Author Topic: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam  (Read 27621 times)

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Offline suicidal_orange

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Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« on: Sat, 11 December 2021, 13:20:05 »
The first I heard from "Norton Lifelock" was an e-mail notification that my subscription would auto renew - I don't have a subscription so flagged it as spam and thought no more of it.

A couple of days later I got another e-mail, then another, then another and finally today one that has my name in it.  Not that impressive as any human could see it in my e-mail address, but enough that I searched for Norton Lifelock scam and found this page all about scams with an absurdly long list of domains "official" domains unsolicited e-mails could come from.  All have come from domains on this list.  I then followed the link to "manage my account" and chose forgot password and sure enough I got an e-mail to change my password.

Next step search for "Norton Antivirus" which I know is real.  The site looks the same, there's no mention of "Lifelock" anywhere in the products page but in my NoScript list it is mentioned.  The company details and issuer on the SSL certificates also match.

Does anyone know if Norton Lifelock actually exist or is this just an elaborate scam?  I can't help wondering if it's related to the e-mails I've been getting for years from Australian universities asking me to cover lectures at short notice (which I have always ignored!)
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Offline fohat.digs

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Re: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« Reply #1 on: Sat, 11 December 2021, 13:27:28 »
Back in the pre-Windows days of DOS, Norton Utilities was amazing and I crowed about its value to anybody who was curious.

I probably used it for a while after Windows came around, but it had lost a lot of its luster. And it seemed to have become bloated and hogged resources, so I ditched it in the early-2000s and have generally ignored it ever since.

It is particularly ironic and disappointing when anti-malware products become magnets for the garbage that they are supposedly protecting against.
"It turns out that for a decade, whenever Trump wanted to get a loan, or make a deal, he would inflate the value of his real estate. For instance, suggesting that his 11,000-square foot penthouse was a 30,000-square foot penthouse.
And the attorney general of New York knew that Trump's property values were inflated because when it came time to pay taxes, Trump undervalued the very same properties.
It was all part of a very sophisticated real estate practice known as “lying.”
- Jon Stewart 2024-03-28

Offline Leslieann

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Re: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« Reply #2 on: Sat, 11 December 2021, 14:53:29 »
Norton Lifelock is what Symantec (parent company of Norton) rebranded itself to.

That said, this sort of email could be a fishing scam and why companies initially* moved to 2 factor authentication (2FA). They send tons of emails, you click the link to log in and fail, they now have an email and password you've used in the past, possibly with that company, they can then use those credentials to log into that site, or better still, use a pass through.  They did this to one of the first banks to implement 2FA claiming it was foolproof, I believe it was Bank of America (BofA). How it worked was you went to a scam site/domain linked in the email which loaded BofA in the background and you put your credentials into the fake site which put them into BofA, including the 2fa code you entered and told you it failed, running you in circles while it drained your account. This is why you never click email links before logging in, ESPECIALLY IF YOU USE Microsoft products (F-U Microsoft for hiding extensions and links you incompetent morons!), go to the website you know is the right one then log in.



*2FA can work if used properly but it rarely actually is, in reality it's nearly useless and mostly a scam.
Not only are many companies are using it for data harvesting under the guide or security, but if you are using a phone to log in, and they send you 2FA key to said phone you just destroyed the whole point of having a 2nd factor. The second factor needs to be a secondary system completely disconnected from the first in order to actually work. Worse still, why in god's name would you use the device you log in with and the most easily stolen thing you posses being used as your 2 factor?

And have you ever lost your phone and had to rest your 2FA on an account, what an absolute nightmare. I had an update that wiped my phone (it had an issue), to reset my 2FA on a bank account they wanted to place a 2 week(!) hold on my money. Luckily I had a secondary "key" to bypass the 2fa and reset it without a 2 week wait but not all companies do this. When i created those keys I forgot I even had them and had to get with support before I even realized I had them at all since the account was so old.

Some companies also lead you in circles, you can't change email without a 2fa, but you can't create a 2fa without a working email on the account, so if you rejected using 2fa your account was effectively screwed if you lost access to that email account.  This happened to me with a gaming account.
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Offline suicidal_orange

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Re: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« Reply #3 on: Sat, 11 December 2021, 15:34:31 »
Norton Lifelock is what Symantec (parent company of Norton) rebranded itself to.
Thanks, that makes sense.  Seems they cheaped out and didn't change the logo (or I'm looking at fake sites...)

The fishing scam was my first thought and why I ignored it but I'm all the more confused that the password reset request on what I believe to be the real site (found via search not a link in the e-mail) worked.  I have not clicked the link in that e-mail either as I haven't used Norton for 15 years and it was never on this account but they sent it.

I do nothing important on my phone (when it works) so it's a reasonable 2FA, just texted codes so loosing it wouldn't be that fatal as I'd just get a new sim.  I may be dragged into the modern world where phones rule life but will resist as long as possible.
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Offline fohat.digs

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Re: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« Reply #4 on: Sat, 11 December 2021, 19:50:22 »
I moved (back) to a new (old) city in a different state last year and got a new cell phone with a local number.

Boy-O did that ever slam doors on me when I went back to accounts or sites that I hadn't visited in a while.

"It turns out that for a decade, whenever Trump wanted to get a loan, or make a deal, he would inflate the value of his real estate. For instance, suggesting that his 11,000-square foot penthouse was a 30,000-square foot penthouse.
And the attorney general of New York knew that Trump's property values were inflated because when it came time to pay taxes, Trump undervalued the very same properties.
It was all part of a very sophisticated real estate practice known as “lying.”
- Jon Stewart 2024-03-28

Offline suicidal_orange

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Re: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« Reply #5 on: Sun, 12 December 2021, 02:41:07 »
I moved (back) to a new (old) city in a different state last year and got a new cell phone with a local number.

Boy-O did that ever slam doors on me when I went back to accounts or sites that I hadn't visited in a while.
Your cell phone numbers are geographical?!  Another strangeness of living in such a huge country I guess.  Here they were assigned by network but you can transfer your number to another network so even that isn't reliable.  I get scams aimed at users of the network my number came from which is a good flag to ignore them.  Had this number for 15 years, I still use one e-mail account that's older but nothing used them back then.  Back in those days a single word password was considered secure - good times!
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Offline fohat.digs

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Re: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« Reply #6 on: Sun, 12 December 2021, 09:03:34 »

Your cell phone numbers are geographical?


In the US numbers are 3-3-4 where the first 3 are the "area code" and the 2nd 3 is the "exchange"

When phones really started becoming common, say, after WW2, an area code was often an entire state, or a large chunk of a larger state. An exchange, back then, might serve a small-to-medium city or county (counties here are much smaller than yours). Exchanges had names, for example, our exchange was the "Walnut" exchange so our number started with "WA" (~WA6=926). When I was very young, in the 1950s, you only had to dial the last 4 digits for a local call. (Also, you could also mail a local letter with a street address followed by the mere word "City"!)

Obviously, we quickly outgrew those limits, but the exchange names lingered (WAlnut 8 (=928) was added but it was still colloquially called Walnut), but now you had to dial 3+4 instead of just the last 4.

The same thing happened with area codes. When we moved back to Atlanta in the early-1990s the entire region was in the 404 area code and you could dial 3+4. Mid-1990 the center of the metro area kept 404 but the suburbs were peeled off and changed to area code 770, and 706 wrapped around that. Now you had to dial 3+3+4 anywhere in the area. Within a very few years area code 678 was layered on top of both 404 and 770, you get the idea, you can keep layering both exchange numbers and area codes. Today, your cell phone numbers are "portable" so that you can move across the country and not lose your number.

But the "feeling" of place remains and I intend to stay in my new location permanently. So I want my number to appear local rather than have people look at it and think, "Oh, he really lives in the Atlanta area"
"It turns out that for a decade, whenever Trump wanted to get a loan, or make a deal, he would inflate the value of his real estate. For instance, suggesting that his 11,000-square foot penthouse was a 30,000-square foot penthouse.
And the attorney general of New York knew that Trump's property values were inflated because when it came time to pay taxes, Trump undervalued the very same properties.
It was all part of a very sophisticated real estate practice known as “lying.”
- Jon Stewart 2024-03-28

Offline suicidal_orange

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Re: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« Reply #7 on: Mon, 26 December 2022, 16:53:10 »
These e-mails never stopped and today I got one which does have my name in but says I've been charged on a card ending in a number that doesn't match any of mine.  I guess tomorrow I get the "payment failed, please enter your details" and scam is confirmed but I'm surprised how long a game they're playing - I've had at least an e-mail a week for the entire year.
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Offline John McCormick

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Re: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« Reply #8 on: Mon, 26 December 2022, 18:45:55 »
a combination of lots of firefox add ons like ghostery, tron script to clean up very once in a while, microsofts new winget package manager to safely get verified copies of software works good for me.

Offline Leslieann

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Re: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« Reply #9 on: Mon, 26 December 2022, 23:37:38 »
Ghostery blocks ads, but it tracks and sells your info to marketers.
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Offline suicidal_orange

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Re: Is Norton Lifelock real or a scam
« Reply #10 on: Thu, 29 December 2022, 05:18:12 »
"Norton" seem quite happy with my account and continue to send me info e-mails :confused:

Has my identity already been stolen and this subscription is someone's idea of a joke?  Might actually have to take a look at credit score stuff...
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