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

Getting Started

When NIS 2001 Family Edition starts for the first time it asks you to create a supervisor account and eventually accounts for other family members such as children, teenagers… Once this is done a small NIS 2001 icon appears in the tray notification area of Windows (near the windows clock on the taskbar). When you double click on this icon the NIS 2001 main window appears: as you can see it’s fully integrated with Norton System Works 2001 due to its full support of the new Norton Symmetry technology. (Note: that if Norton System Works 2001 is not installed on your system, the setup asks you if you want to enable integration or not and when you install SystemWorks 2001, NIS will automatically integrate to the default main SystemWorks window). The graphic user interface of NIS 2001 has been streamlined compared to the previous release 2.0 and adopts the new blue look and feel of SystemWorks 2001. The user interface of NIS is clear and useful for all kinds of users. Now you should set your privacy and security levels at your convenience. Be careful if you set this levels to High you’ll be prompted each time you visit a web site to create new firewall rules. The medium settings are the best compromise between security and ease of use. The status tab of NIS reports quickly all the blocked and allowed information that NIS monitors for every category. A click on the arrow next to each category will show you exactly what was blocked or allowed. New to Norton Internet Security 2001 is the fact that when you’re attacked by an hacker the red “!” is blinking on the NIS icon of the Windows tray area.
   

Norton Internet Security 2001 GUI (integrated to SystemWorks 2001)
  

How It Works?

In fact NIS 2001 provides a barrier named a firewall between your computer and the Internet. It’s a filter that blocks or enables connections and data transfers in both directions. This firewall will protect users’ data and privacy. Each time you visit a new website, NIS will automatically create firewall rules but you can also create your own security rules. When NIS 2001 encounters a new figure case it may prompt you to define a rule to always authorize or block an application that uses the Internet.
  

What it does

The Norton Privacy Control module of Norton internet Security 2001 will block your privacy information that you don’t want to share or to see transferred on the net without your approval such as your email address, your postal address, your phone number and it’ll prevent other users to give private information without your authorization such as your Credit Card number. It really works since for example if a website form asks you your phone number and if you type it when NIS is running, NIS will ask you if you want to send this confidential data.

While you’re at work, the Norton Parental Control module will prevent children to access potential harmful risk websites (like pornographic ones or ones that contain objectionable material) or even chat software (as well as email software: you can tweak easily this setting). To do so you have to create multiple users accounts with different privileges: each account has got its own password so each family member can access the part of the net he is authorized to. Once you’re back you can switch back to your supervisor account to get full access to the net.
   

Norton Internet Security 2001 Accounts Manager
  

Norton Internet Security comes with a one year of free updates to ensure that you’ve always got the latest ‘Black web site list’ thanks to its LiveUpdate technology. You can also specify manually which websites are allowed or blocked. NIS can also regulate the emission of cookies or definitely block them, but with this feature enabled a lot of websites will refuse to work, as they required a cookie to save users preferences… (Cookies can be tracked with Norton CleanSweep 2001).

Your safety is the most important thing so NIS protects you from malicious Internet ActiveX controls or Java applets by monitoring them and eventually asking you if you want to run these applets each time you visit a website that uses this technology. But once again if this feature is enabled your Internet experience won’t be convenient as it’ll display rules configuration wizards asking you what to do for each Active X applet that is detected.

As it comes with the latest version 2001 of Norton Antivirus, your incoming emails will be scanned to check that they don’t contain any viruses… But be careful because you have to often run LiveUpdate to retrieve the latest virus definition updates: indeed new email worm viruses appear each day…

Norton Internet Security 2001 has a unique feature that will prevent websites to display banners, adds, or popup windows to speed up your Internet connection. If you turn it on most of the time you won’t see them automatically and when it doesn’t work you can drag the banner to the NIS trashcan. It’s a useful feature that really changes the way you surf the web.
 

Norton Internet Security 2001 Ad Manager
 

By blocking and monitoring all the outbound Internet ports, Norton Internet Security will protect you from hackers’ attacks. When you’re attacked you’ll receive an ALERT message telling you that someone is trying to hack your computer. This feature is really useful for high-speed connection users: xDSL, cable. It also blocks Back Orifice Trojan attacks. NIS allows advanced & expert users to define advanced opt ions such as the authorized HTTP ports, the firewall rules and much, much more…
  

Norton Internet Security 2001 Alert box