Norton "month in advance" renewal charges

[Xenophon PCDGS]

My package runs until mid-February 2025, but they have notified me they will be taking payment mid-January 2025. Are they in desperate financial straits that they have to do this?

 

[jfollows]

My package runs until mid-February 2025, but they have notified me they will be taking payment mid-January 2025. Are they in desperate financial straits that they have to do this?

Honestly, ditch it, it’s a solution looking for a problem.

I understand your reasoning and motivation, but you don’t need it. Back up your important files and get on with your life. Sure, what’s important? Not a lot in reality. Anything you can’t recreate. Put your important files on something like Dropbox and duplicate them on a different computer. Then you have a version on a second computer as well as in the ‘cloud’. If they’re not important enough to have a second computer, then work out its cost versus paying Norton £££ all the time.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Dec 2024 ==

All I suggest is that you think about what’s really important on your computer, which won’t be much but will be your personal files, and make copies of them. All the rest can go to hell and you won’t care. You can re-install Word/Excel/etc on a new computer, which can read your personal files. Don’t believe the scare-mongers who want money from you on a dodgy premise.

To put it another way, you need to own that data you store on your computer, and stop trusting a third party to look after it, which they won’t. And, yes, my degree is in Computer Science so I may not be a “normal” user but I believe my advice to be good nonetheless.

Ultimately, of course, the choice is yours. My advice is free but with no responsibility. Norton wants your money but offers some corporate responsibility in return.

 

[Kite159]

Also as it's Norton check how much they want for the renewal compared to buying a new copy of the software from Amazon (etc).

 

[najaB]

Are they in desperate financial straits that they have to do this?

No, not really. It's quite common in the industry now to bill a month in advance.

 

[66701GBRF]

save yourself some money and ditch Norton and stick with Windows Defender. Never had a problem with windows built in anti virus.

 

[Trackman]

save yourself some money and ditch Norton and stick with Windows Defender. Never had a problem with windows built in anti virus.

I second this.
Might be worth doing a forum poll to see what people are using.

 

[Flying Snail]

Norton and McAfee, I wouldn't use either even if they paid.

 

[GusB]

I don't see the point in paying for the likes of Norton when there have been decent free alternatives around for years. I used to use AVG, but I've been using Windows Defender for a few years without any issues.

Having been called upon to fix various slow-running computers over the years, I found that by far the biggest culprit was Norton, although other security "suites" were almost as bad.

 

[barringtoncem]

I use the Which recommended free Bit Defender which runs in the background and will inform you of any sites which are not safe or have out of date security certifcates

 

[najaB]

I use the Which recommended free Bit Defender which runs in the background and will inform you of any sites which are not safe or have out of date security certifcates

To be fair, pretty much every modern browser will warn you of unsafe sites and all will throw an error on invalid certs for HTTPS connections.

Where "invalid" means both out of date, as well as those that don't pass HSTS validation.

 

[TheSmiths82]

In the early days of the world wide web and the internet an external anti virus program was very important as operating systems were insecure. These days the built in Windows Defender is more than good enough. The operating systems are much more secure. I used to be an IT tech and viruses were a very common issue but since 64-bit operating systems I have never seen a rootkit or proper virus. It is all just trivial malware which stuff like Norton was useless at dealing with anyway.

It is just snake oil these days. I would be much more concerned about making sure your data is backed up.