Product: Norton Internet Security 2001 - Family Edition
Company: Symantec
Website: http://www.symantec.com
Estimated Street Price: $79.95
Review By: Julien JAY

Advanced Features

Norton Internet Security 2001 allows advanced & expert users to define advanced options such as the authorized HTTP ports, the firewall rules and much more… Users are guided step by step to create new rules and when a rule alert appears when for example you try for the first time to update your Microsoft Money online financial data users are prompted to create a new rule for this event in order to prevent the alert to be redisplayed each time they use Money. Concerning the updates Norton Internet Security 2001 should be updated on a regular basis in order to make sure you’ve got the latest protection rules, minor patches, etc. So it comes with a one year of free updates subscription you can retrieve using the brand new version 1.6 of LiveUpdate. After that you’ll have to pay the sum of $6.95 to renewal your subscription.

Report Features

NIS will report in a very accurate and complete window all your Internet security statistics (blocked websites, blocked pictures…) as shown below (you’ll be able to print them). It tracks every Internet connection, every visited websites, every program that uses Internet such as Microsoft Outlook, MS Money and much more… Every attack attempt is saved along with the IP address of the hacker. However, Norton Internet Security 2001 can’t trace the IP address itself so you’ll have to trace it using third party program.

    

Norton Internet Security 2001 Report Window
       
  

Norton Internet Security 2001 Family Edition also includes a complete statistic module that'll record all networks connections, transfer speed, blocked websites and more! You can easily consult the accurate statistics while you're offline.
                   

Norton Internet Security 2001 Statistics Window
              

Is It Useful?

Norton Internet Security 2001 really works and protects you, your children and your family from all the Internet threats. It’s not a ‘NoBo’ like program… NIS is better than for example CyberPatrol to filter web sites, more it really protects your privacy and once again this works! If you try to send private information that you have defined NIS will block them until you’re agree to send them. All Internet users, from the cool surfer to the passionate one should use it and particularly those with cable or ADSL connections.

Real Tests
  

To ensure that Norton Personal Internet Security 2001 is a high quality product, we tested it by connecting a machine to the Net and trying to hack it using various methods. The first thing we noticed is that Norton Internet Security 2001 really monitors every of your current running software that may access the Internet connection without your knowledge and alert you. Indeed we've seen that Microsoft Windows Media Player 7 may tries to connect to the net to check for updates without you even asked it to do so: in that case Norton asks you what to do and if it should permit or not this network communication. We repeated the test with Napster (here if someone is trying to pickup a MP3 file on your computer Norton Internet Security gives you an alert asking what to do), PC-Cillin (viruses updates), Copernic 2000 Pro, CuteFTP 4, FrontPage 2000, and many other software like the MSN Zone games  (chess, checkers, etc.) and Norton Internet Security 2001 each time warns us about the fact that a software is trying to use our connection. Sure you can create rules that will always authorize this network communications in order to avoid multiple alerts. Wide used and safe recognized programs like AOL 5.0 are instantly recognized so Norton Internet Security 2001 automatically creates a rule to allow every connection using AOL.  Concerning the hack problem the first thing we have tested is a basic treat: we enable the Windows Folders sharing feature and we attempted to connect to the machine using its IP address and the name of the shared folder: when we tried to pick up a file or to remove one on the Norton protected PC, we were instantly alerted about the fact that someone was trying to access the computer (sure you can decide to authorize or not this communication). Then we tested Norton Internet Security with serious tools that serious hackers used to pirate a computer. We first ping our Norton Protected PC using BO2k and the software displays a security alert on the remote PC that prevent us to reach it. Every security alert event is logged in a text file you can later consult. The log also contains the IP address of the machine that tried to ping you. Using Trojans horses programs like SubSeven, Backdoor we were unable to access the Norton protected PC as Norton Internet Security 2001 always detect our numerous attempts to hack it. Last thing we did is to test the firewall with some programs that aren't malicious ones but that require an Internet connection to display advertisement banner: for PKZip we were instantly alerted as well as for DAP (Download Accelerator Plus). However this wasn't the case for FileFerret a freeware that displays ads: however the treat isn't harmful so we don't blame Norton Internet Security to not alert users for this outbound. Finally at the privacy level we were impressed by the Norton Internet Security 2001 ability to really protect our privacy by blocking some cookies, hiding email address, etc. Using this features and by completing the data to protect form we were able to access almost all our usual websites we like except one. If you asked Norton Internet Security to protect your phone number and if you type it in a web form to send it over the net you'll receive an alert asking what to do. In conclusion our test results are more than good and show that Norton Internet Security 2001 has a very good built engine and that its sensibility isn't too marked in order to avoid annoying user by detecting false treats.
  

Compatibility
   

Even if Norton Internet Security 2001 is a great software it may block a few web sites you’re trying to visit without displaying any error message or letting Microsoft Internet Explorer saying that there’s a website error. In that case you have to close NIS and you’ll be able to display correctly the web site. This is to our point of view a very bothering issue. Although we have seen that the software may “slow-down” some websites.