Using old antivirus programs?

[Comodore]

Hey guys,

Just a thought. Not that I myself do this:

Many people these days still use old versions of Norton, McAfee, and other such antivirus programs. Most of them are from 2002-2006. My question is, do these companies stop supporting their older virus programs at the end of a year, or when a new version comes out?

Are updates still released or is there some sort of cutoff date?

(Although I don't think it is...) Is it safe to protect yourself with, say, Norton 2005 or 2006 if you fully update it?

I'm curious because a lot of people do this, and my first instinct is that they are using "out of date virus protection." But are they really?

If they stopped paying for their subscription, do they stop updating? (I'm pretty sure they do, but I just want to double check)

If they pay for another year of service, does the program update itself to the newer version? (Say you pay for another year of Norton 2007. Does it remain Norton 2007 or roll over to Norton 2008?)

I usually am tempted to tell them to ditch the old stuff in favor of something newer- or as a stopgap (or temporary solution, if they are so inclined) to get AVG, Avast!, or Comodo antivirus (all free). I think this is a good idea anyways, but I just want to be a better troubleshooter.

Thanks for any and all help!

--The Comodore

[Suspishio]

Interesting question.

In my past experience (and I've dumped Norton as it's proved well below par where trojans are concerned), Norton supports there pas versions if you pay the renewal. At renewal time they offer upgrade at reduced price to the latest version.

McAfee (which I use), offer free version updates to subscription payers. It's also quite good with Trojab detection and nothing has ever got through to my system.

I use Kaspersky on the XP 64 system - I'm curious to see how that performs but haven't yet got to the renewal point.

PCs that come to me for disinfection are either running Norton, or the gamer has turned protection off for gaming, downloaded some crap having forgotton to turn protection back on. That was the case with my son's laptop. When we got McAfee to scan for the trojan, it found it but couldn't do anything about it as the trojan was running. When I slaved the HDD onto my own PC, I would have expected McAfee to have removed the trojan - but it didn't.

Good old SPYBOT and AVG found and removed them on different occasions. Now when disinfecting I use these two (which I don't keep running) for the specific task. I use them both.

So you've opened up a very interesting and useful topic.

[Comodore]

Thank you,

I agree about Norton and Mcafee. I have always loved Mcafee, it seems to be a very good protection choice, but its supposed to be similar to Norton in that it has bad detection ratings? Well, I don't believe that.

As for Norton, the newer versions are actually improving, but I still don't think its a good option. I like Kaspersky- which you're trying- you shouldn't have any problems with that.

Back on topic, thanks for your imput- its very useful. I remember rolling over with Mcafee but I don't recall how norton worked- which is what I am most interested in, because so many people use Norton!

Any and all insight is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again,

--The Comodore

[Comodore]

Just a thought... Is Norton the only one that has free trials/subscriptions that go out with store bought computer? (Though I think I've seen a few McAfees around) Do any other companies do that?

--The Comodore

[Aiden_2]

Oddly enough, I had a Compaq Presario machine from 2005 which had a recovery partition on the hard drive, so I ran the system recovery (about 7 years after the PC was bought) and up came Norton Internet Security 2005 with it's 60 subscription fully intact! I found this very odd, and presumed that the system clock was faulty, but later discovered that it was indeed fully functional and displaying the correct date. Obviously I got rid of it and installed a fresh copy of Avira Antivirus, which meets my needs just fine.