Norton Mobile Security - EPIC FAIL!

If someone was sitting on your face, you would probably notice it, but apparently that's not the case with Norton Mobile.  Just check out this screen shot of aggressive ad-ware sitting on the face of Norton Mobile.  Norton didn't see it when it invaded my phone.  Norton didn't see it when I ran a scan manually, and Norton didn't see it when the ad sat on its face!

I would like to tell you the saga of how I got infected and lessons learned.  It's a bit lengthy, but for those of you who might not not want to spend the time, I'll cut right to the chase. 

At $29.95 a year, Norton Mobile is probably one of the most expensive apps the average user will buy, but if you ask me it is a waste of money. For me, it performed woefully compared to SeCore Antivirus, which offers the lite version for FREE.

I also learned an important lesson about a very popular and highly rated free app, but you will have to read on to find out more about that.

It started about a week ago, when my phone began suffering from aggressive pop-ups that would show up at random times. There was on way to close the pop-ups and the ads would stay on the screen until you clicked on them.  When you clicked them one of a number of things would happen.  In once case, it would automatically, without my permission, download a app called Mobogenie.  In another case, it would to the glispa.com marketing website, which would immediately redirect me to to Google Play to download the software in the ad.  Other times it would go to a website or directly to Google Play.

The only real harm done was the time wasted in deleting Mobogie from the download folder and the process of backing out of the process and getting back to what you wanted to do on the phone.  Incidentally, if you don't delete Mobogenie, they will continue to back up in your download folder.

Yesterday, I went to the Norton website and started a chat with a support agent, a process that resulted in nothing but frustration.  After going through steps that I had already taken without the aid of the script he was probably using, his solution was to do a factory reset on my phone. 

I have 135 apps installed and I told him I didn't pay $29.95 to be told that the solution was to wipe a year's worth of software off my phone and then spend days reinstalling it. 

At that point, he said he would escalate my call to the next level tech support and that after 2 hours they would call me to solve my problem.  Here is that full chat LINK,  That was YESTERDAY and I did not receive a call.  Perhaps tech the next level support is on Venus.  A day there is 243 Earth days.  In that case, I can expect a call sometime after March 15th.

While I was waiting, I decided to look for other software that might solve my problem.  After downloading and trying a few, I found SeCore.  When I installed an ran a scan, it picked up one virus and eight pieces of aggressive ad-ware.

I allowed SeCore to remove the virus and questionable apps, and my problem was solved.  Right after posting this, I will remove Norton Mobile from my phone and upgrade to the full version  SeCore.

If Norton's second level tech support calls from Venus sometime after March 15, I may update this blog.  Until then, don't waste your money on Norton Mobile!