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Norton AntiVirus (NAV) is the flagship product of Symantec Corporation and one of the most popular anti-virus programs. Since its birth in 1990, over 100 million people around the world have used it. Early versions of Norton AntiVirus were integrated and took much from Central Point Anti-Virus (CPAV), which was acquired by Symantec in 1994. CPAV was also integrated into the Microsoft Anti-Virus utility. The current version is Norton AntiVirus 2005.

Despite its widespread adoption, it carries a reputation within parts of the computer enthusiast community as slow and inefficient, as well as being difficult to uninstall. Whatever the reasons, there are certainly a wide variety of opinions on the product, with professional reviewers tending to give it good rankings (often describing it as the best in its category), but actual user reviews tend to describe it as poor. See for instance ZDNet's review of Norton AntiVirus 2004, where the editor's rating was "7.8 Very good", but the contribute user rating average was just "4.5 Mediocre" as of July 2005. It is possible that variations between different systems account for this discrepancy. Other reviewers have described the software as "memory hungry" or "system resource hogger", including the UK's PC Plus magazine review of the 2004 edition.

Symantec's LiveUpdate provides virus definition updates, which enable Norton AntiVirus to detect more viruses. To receive these updates, the customer needs an updates subscription. An initial subscription is included with the product, and is good for one year (or 90 days for OEM copies). When the user's subscription expires, he can still receive program updates (patches) for free, but he will not be able to download virus definitions updates until he renews his subscription or installs a newer version of NAV that includes a new subscription.

Both Norton AntiVirus 2004 and 2005 include an anti-piracy feature called "Product Activation," which is similar to the activation process in Windows XP and Office XP. The activation process can be accomplished through two methods: over Internet or by phone.

Norton AntiVirus was critisised in the past because of Symantec's policy that allows spy software (keyloggers/backdoors) of US secret services FBI (Magic Lantern) and CIA (Oasis) to bypass Norton's malware detection. Sources: Slashdot, San Francisco Bay Guardian

• Anti-virus software
• Symantec software