Symantec Hopes To Deliver Anti-Virus Online 148
daria42 writes "Symantec today said it will slowly move towards supplying its consumer applications online as services." From the article: "Sykes also said there was the possibility that tiny pieces of an application or a single virus scan could be resold by organisations such as online banks, which may choose to ensure their customers are not infected with a virus or spyware before they log on to their account ... This could be paid for by the customer using their credit card or by adding it to their mobile phone bill by sending a text message, said Sykes, who warned that banks could decide not to provide access to anyone with an infected computer."
Sometimes online isn't a good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't want to (Score:4, Insightful)
No guaranties (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because the antivirus scanner doesn't find anything doesn't nessesarily need to mean that there are none.
Uh, no thanks... (Score:5, Insightful)
"YOUR COMPUTER COULD BE INFECTED WITH SPYWARE - CLICK HERE"
It sends up huge red flags for me, and I always shut them down without clicking. I've seen so many of them (wanting to optimize my Windows, etc.) that I'm now gun shy of any such remote scanning application.
I'll be thinking long and hard about letting anything scan my system through my firewall.
Steve
Whoa there nellie... not such a hot idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Web Based Scanning Won't Cut It (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Broken Internet (Score:2, Insightful)
You could get really paranoid and wonder if they are keeping a record of all you filenames, folders, etc. And if you're a repeating offender, will the bank ban you or (OMG!) even file a lawsuit against you?
Bad idea (Score:1, Insightful)
4 hours to do online banking? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can imagine trying to connect to my bank and waiting for the virus scan. I will getting bored and wander off. Then the bank would kick me off due to inactivity because it finished the scan while I wasn't looking.
I think your missing the point people.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because some exec comes up with a snassy (new?) idea and starts talking it up doesn't mean it will find its home in the marketplace.
To me this sounds annoying, plain and simple. As a bank exec I'd really be scratching my head trying to figure out how my customers win (which makes me win).
Re:Let me add another concern... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite worrying... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also virus checkers will be useless against more targetted attacks which are being seen more often nowadays, small attacks against customers of a particular organisation which don`t become widespread enough to get noticed by antivirus vendors..
And finally those of us not using windows systems or not using ie may get turned away since we're not able to run the virus checker (and most likely wouldn`t need to in any case).. I don`t think firefox provides a way to execute code with access to your local filesystem (for obvious security reasons) in the same way that activex does.
"Symantec Hopes" (Score:3, Insightful)
Symantec has been *hoping* to deliver something worthwhile ever since they stopped developing for DOS-mode.
Face it, the Norton Utilities used to be *great*. Now they suck! Norton Anti-Virus has never been spectactular. Norton Ghost.. Well, Norton Ghost is pretty good; at least the version I have; it still runs under DOS4GW with a non-MS GUI.
Re:I don't want to (Score:3, Insightful)
That brings to my mind additional questions, would I want to pay additional money evrey time I use the banks services? By paying this will it insure as in insurance that if I do get snooped that I will be fully covered for any damages that may occur if they were wrong or missed a baddy or two? And how high would they cover? These are banks we are talking about here they will NOT spend money that does not make them money, period.
This would bring attention to the people who are using friends, family's or public computers for these transactions, it would probably wake them up. What I think would really work is a sandbox using encryption based on a one time password sent to your cell phone. It would be a website password, not unheard of but much more streamlined then scanning an entire computer for bad apples.
I would think it would work like so...
If Symantec is going to use the same method and be sure there will be no infection then using that application to interract would be just as good, no? I may be the only one but I would not want to be waiting at a computer while it goes through the possible millions of files just to do a transfer or check my balance. In that case I would just want the bank to send me a SMS with my balance or a cheezy wap interface to transfer between 2 accounts.
I guess you can't blame Mr. Norton for trying but I don't think its gonna fly with banks. It does bring about a new method of accesssing the data that should be looked at. Possibly if it works well enough we could use this method for sending other types of confidential data or stuff you just don't want anyone else to see.
Educate rather than give a false sense of security (Score:2, Insightful)