BullGuard has joined Avira as part of NortonLifeLock

fabiobr

Level 12
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Mar 28, 2019
561
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

Level 3
Verified
Jan 27, 2019
103
NortonLifelock is doing well, and pulling it more customers.


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

Level 26
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Aug 4, 2016
1,465
NortonLifelock is doing well, and pulling it more customers.


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.
 

Divine_Barakah

Level 29
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May 10, 2019
1,854
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

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Aug 4, 2016
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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.
 
F

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.
 
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Antimalware18

Level 10
Verified
Well-known
Jan 17, 2014
485
If Kaspersky is acquired by Lifelock I will relocate to the moon :p

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 :ROFLMAO:

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

Level 4
Jan 20, 2020
164
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.
 
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Lightning_Brian

Level 15
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Sep 1, 2017
742
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

Level 12
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Mar 28, 2019
561
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

Level 29
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Well-known
May 10, 2019
1,854
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

Level 12
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 28, 2019
561
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

Level 4
Jan 20, 2020
164
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?
 

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