Norton, what did you do?!!

[Chishio Kunrin]

My mom's not gonna waste money by getting a different antivirus like Kapersky, until our Norton subscription finishes. It still has about 120 days on it, and this is how it acts?! I dunno what I just got!

I'm sitting here on Youtube, and all of a sudden, a little Norton window comes up saying it was analyzing libGLESv2.dll. I freaked out like "What?! Nonononono, what is that?! Stop, stop, nononono." And then it said it's safe, and I'm like "NO, it might NOT be safe!" Then, it comes up with another one saying libEGL.dll is safe, and I'm like "WHAT is going ON?!"

What just happened? Did Norton just do something stupid?

[Rissian]

I looked up that file online and it says it's found in the google chrome and mozilla firefox browsers so it's likely a safe file and norton was just being paranoid and scanning it, it says this file is used by the browser to render the graphics of web pages.

I checked my Mozilla installation and I have the exact same file in it, it seems like norton just wanted to randomly scan it, since it relates to graphics and you were on youtube it probably just freaked out when the file was being used.

[Chishio Kunrin]

So it scared me for nothing. They should probably name those files something not so... suspicious. I dunno what a bunch of letters .dll means.

[Rissian]

It may seem suspicious to most people but the companies themselves and a lot of programmers in general use names like that for a reason usually, and .dll files are important for the programs that use them as some programs won't even run without these files and due to the nature of coding renaming them isn't usually an option if they are being used in multiple programs already.

Anyways if norton scans other things and says it's safe theres a good chance it's safe, I think the main problem with norton is it's a resource hog and likes false positives, but I've only used it on my old XP a long time ago I have no idea how it's like now other then what I hear from other people.

[Chishio Kunrin]

Yeah, I've noticed its resource-hoggyness, especially when it decides to do a scan in the background just because I went idle.

[Rissian]

I actually don't understand why norton would program something like that, into their antivirus making it scan everytime someone is idle that just screams I want my customers PC to lag, the antivirus I use has a realtime scanner but that only scans when you load a program but only that program itself or when the file is being used by the PC it will do a quick scan on that file then stop, as for full scans it does one full PC scan once a week.

Hopefully kaspersky will be better than norton once you get it though a lot of free virus protection is a better alternative than the ones you have to buy. I've learned that from getting cruddy virus protection from multiple companies mcafee is horrible norton's pretty bad I've only seen one PC with kaspersky but I don't know enough about it to tell if it's good or not it didn't seem that bad but I think it was my aunt's PC that had it and it didn't protect her PC much from viruses, but I've never used it myself so that could have easily been a fluke.

[Iron Girella]

download avast, free and nice 

[Lary]

Norton isn't a bad Antivirus, per se; it's just terribly optimized. It's a PC hog that bogs down your computer processing. Some versions embed themselves into your PC so you need separate software in order to safely remove it from your computer.
There's actually a conspiracy going around that Antivirus manufacturers actually develop viruses and spread them just to give people more reason to use their software.

If you're planning to switch, I would suggest MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) or Avast Home Edition. Both are free, and are really good.

[Chishio Kunrin]

Norton isn't a bad Antivirus, per se; it's just terribly optimized. It's a PC hog that bogs down your computer processing. Some versions embed themselves into your PC so you need separate software in order to safely remove it from your computer.
There's actually a conspiracy going around that Antivirus manufacturers actually develop viruses and spread them just to give people more reason to use their software.

If you're planning to switch, I would suggest MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) or Avast Home Edition. Both are free, and are really good.

I figured out that conspiracy theory on my own without ever having heard anyone mention it, oddly enough. It was while I was sitting around wondering why people make viruses. "What's the point?" I thought, "Stupid no-lifes."

[Little Judas]

Avira is also good

[Remedy]

Did Norton just do something stupid?

By the looks of it Norton just did something clever, I'll get to that in a bit though. First.

They should probably name those files something not so... suspicious. I dunno what a bunch of letters .dll means.

Their names are merely abbreviations of what they are. First of all .dll files are Dynamic Link Libraries. They're just bundles of computer code, and in essence contain parts of computer programs. Executable files (.exe) then use these files to do certain things that they wouldn't be able to do on their own.

The two that Norton scanned appear to be Open Graphics Layer Extension Libraries. These particular ones appear to be used by your browser to display things like website games.
But this is where it gets a little bit out of the ordinary: It seems like old versions of this files had a minor security issue.
So I believe Norton was just checking that these files were the right version... Which I don't believe I've ever seen an anti-virus do before.

I figured out that conspiracy theory on my own without ever having heard anyone mention it, oddly enough. It was while I was sitting around wondering why people make viruses. "What's the point?" I thought, "Stupid no-lifes."

Well, most viruses are programmed to try and steal money, or personal information like usernames and passwords.
While nearly all viruses have some sort of purpose to do something spesific, there are a few out there that of course are just trying to destroy anything they can.

Personally, however, I use Comodo as my anti virus.

[Chishio Kunrin]

Ah. Interesting. Thanks for explaining, Remedy.

[Firey]

I suggest you download Avast Antivirus     

[Chishio Kunrin]

My mom likely won't go for it. We're waiting for our Norton subscription to end because my mom didn't want it to have been a waste of money. Once it ends, we'll try to find and buy Kapersky.

[Blues-Music]

I still have 30 days of norton left.
I don't use it though.It has to scan every single one of my downloads.Half of the time it says it detects a virus when there isn't a virus in it , and then deletes the download.

[Stitchin Time]

*Sigh* Norton.

[Tekner]

So I believe Norton was just checking that these files were the right version... Which I don't believe I've ever seen an anti-virus do before.

Antivirus programs are programmed to check for virus signatures, flagged filenames, flagged file hashes, and a few other things. Programs and dlls, however, do sometimes have several variants and/or signatures when infected by spyware, so even if a file is "safe", it can also potentially be unsafe. A file can be flagged as a potential target for that very reason and that may be why it was checked. So you are correct, Remedy. It wasn't checking for a correct variant per se, just that it wasn't a vulnerable variant. Antivirus programs carry out these checks alongside their other duties. Another reason a seemingly safe file can be checked in particular is also because even though hashes have over trillions of different possibilities, that doesn't make them 100% unique to each file they represent. In english that means that a safe file can have the same hash as an unsafe program, which will trigger the antivirus to check it.

Viruses are like spies on your computer. They're usually well hidden, seek nothing more than to steal vital information and sabotage your machine, and they can convert other initially harmless programs into dangerous variants. There are only a few sure-fire ways to tell you actually have a virus or not. Besides those, all you can do is keep searching your computer over and over again hoping to root one out and destroy it.

I do also want to make a huge point that people seem to miss: viruses aren't anything special or mystical. It doesn't take any additional programming knowledge to make a virus vs a game or office application. All of your favorite games and applications are (when you get down to the most basic level) just as unsafe as those notorious viruses you've come to hate. Just like people, what defines a good program from a bad program is its intention, but they all have the same capabilities.

[Book Smarts]

I had Norton once on my old computer, everything was working until I had to uninstall it after the subscription ended. I don't know what happened, but it made it so I could never access the internet on that cpu again

[LaptopCommandStation]

My dad is a computer technician for one of the major school boards here.  I thought I heard him say once that Norton was some kind of scam and to never use it.  While I don't know if that's true, i've always stayed away from it.

Although right now I need a new antivirus as the one I was using broke when I switched operating systems.  As with all my other programs(speaking of DLLs I can't run VB6 because it can't find dao350.dll, and when I try to register it with the regsvr32 command in prompt it says that file is uncompatible with windows 7...WHAT!?)

[Lord of Madness]

Im gonna say I have norton 360, it came with a 1 free year subscription on my computer. and FOR all my other computers just because of this one computer. The best thing is as long as I have had this I have never had even 1 virus. I'd say it works pretty well.