Customer Reviews

Norton AntiSpam 2005 - Single User

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

I purchased the Norton Internet Security with the Norton Antispam hoping that it would eventualy solve my ever increasing amounts of spam in my inbox

With my daily routine of clicking this is spam - my Norton Antispam folder contained 8000 spam emails in 6 months. I checked my statistics and the logs to my astonishment - Norton Antispam did not scan 1 single email.

Reporting this 3 times during 1-2 hour live chat sessions (with their customer support) only proved to me that this product is as bad as all the reviews state. The "techs" provided me the same advice and fixs over and over again which, were all tried and failed. The phone support was equally as fustrating as the chat support and Symantec's outsourced technical support technicians seem to have a single cheat sheet page of solutions that never resolved any of my concerns.

I will do some additional research and choose anything but a symantec products. They were good in the past but failed miserably with this version. They get an D- for the software and a BIG F for customer support. Buyers Beware!!

I work in IT and I've dealt with a lot of buggy Symantec products before but this is by far the worst one I've ever used. If you're an Outlook Express user then this program will be totally useless to you. It seems that the infamous "'This is Spam' button crashes Outlook Express" bug from the 2004 version is still there [...] After going through the usual uninstall/reinstall/change every freakin setting routine, I spent hours trying to find a solution on the symantec tech support site and on other sites with no luck. The Symantec tech support site is terrible. I couldn't find any place to report an incident through email or post it to a support forum or anything like that. And with phone support at $30/incident, I'm currently looking at how to get a refund!

Search for Amazon item number 10099566 to see an overwhelming number of bad reviews of Norton AntiSpam 2004. They didn't improve the product much in the 2005 version. It is really disgusting that Symantec has leveraged the Norton brand, formerly known for quality, with the cynical money grab that is Norton AntiSpam. Absolute junk software, with comically bad support. I hope to see a class action lawsuit against Symantec for selling this product that they certainly know is defective in a myriad of ways.

The GOOD
It does effectively filter SPAM. In my experience over the last 7 months, it has been 92% effective. This is great because 63% of my email is SPAM. Let's me focus on my work.

The BAD
It is really really slow. If you click the "This is SPAM button" it takes about 6 seconds to process the request. More disturbing is that other operations like selecting different emails are also slower.

The UGLY
As other users have indicated, don't open up your email (Outlook Express in my case) too soon after reboot or AntiSPAM will not load. Very strange. Wait until you hard drive starts buzzing before you open the email application.
In the past, I also experienced crashes when hitting the "This is SPAM button". Strangely, I have not had this happen lately.

If your SPAM level is only about 10%, don't bother with this program. If your SPAM level is 50% or higher, this might be worth a try.

I found this software to be VERY dissapointing. It just does not work very well? I use Incredimail as my e-mail provider, and find Norton AntiSpam to be less than helpful. It is very good at always mentioning Norton AntiSpam on my spam e-mails, problem is it doesn't block most of them? So what is the use of having an AntiSpam program? I find this product to be a total waste of money. Now I am really wondering about the quality of other Symantec Norton products in general?

Nine out of 10 tries to open Outlook Express have failed since I first installed this product. I suppose that's one way of stopping spam; you don't get any email at all. Symantec's free online technical support has tried to help, but the apex of the advice has been to redownload and reinstall the suite--32 MB of data and then 32 MB of Live Update. Like other reviewers, I suspect that this product should not have shipped.
Purchase with extreme caution and fully back up your system before you install so that you can fully back out.

I've used this product in its 2004 version and just recently upgraded to 2005. The 2005 version is nothing but junk when compared to the 2004 version. It seems to stall when closing Outlook Express, it takes upwards of a minute to mark an email as an anti-spam email, and some items marked as spam never get recognized properly and end up in the wrong folder everytime. I've unstalled the product but doubt I'll ever get my money back.

My "This is spam button" intermittently appears, and NORTON CUSTOMER SERVICE or TECH SUPPORT IS NON-EXISTENT. I have run the maze to find a way to ask them about the intermittent toolbar and NO REPLY. Symantec would rather you DIY with FAQs dealing with a limited set of issues instead of REAL OPERATIONAL CONCERNS. I've had internet connection issues, lost IE links (recovered them); I use Firefox, had numerous issues. LOTS of PROBLEMS - but mostly disappointing was the LACK OF SUPPORT. If you get this, you're on your own to deal with lots of problems and erratic behavior.

1. high false identification rate. missed quite a few spam emails, and marked a lot of legit emails spam

2. Integration with outlook express, it make the rule unmodifiable, which would be fine if it works well, but they don't put a stop to processing more rules, and my subsequent rules will move the messages marked spam to a different folder, then the toolbard won't allow me to mark the message non-spam from those folders.

I kinda solved that problem by making a copy of the norton rule, and added a stop processing more rules in it.

I won't buy it if it were a stand alone software, but it came with internet security...

Skip this one, and reconsider whether any of the symantec products are worth the hassles.