I have long taken joy in removing Norton products from client machines simply because of the performance drain and the aggressive invasive nature of the software.  i now have a new reason.  Norton is now bundling the Ask.com toolbar with their security product.  Ask.com is long known as a toolbar that aggressively changes system settings and search traffic to their own servers.  They also have been known to show their ads on websites overriding anything else.

I have a client machine here that had a monitor smokecheck and luckily it was only the monitor.  I cleaned out the dust from the interior of the machine and fired it up and saw ask.com(relabeled by Norton) pop when I fired up the browser.  Norton as usual refused to uninstall so I am having to use their uninstallation tool to forcibly remove what has become(in my eyes) a parasite.  It is a sad day when a name like Norton has been co-opted to now install one of the shadiest “search” vendors around.  If you have Norton internet Security or any other Norton “security” product on your machine make sure you have not been co-opted into the ask system.  If you have it’s time to switch to a security company who is really interested in your security.  ETC Maryland has a stable of trustworthy security products to help secure your systems.  Contact me to see how you can be secure without having somebody looking over your shoulder.