Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Even though I still had 299 days left to my current subscription, I decided to nuke Norton Antivirus 2009 from my computer. Disabling stuff on it just so that I can use my computer was getting annoying.

First I had disable so that I can run BOINC projects on my computer, this means there's that annoying red X on the tray icon.

Today, I couldn't check my email because the inbound email scanner was broken....another thing that needed to be disabled. And, there were other quirks that seemed related, but I wasn't sure.

Of course, I don't like being unprotected. So, my employer has a site license for AntiVirus software...all on site computers are required to run it, but additionally employees and students are allowed to run it on their own computers. Once upon a time, it was Norton Antivirus that the University provided. But, a couple years ago they switched to Trend Micro. I think they just renewed for another 3 years.

So, I have installed Trend Micro. It has the annoying habit of identifying stuff that I want to run as spyware or malware and not giving any choice but to remove it....and without asking me. I had identd running on my desktop, probably left over from when I used a Windows IRC client. I vaguely recall that there was some other reason I had it, it didn't do anything dangerous...it was configured just to make whatever service that wanted to find it happy. But, during the Trend Micro installation...it silently saw it and uninstalled it from my computer.

A few years ago, it was uninstalling a home watching webcam software. It had classified it as spyware and kept removing it. Ya...it is spyware, its so I can spy on my home when I'm not home and see if anything is happening. I don't use it anymore, though I keep thinking I need to have something back again. Though I'm looking for something that is not computer dependent....

Oh well....