Suspicious Norton 360 Popup Message?

VPN
1

Hi all, hoping somebody here can offer some insight into something I’ve been seeing on my laptop recently.

I have a persistent popup message that says, “This network has weak password. Turn on VPN…” I can’t remember the rest of the message text, but that’s how it starts.

I’m concerned for two reasons. 1)That message pops up a lot, and keeps reappearing, moreso than any other Norton popup messages, and 2)The first sentence of the message is doesn’t use ‘technically correct’ english, as if it were written by somebody who did not use english as their first language. Nothing against that; but it seems that almost every scam email I’ve ever received has this trait.

After I did a quick google search I didn’t see anything related to this. Also, all updates are installed on my computer, and a full scan didn’t reveal anything.

Hopefully this is nothing; but I thought I’d reach out to the smart people on this board to get your thoughts and insights. Thanks in advance either validating or refuting my concerns.

2

the real question is why are you using Norton?

3

Yeah, that popup is annoying. If you don’t want/need Norton’s VPN, you can turn off the notification by going to: Your Norton account on your device’s app (if Norton is set to open the My Norton window, then select “Open” for Device Security, at top); click on the search icon; enter “notification”; a list of various notifications pops up, select to turn off “Intrusion Prevention Notifications.” That’s it!

Re. Norton being a bad/weak or otherwise insufficient security program, I couldn’t disagree more vehemently. I’ve been in IT since 1987 (Norton has been around almost that long) and worked closely with various security admins.

Norton’s products have rated in the top three security programs pretty much ever since they started on all major review and tech sites (PC, CNET, Tom’s, Maximum PC/PC Gamer–yeah, I know they are defunct–Techradar, ad nauseam). I trust these sites much more than the ad hoc, personal reports of who-the-heck-knows who is posting here or elsewhere.

While Kaspersky and Bitdefender tend, in the past several years, to also rank in the top three, I’d go with either Bitdefender or Norton; though Bitdefender is engineered in Romania as opposed to Norton/NortonLifeLock/Symantic being USA bred. McAfee has been around awhile and sometimes makes it into the top three, but it’s too irregular for me—some iterations over the years have not been very reliable. And Kaspersky comes out of Moscow, you know, Russia. Sorry, but that sends up a red flag for me. There’s so much state-sponsored, and otherwise, hacking coming out of Russia, I feel disinclined to put my trust there.

Are there viable free alternatives? Sure: AVG, Avira, Avast, and Bitdefender (not necessarily in that order) all have free versions that most reviews have indicated are viable. If you’re on a Windows system, MS has come a long way with their native Defender system.

All that said, you do sacrifice the more complete and well-supported protection that a paid-for solution offers. But if the 30 or 40 bucks a year is too hard on yr budget, free is good!

4

It might be a phishing notification that comes from your browsers. Follow these steps:

1- If you don’t have really important informations, you can delete all cookies, turn off all notifications and delete all browsing history.

2- Use HitmanPro and make a second opinion scan. But do not delete suspicious files on System32 because they are propably system files. I deleted an .exe file and my PC was broken lmfao.

3- If you use Norton you are not really safe. Norton is really bad at dedections. My recommendation is KSC Free. Easy, light, useful and effective. (I am using trendmicro cuz I paid a lot of money lol)

5

Do you have weak password for your WiFi? Could just be them (poorly) advertising their VPN.

6

I get this popup message as well. It seems like they’re trying to sell me on their VPN. And how would they know I have a weak password on my wifi? Are they hacking me?

7

I’m just learning that. I’ll be changing to one of the recommendations on this board shortly.

8

Thanks. I performed steps 1 and 2, and nothing suspicious was found. I’ll be switching away from Norton ASAP.

9

Avast free is very good, KSC free isn’t a bad choice either

10

These people don’t know what they’re talking about, ksc and Norton are among top, they just talk about the old Norton because they had problems with the software years ago, the new software is perfectly fine the people telling you to switch haven’t used it either in a long time or never used it and read comments too much on Reddit.

Use whatever av is good for you, but Norton or ksc or wd with configure defender are all perfectly fine. People on this sub you need to watch out here for, a lot of them don’t really know what they’re truly talking about they just read someone else’s comment , and go with it ahah. Been on this sub long enough to know. Although there is some people who have some cyber or it knowledge.

People recommend what others want to say, it’s all hype really but if you’re in the it field you’ll know what ones are used the most, as someone who works on azure servers too, windows defender has a bad wrap around here when I know tons of enterprises that use windows defender or Norton , we use Norton and kaspersky on our clients, both have been no issue what so ever, they might be slightly better are certain things, but in general it’s not enough to notice really much truthfully.