I just wanted to clear up some things about PIFTS.EXE.  I read a Most Interesting Article about this over at Bleeping Computers.  He talks about how tested this on his system and I’ll quote:

After reading about this file here and here, I asked around on BleepingComputer.com for one of our users to submit a sample of the file to me. Once I received the file, I ran it on a test box while running a file monitor, to see what it accesses, and Wireshark, to see what it does on the network. What I found was that the program appears to be quite innocent, and from the hostname it connects to, we could have guessed as to what it does. It appears that when you update Norton it connects to stats.norton.com and lets the server know someone has installed an update, what the update was, what program it was for, and whether it was successful. Now, I am not saying that Norton should be contacting one of their servers and reporting this type of information without a user’s permission or even knowledge, but there is no conspiracy theory between Norton, Google, Microsoft, African Nations, and little green men.

[Via Bleeping Computers]

[ad#cricket-right-ez]So Let’s Talk about this a little more, It does connect to stats.norton.com and tell norton that it it has installed the update.  Like he says, I agree although Notron isn’t trying to be the bad guy. I, like everyone else, also thought something was amiss when they started deleting forums post.  Instead of locking them down.  You see it makes them look suspicious and that started a flurry of people posting about this.  I do know they should of been truthful from the get go.  I just heard about this today and wanted to remind people that I meant what I said.  Don’t go overboard because your think your trust with a company was mislead. You know that they have to protect their service to prevent unauthorized access to there software and get what money they deserve.  However They should of been open from the start with this on there main page or in the forums talking about how this happened in the first place.

In Symantec’s defense, when I first heard about this earlier this morning, I noted privately to a couple of folks that some of the comments being left on the Symantec forum bore many of the hallmarks of “4Chan,” (a.k.a. “anonymous”), a virtual community that thrives on playing practical jokes and causing trouble online. The summary about this incident posted to News-for-nerds site Slashdot this morning links to a key 4Chan forum.

[Via Bleeping Computers]

Now they couldn’t say something like this either in there forums as a sticky note or on there Website?  This was why they started to delete the forum threads without telling anyone what happened.  I understand they have the right to delete what they want when they want, it was probably an over zealous moderator.  I wanted to clear this up a little so the virus theories and the conspiracy theories would go away.   I know some website are being over zealous over this and claiming it is doing things it isn’t.  I was just trying to inform but others seemed to run with it and come up with all kinds of theories.  So please let’s take a deep breathe and understand that you have several options as to what you want to do.  I haven’t recommended people removing Norton, and I still don’t recommend removing from your system.  I will always tell people that there is Free versions of Anti-virus and Firewalls available.    Like I said in my previous post these were post made by people on the forums and I was taking screen shots to proof that there was something going on.

I hope this clarify what is going on with Norton Antivirus. I’ll still recommend it for people who can afford it, because it does a good job on anti-virus.

[READ More about this at Symantec]

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