Norton Confidential plug-in crashing Chrome

[Lowfellboy]

Hello all, help or advice please.

Has any one had problems with the above. I have done a search on this forum but cannot find anything.

Basically I upgraded from NIS 2011 to 2012, and ever since when using Chrome I have had the following message...Norton Confidential Plug in failed.... and Chrome freezes, not all the time but enough to curse the screen.

Apparantley Norton are aware of this but have passed the blame to Google Chrome.

 

Thanks in advance

[wellies]

I'm not familiar with Norton Confidential and had to read about it so see what it does. I do use NIS 2012 however and wonder if there might be a conflict with between the two programs. I don't get any problems with running NIS 2012 with Chrome. As far as I can tell, Norton Confidential only doubles up on what NIS does. Using both shouldn't be necessary and doing so could be causing the problem. An aspect worth looking into anyway.

 

Have you only read about Norton being aware of this problem, or actually asked the question on the Norton forum? If you haven't asked the question there, it might be good to do so. It is the best place to go for advice about Norton if your preference is to keep using it.

[Jelly Bean]

Have you fully updated Norton?

 

However your not alone on this,I can see many are having issues with NIS 2012 and so far Norton has NOT found a fix or an update....

 

Norton is working on a fix.

[Lowfellboy]

Many thanks for the replies, my subscription is about to expire with NIS, any ideas on another provider, for example McAfee.

Thanks again

[wellies]

Lots of free alternatives are available and I'm sure recommendations will made on them by others. I like security suites myself and have tried 3 different ones out lately. One of these was the Comodo Security Suite (free). This is thought not to have great detection rates but Comodo points out that it's protection that matters and they reckon the suite is better at that than others. That might be the case. It is OK to use anyway, Much better than it used to be in my opininion. There is no computer idle-time scan like some of the other AV programs have so it's not quite as 'set and forget' as NIS (for instance).

 

BitDefender always gets very good detection rate figures on AV testing sites. It comes out well as regard false positive instances too. It uses more memory than Norton does but that doesn't matter providing you have enough of it. I tried BitDefender a few years ago and it slowed my computer right down. The 2012 version didn't do that. The suite includes its own site rating function (like WOT) and this works with IE, Firefox, Chrome and Opera. A good suite and not that expensive if you shop around.

 

Kaspersky is another that I tried. It gets good reviews as regards detection rates and false positive figures. This uses a bit more in resources than NIS too but again, it didn't slow the computer down. It also has it's own WOT-like site rating function but this didn't seem to work with Opera.

 

I think I could use any of these suites quite happily but decided to go back to NIS in the end. It seems to have a lot going for it in my opinion and I don't always see why people say it is so bad. It's all about experiences and preferences though and I know that many have had poor experiences with Norton in earlier years. This seems to have set the opinion for life. Mud sticks, even though the versions from 2009 onwards have been much better. The fact that Norton Confidential is giving a problem doesn't mean to say that NIS must be changed too but there is plenty of choice of both free and paid programs if that's what you decide to do. My choice would be one of the above because, having read about and tried many free and paid products, I reckon these are best.

 

The only thing I would say is not to rely solely on any AV program or security suite. Use other layers too. I always recommend Sandboxie for good protection. This, NIS, and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware does it for me. One more addition that has absolutely no overhead. You could change your DNS server to one that offers the filtering of malicious sites. Comodo, OpenDNS and Norton DNS all offer this. All you have to do to use one of them is change some numbers. No installation of anything is necessary.

Edited March 21, 2012 by wellies

[wellies]

I have to say I'm a bit confused about what Norton Confidential actually is. As said earlier, I had never heard of it before reading about it here and then, over on the Norton forum after reading Jelly Bean's post. Research made it look as if it is a separate product ..until eventually coming across this.

 

http://www.norton-security-store.com/products-norton/norton-confidential.html

 

Then it starts to look like it is part of the 2012 suite that is only referred to as 'Norton Confidential' as part of a crash message. Whenever I've had need of the Norton Forum, the extensions that the suite adds to browsers have always been referred to as 'the Norton toolbar' (I normally hide it) and depending on the browser:

 

* Firefox: Norton Vulnerability Protection.

* Internet Explorer: Norton Identity Protection and Norton Vulnerability Protection.

* Chrome: The password safe, site rating function and the toolbar are rolled into one under the name of 'Norton Identity Protection' (the toolbar can be hidden whilst keeping the other functions working).

 

Now I read about many people getting a crash with Norton Confidential, which it seems doesn't exist any more according to the link above. It can only mean the extension, normally called 'Norton Identity Protection', is causing the crash but since the message mentions 'Norton Confidential', people start calling it that? I really wouldn't know for sure because Chrome doesn't crash for me, so no message. Ah well, live and learn I suppose. I've only been using NIS for three years. :)