Norton Internet Security 2012 3User

 Norton Internet Security 2012 3User

Norton Internet Security 2012 3User

Product Features

• Norton Protection System: Provides industry-leading security with four unique layers of powerful protection proven to proactively stop online threats before they can infect your computer.


• Insight: Stops new online threats before they can cause you trouble by checking where files came from and how long they have been around.


• Download Insight 2.0: Protects you from dangerous applications before you install them by telling you if they are harmful or unstable.


• Norton Safe Web: Proactively protects you while you surf the Web by warning of and blocking unsafe and fake websites right in your search results


• Norton Management: is cloud based so you can download, install, transfer, update or renew Norton products from anywhere right over the internet.


• Network mapping and monitoring; antispam; smart firewall


• Online identity protection; parental controls management


• Social network protection; browser protection; phishing protection


• Stops viruses and spyware before they reach your computer


• Superior protection with fast scan speeds and low impact on PC performance

Norton Internet Security 2012 3User 


Norton Internet Security 2012 3User 

Symantec’s Insight Protection system draws on data from the huge community of Norton users to make reputation judgments about unknown code as it arrives on your system. It’s a clever idea: unfortunately, in our tests, it wasn’t enough to put Norton on top, leaving it with a detection score of 96%. Still, that’s respectable, and Norton’s long history of high scores is encouraging. It also gave the green light to all our harmless false-positive processes.

What troubles us is the user interface, which follows the style introduced in the 2010 edition. We found it cluttered then, and two years of upgrades haven’t helped. It’s overloaded with switches, links, buttons, tabs and gimmicks such as an Activity Map, which shows “worldwide cybercrime for the last 24 hours”. A less practical use of pixels we can hardly imagine.



This isn’t merely an aesthetic issue. The main features are reasonably easy to locate, but adjusting the program’s many settings and finding one’s way around is frustratingly illogical and inconsistent. It isn’t even clear from the interface exactly what’s included: click on Mobile Security, Online Family or Online Backup, and you’ll be invited to install or sign up to other services.

There are good features in here. Network management lets you keep an eye on all your Norton-protected PCs. Identity Safe lets you store passwords in the cloud, so you can log into all your secure sites from any Norton-equipped computer.



The Startup Manager and application monitor make use of the same community monitoring data as the Insight Protection system. This means users can view running applications, and also get an idea of how common and well trusted each process is – handy for identifying rogue software.

Norton Internet Security was once known as a bloated suite, but this 2012 edition added an unremarkable 209MB to our test system’s memory footprint – only 22MB above this month’s average – and raised boot time by one second. A quick system scan took 32 seconds, but this should be irrelevant as Norton scans your PC automatically whenever it’s idle. All told, it’s a well-featured and effective security suite. For £25 a year, though, we expect something nicer to use.

Norton Internet Security 2012 3User Products Reviews