Norton 360 review

Let’s be fair; you pay for an antivirus because you value your safety and privacy, and are maybe a teensy bit paranoid. And who can blame you; the world is a scary place, and the internet is CRAZY.

Well, if you’re going down that route, Norton LifeLock isn’t a bad option at all.

First things first; why would you pay good money for an antivirus when Avast is right there, perfectly fine in its free version?

Because you get what you pay for. Obviously.

Don’t you pretend to be me

Norton is a household name when it comes to malware protection, but what’s a LifeLock? Well, Norton and LifeLock are now both part of Symantec, the parent company, and yes that’s too many names.

Look, LifeLock is a cool little bit of identity theft protection, and have been around for years making sure people don’t get financially catfished. While I doubt anyone wants to be me, it’s nice to know there’s a buffer.

With Norton 360 feat. supporting artist LifeLock, you basically get all the stuff you want to protect your privacy mixed together in one big jug. It’s a delicious medley of safety features, and surprisingly easy to navigate.

Hiding all away

Norton 360 allows you to protect all your devices with a patchwork quilt of privacy features. Parental controls, cloud backup, password managers, and VPNs all arrive in a neat little package designed for peace of mind.

That’s right; this version of Norton comes with a built in virtual private network or VPN. Obstensibly these are for hiding your identity when accessing potentially dangerous networks like Starbucks or your local human-hunting club, where there could be some dodgy characters hungry for your details.

It can also be used for less legal things but, ya know, don’t do that.

Handily, this is also available on mobile, where it is arguably more important. I’ll never understand why people don’t have antivirus on the device we do the vast majority of our internetting, but yeah, you need it.

There’s a Password Manager you could use, if you’re unsatisfied with Google storing all your passwords, or if LastPass seems like too much effort. Again, Norton doesn’t really break the mold here, offering much the same as the competition; syncing between multiple devices, generating inexplicably complicated passwords that would probably summon Cthulhu if read aloud, and storing card details for all your MightyApe or Amazon needs online shopping.

It works, though, and that’s all that matters to me.

Wait, isn’t this an antivirus?

Why yes it is, reader. It is an antivirus. But it’s also, to quote Rowan Atkinson, so much more. And all I can tell you is that, while I’ve been using Norton, I haven’t yet gotten a virus… or a warning for one. But I’d chalk that up to be being boring more than them not being picked up.

Running a quick scan was, well, quick. Running a full scan? Put on a pot of coffee and get some ice; I was exceptionally concerned by some of the noises my poor little laptop was making while running the big fella. This was weird, as there was no noticeable slowdown from the other features, even the browser stuff, but the malware scan really went batshit on the processing power.

If you’ve got kids, Parental Controls looks handy, keeping your family safe or, if you have some sort of demon child, protecting the world from your family. This wasn’t really relevant to me, as my cats are unlikely to do anything on the internet I wasn’t already prepared for, but for people with human children this could be good for y’all.

Can’t someone else do it?

Overall, yeah, you COULD get most of what Norton is offering here for free, by cobbling together a bunch of debatably secure programs that will almost definitely require a ton of fiddling around to get working in something resembling harmony. If you want to be the AntiVirus Frankenstein (which, OK, sounds cool as hell), then go for it. But you may not get full protection that way.

For the rest of us, it comes down to budget. Norton 360 with special guest LifeLock is worthwhile, but is it worth what they charge? In my opinion, yes. I’m fundamentally lazy, and simply installing this takes all the guesswork and nitpicking out of securing my data and devices. It’s as close to plug and play as you’re likely to get with this sort of thing, and I’m the sort to pay for convinience. Other features aside, count your devices. That’ll inform what version you should get. Your mileage, and perception of value, may of course vary.

Norton 360 with LifeLock is probably the most complete antivirus slash identity protector you can get. And while that sounds niche, they really do go hand in hand.