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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 featuresNorton 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.
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