so maybe there was some talk about it when it first came out?

I'd think for many free sites, to have banners stripped and tables collapse where the banner should be would be reason for concern.

[Cleo]

Yeah I knew about it stripping out the display ads.

Actually there are a few products out there that strip out banners. Also if they have JavaScript turned off they don't see my display ads.

This is why I have lots of text ads.

[Alphawolf]

Yeah- text ads are the saftey net.

[Wazza]

Simple solution - draw all image files from a banners dir and put the ads in a "non evil" dir

[Alphawolf]

Originally posted by Wazza
Simple solution - draw all image files from a banners dir and put the ads in a "non evil" dir

It depends. In some cases an image is strips due to a typical banner SIZE and a few other variables.

That's why I downloaded it. The closer you are to your enemy, the better.

[Cleo]

I think with my site it is just stripping out anything that it thinks is a banner rotator so it wouldn't matter where I pulled the banners from.

Actually I think most users turn off most of the Norton stuff after a short time seeing as it also causes problems.

In Mac OS X there has never been a worm or virus yet Norton manages to sell their anti virus product to Mac users. Most end up removing Norton after a short time when they see all the problems it causes.

[Alphawolf]

Cleo,

>>Actually I think most users turn off most of the Norton stuff after a short time seeing as it also causes problems.<<

You're giving people way too much credit. After all, vast majority are still running Windows, right?

I truly don't think most people turn it off. The media has made people paranoid and more viruses and SPAM and scumware, etc...

Remember that E-mail i shared from my freind- her brother has his laptop hosed from an adult site- or so he thought. He'll never surf without NIS 2004 again.

I didn't know...but my Dad has this thing too. When I went to look at my site that is when I first saw no banners.

He's had it for about 6 mos now and it hasn't caused any problems. I know 'cos I'd have to fix them.

[Cleo]

You may be right.

One of these days you dad will use another computer and then wonder why his doesn't display everything, but until then he will not know any better.

I was at someone's home the other day, a Windows user, and I just wanted to grab the mouse out of their hand watching them use it. Instead of just clicking things to open them they would, very slowly, right mouse click and then chose open from the contextual menu. After they finished reading a page they would close IE and then go back to the desktop, right mouse click on IE, choose open, right mouse click on a link, choose open…

It was just painful to watch them. Kind of scary when you think that people like this also drive a car.

On a Mac Norton System Works is known for causing network problems and even kernel panics. I show up, do a search for anything with the name Norton in it and delete all of it and restart, then hand them a bill.

[Alphawolf]

Yep...I've watched too many people. They get used to doing things one way then it's habit.

I agree with you on Norton. On rare occasion I've installed Norton Utilities, run live update, run the scan and let it fix everything...then uninstall it. Not on my computer, but family members.

Most users do not know they need to update their computers.

My Aunt asked me to check out my cousins computer. A Windows ME Gateway. She had just 64MB ram and the latest edition of AOL uses about that.

I go to see if there are any updates she didn't have...and discovered she never once ran a Windows Update.

Even on a cable modem that was a _long_ time.

She also has Norton anti virus and that's good, but she never updated that either.

Oddly, people who buy computers think they should just work and that's that. Upgraded my cousin's system to 192MB RAM.

A woman at the tanning salon had a Win98SE custom machine. It had weird issues. Her niece downloaded some 'game' and there was scumware on the system.

Had to run SpyBot and reboot and run it again, modofy msconfig's start up, so that 2 billion programs didn't load on start up...

Again...ran windows update and she never knew she had to update stuff. Again- same with the virus program.

These sorts of users either have a computer for very specific things like AOL, printing pictures, E-mail. That's it.

My Father just downloads porn all day then views it. he doesn't even know how to serach for stuff, nor does he care.

The tanning salon lady (Donna would make a hot MILF...Mmmmm) turns it on maybe once a week to type stuff in MS WORD, maybe check E-mail which she stopped using due to spam, and search for practical stuff on thr web.

I gave her some tips and got 200 minutes of tanning for free.

My sister- again...never ran Windows update. Had to do that and run SpyBot to get rid of some shit. She uses AOL and PrintShop...that's it.

Oh, the tanning Salon's Father has a computer and she asked him if he knew he had to update Windows, and he never heard of it.

Multiply by millions and there ya have the average computer user.

[AcidMaX]

I also noticed while working on some people's paysites that it also strips the referer from the user. So if anyone is looking at the HTTP REFERER in the code it will not be there with the default settings of norton. I had to change some code around for one of the people I do programming for this week because of that. Norton screws with a lot of stuff, thats for sure.

Andy

[Cleo]

Maybe time for a class action suit against Norton?

I get e-mails from my submitters who can't get to my submit form because Norton strips out the referral which makes it impossible to get to my actually submit form which is protected by htaccess and just keeps on bumping you back to my rules page if it doesn't see a proper referral.

[AcidMaX]

Cleo try using a script that generates a unique password each day, then in your link pass that code to your submit page. If they match up you are good if not, then they dont see it. At least this way it can bypass the referer thing.

Yes the referer stuff is a pain in the ass, imagine all those plugin providers who work entirely off of referer. I bet a lot of paysite owners dont even know this is going on and their users are going to their plugins and not seeing crap. It's costing a lot of people money.

Andy

[Cleo]

Originally posted by AcidMaX
Cleo try using a script that generates a unique password each day, then in your link pass that code to your submit page. If they match up you are good if not, then they dont see it. At least this way it can bypass the referer thing.

Yeah my TGP script does that, wish my LL script did that and a bunch of other things that my TGP script does. Feeling bored and want to whip out a LL script?


I wonder how much money we are all losing due to Norton stripping out cookies and referrals?

[AcidMaX]

Originally posted by Cleo
Yeah my TGP script does that, wish my LL script did that and a bunch of other things that my TGP script does. Feeling bored and want to whip out a LL script?


I wonder how much money we are all losing due to Norton stripping out cookies and referrals?

I have been working on one for quite some time it runs http://www.smutlinks.net for me. List some requirements you guys want in a link list script and shoot it to me in email and I will add them to what I have and try to finish up the code.

Andy
webmaster@smutlinks.net

[Cleo]

AcidMaX
We had this discussion as we were choking on cigarette smoke in Vegas.

Anyway here is a thread already with a list of what we would like to see in a link list scrip.
http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...nk+list+script

[AcidMaX]

Originally posted by Cleo
AcidMaX
We had this discussion as we were choking on cigarette smoke in Vegas.

Anyway here is a thread already with a list of what we would like to see in a link list scrip.
http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...nk+list+script

I remember talking about it , but my brain doesnt remember specifics that far back, i should have written everything down.

[Surfn]

My NIS works perfectly If the user is too stupid or lazy to teach it what to do then they deserve what they get.

[Cleo]

Originally posted by Surfn
My NIS works perfectly If the user is too stupid or lazy to teach it what to do then they deserve what they get.

I remember that you were one of the submitters that couldn't figure out why you couldn't get to my submit form.

[AcidMaX]

Originally posted by Surfn
My NIS works perfectly If the user is too stupid or lazy to teach it what to do then they deserve what they get.

It could also quite well be affecting your income, who knows what some of these affiliate programs have in place for their hit tracking code. It could be knocking off hits/sales because its blocking data that should be sent to your affiliate links. Who knows!!