BullGuard has joined Avira as part of NortonLifeLock

[fabiobr]

Putin selling his security product to Americans? Never friend, you can rest assured about this

We are joking here, but I see something like that. Even if Kaspersky wants to be bought someday, the Russian government would do anything to avoid this.

Geopolitics.

 

[SomeRandomCat]

I'm surprised Putin hasn't forced Kaspersky to give free licenses to all Russians.

 

[amico81]

NortonLifeLock Inc. (NLOK) Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool

NLOK earnings call for the period ending December 31, 2020.

www.fool.com

 

[fabiobr]

NortonLifeLock Inc. (NLOK) Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool

NLOK earnings call for the period ending December 31, 2020.

www.fool.com

In December, we announced LifeLock's first acquisition. Now that the deal has closed, we are excited to welcome Avira's employees, customers and partners to the Norton family. We are really excited by the opportunity to provide Avira's 30 million users and over 1.5 million paid customers the benefit of the Norton plus Avira offering. Together, we are now privileged to help protect over 80 million consumers globally as we embrace the important responsibility we have in securing the digital lives. We are also quickly working to leverage our strong presence in Europe, which now also includes BullGuard, a UK based cyber security company that Avira added to their business last year. On top of expanding our reach deeper into EMEA, we look forward to adding Avira's and BullGuard's capabilities to our portfolio.

 

[F 4 E]

NortonLifelock is doing well, and pulling it more customers.

NortonLifeLock adds 334,000 customers in one quarter - ZDNET

The company reported a direct customer count of 21 million in Q3, with nearly 60 percent of customers using Norton 360.

www.zdnet.com

Personally, having used it for years and seeing Marketing ruining the user experience, I wouldn't accept a free licence !

I'll stick with F-Secure.

 

[Cortex]

Norton doing lots more advertising on UK TV & pushing their VPN as an added feature.

 

[Cortex]

NortonLifelock is doing well, and pulling it more customers.

NortonLifeLock adds 334,000 customers in one quarter - ZDNET

The company reported a direct customer count of 21 million in Q3, with nearly 60 percent of customers using Norton 360.

www.zdnet.com

Personally, having used it for years and seeing Marketing ruining the user experience, I wouldn't accept a free licence !

I'll stick with F-Secure.

I really liked Norton but since they did a preinstalled VPN with no way to remove it I've totally given up on it, apart from other issues never fixed.

 

[Viking]

Norton doing lots more advertising on UK TV & pushing their VPN as an added feature.

Same here in Australia, but on the radio.

 

[Divine_Barakah]

I really liked Norton but since they did a preinstalled VPN with no way to remove it I've totally given up on it, apart from other issues never fixed.

Other vendors do it such as Kaspersky and Bitdefender, but they allow you to uninstall it. Bitdefender used to reinstall the VPN component after major updates and that was too annoying.
Regarding Norton, I see that their Antivirus Plus version comes with firewall now and does not come with VPN, so it might be what you are looking for?

 

[Cortex]

Other vendors do it such as Kaspersky and Bitdefender, but they allow you to uninstall it. Bitdefender used to reinstall the VPN component after major updates and that was too annoying.
Regarding Norton, I see that their Antivirus Plus version comes with firewall now and does not come with VPN, so it might be what you are looking for?

Moved on while ago to either KIS or AVAST.

 

[Divine_Barakah]

Moved on while ago to either KIS or AVAST.

Norton is lighter than bot KIS and Avast. Avast would be my choice out of the three, but their privacy practices drove me away from it.

 

[ForgottenSeer 89360]

I installed Bullguard last night. This thread is mostly for business analyses, not for the product, but Bullguard ain't bad. The interface is a bit awkward in terms of security history, but the system feels very responsive, F-Secure level, and protection is decent. Not as good as Avast and Trend Micro though. This is the first impression the product made.
It is one of the few products that truly feel premium with no bundlers, ads, not even browser extensions.
Alerts are very clean and straight down to the point.

I am absolutely sure both Avira and Norton can benefit from Bullguard in their family and I am looking forward to what the future will bring.

 

[Antimalware18]

If Kaspersky is acquired by Lifelock I will relocate to the moon

I cannot second this enough, My avatar still shows avast but ive been using KSC Free for awhile now. I'm just too lazy to change avatar

I agree with the commends I've been reading above, Avira, Bullguard...while they at one time may have not been a "step behind" they have been a step behind for years leaving them vulnerable to being bought out IMO

However I don't believe we have anything to worry about from main players such as Kasperky...However stranger things have happened, and if it were to happen. I would be right there on the moon with you lol

 

[XLR8R]

The earnings call is way too vague on what Norton intends to do with the Avira and Bullguard brands/products. "Upselling and cross-selling" is as generic as it gets....Symantec has historically screwed up with acquired companies. Let's hope they do better now.

 

[Lightning_Brian]

Quite interesting news my fellow MT friends. Mergers do happen and its not super uncommon. From my understanding this was not a 'hostile merger' meaning Norton did not force this merger to happen. Like others have mentioned it will be very interesting to see what comes of all of this news.

On a personal note - I don't think Bitdefender would ever merge with other companies. Same could be said of ESET and Kaspersky. If a merger did happen with any of those companies I would be over the top shocked!

Lets keep our eyes out for more news to come from Norton in regards to these mergers.

Thanks for posting about this @Gandalf_The_Grey ! Always staying on top of things.

~Brian

 

[fabiobr]

Norton is lighter than bot KIS and Avast. Avast would be my choice out of the three, but their privacy practices drove me away from it.

About Avast: They are pretty clear on their privacy and product policy what they collect and what uses it does to it. Before they warned there that some data is sold to jump shot (especially on the free version), but that's not more the case since now. They specify more than many vendors like Norton that says "in case of necessity we can share data to the government" or something like that, I know because I always read/look at the privacy terms. Avast needs to respect GDPR since it's on EU, and with all the scandal of jumpshot they put all the users worldwide to follow the California data act.

I am not saying that were a nice thing to sold user data, but they do specify everything on the privacy policy.

 

[Divine_Barakah]

About Avast: They are pretty clear on their privacy and product policy what they collect and what uses it does to it. Before they warned there that some data is sold to jump shot (especially on the free version), but that's not more the case since now. They specify more than many vendors like Norton that says "in case of necessity we can share data to the government" or something like that, I know because I always read/look at the privacy terms. Avast needs to respect GDPR since it's on EU, and with all the scandal of jumpshot they put all the users worldwide to follow the California data act.

I am not saying that were a nice thing to sold user data, but they do specify everything on the privacy policy.

I do not want to go off-topic here, but data sharing options are all enabled in Avast by default and this is something I like to see. Kaspersky asks you during installation, but does Avast do it? It used to show a warning that “all companies share data and so do we” or sth like that. Now that’s not the case.

 

[fabiobr]

I do not want to go off-topic here, but data sharing options are all enabled in Avast by default and this is something I like to see. Kaspersky asks you during installation, but does Avast do it? It used to show a warning that “all companies share data and so do we” or sth like that. Now that’s not the case.

Agree, they do have to specify more data collection on the installation.

But Avast does have more options to turn off data collection on the main interface than Kaspersky (my first option), for example. It gives the option to not send threat data and still receives feedbacks from the cloud, and turn off offers, etc. But I surely agree with you that they HAVE to warn better the home user, they know that a basic user will never read these things.

And I'm saying that as a former hater of Avast hahahaha, but I tried the software recently and change my mind a little bit.

 

[XLR8R]

I installed Bullguard last night. This thread is mostly for business analyses, not for the product, but Bullguard ain't bad. The interface is a bit awkward in terms of security history, but the system feels very responsive, F-Secure level, and protection is decent. Not as good as Avast and Trend Micro though. This is the first impression the product made.
It is one of the few products that truly feel premium with no bundlers, ads, not even browser extensions.
Alerts are very clean and straight down to the point.

I am absolutely sure both Avira and Norton can benefit from Bullguard in their family and I am looking forward to what the future will bring.

My family's been on BullGuard for years. It is the best family protection program - straightforward, easy to use and low on the bugs. It updates itself and keeps itself in tip-top shape. It even transitioned automatically and largely smoothly from the BD engine to the Avira engine.

I've been told BullGuard products will continue for the time being, so it's a bit weird what Norton is actually planning - are they going in like the mobile phone market and marketing Avira as freemium, BullGuard as a cut-price alternative and Norton as the premium flagship product?

 

[mlnevese]

Avast never removed AVG from the market. I don't think Norton will kill Avira or Bullguard as brands.