Reply #8: As noted ...

[RoyGBiv]

I didn't post comments about this to endorse the conspiracy theories. As also noted, most of the examinations of the file were indicating it seemed innocuous. The conspiracy theories were/are awesome, awesome in that way most whackadoodle stuff has of being awesome. It's just fun to watch it sometimes.

But on that note, there's nothing in that story that wasn't presumed when I did post, information available at the links I gave from the more rational amongst the crowd, i.e. people who were genuinely looking into what the little program does.

The troubling part is that Symantec scrubbed discussion of it and, as of this writing, has still made no official comment on it. I don't care if the file just sits there and counts to 2 once every 24 hours. When your customers pose a legitimate question apparently brought about by a screw-up, you answer them, or, failing that, you let them bleat on about it in your own support forum. Hell, not even Microsoft does that sort of thing. If, as is being guessed, this was just a screw-up with a recent update that failed to flag the file as safe, why allow the mystery to endure? To repeat, all we have are guesses because Symantec, a company that bases its entire reputation on *timely* responses to security issues and has absolutely no trouble at all issuing preemptive warnings about problems that its competitors might have, has said nothing.

Why?

The only conspiracy I see here is the continuation of a business model that runs like a protection racket and an attempt to hide the fact that they screwed up something really simple and don't know how to admit it.

As for relative quality, the corporate version of Symantec isn't bad if you don't factor in cost, but most people don't have that. The various home versions are pure garbage. I've cleaned far too many systems that had various iterations of Norton on their machines, purchased due to a response to advertising methods I consider borderline extortion, to think otherwise.