SCI: Tech Fears Arise Over Norton and Pifts.exe

Um.....Im gonna say no. It was working fine earlier. Or is it something new you have to do?

My Norton asked me if I wanted to allow PIFTS.exe this morning at around 7:00 CMT, and I had no idea what it was! Processlibrary.com turned no results, Norton's Forums were all being deleted, and links on common search engines brought me to malicious sites (so I'm pretty sure my PC is infected now ).

What I do know is that I have been following this thread for nearly 4 hours, and it seems Norton is either up to some shady business, or they made a huge mistake within their most recent update and are handling the affair with terrible presence and effiency. Now, I can see why they would delete all of the spamming threads (because spam takes up a gigantic partition of bandwidth), but what I find interesting is that Norton deleted the initial threads simply asking what PIFTS.exe is (most spamming threads, however, resulted in sheer frustration at Norton's response to these questions); seems very very shady to me, but who knows?

If anyone has any more information, please post!!!

Edit: Spelling Error

[edit on 10-3-2009 by yetijones]

[edit on 3/10/2009 by yetijones]

The site is up and all post regarding PIFTS have been removed.

reply to post by mrmonsoon

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They came back up a few minutes ago.

I've already gotten three calls about this so far this morning. Good money says there's probably going to be a chain email 'warning' people about pifts.exe (that will never die), and probably a SNOPES entry by the end of the week.

Oh, yeah... RE2505, the internet tough guy line forms to the left.

reply to post by FreezeM

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no no harm to your pc but all your privacy is taken! seriously, why do we put up with this? somuch to privacy and freedom in our democracies! The companies who WE keep afloat have no respect at all for their customers!

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reply to post by ubermcnig

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Mod edit please!
screwing my screen!

reply to post by yetijones

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The only things we know for 'sure' is that Symantec confirmed it is theirs. I really trust the people at Sans ISC when they say the spoke with Symantec. And that it appears to be 'calling home'. Maybe just to keep track of the number of successful updates. But it does contact stats.norton.com

isc.sans.org...
www.threatexpert.com...

It is not 4chan's fault.
Actually ebaumsworld did it.
Moreover you think it's really trolling?
I doubt it honestly. Why would norton's mod delete posts than?
And why no offical statement has been given so far?

Before the Symantec forum went down to remove the pile of Anon postings, there was a serious and polite thread on there asking if Norton was able to detect or remove the goverment keylogger mentioned earlier in this thread. That got deleted too, despite having no mention of Pifts (or mudkips).

Hey guys,

I want to get some more info on those ip adresses that PIFTS send it's info too.
But i can only find 2 out 3 ip adresses. What's the third one?

so far i have:
67.134.208.160:80
207.46.248.249:80

I am a computer illiterate. I use Norman Antivirus and Iolo System Mechanic. As I understand this issue, it appears to be a Symantec problem, only.
Quick enlightenment, anyone?

IMO

Norton's, McAfee's, or any large commercial anti-virus is worthless.


Avast

Super Anti-spyware

They are free, trusted and really good.


I gave up on Nortons 12 years ago.

reply to post by FreezeM

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No mate they can get that information by looking at the number of connections made to the server hosting the updates.

AT THE LEAST they are taking private information from there customers without any consent!

It is not necessary for them to access customers temporary files, cookies or history but that is what they have done!



[edit on 10-3-2009 by tommyboy1981]

the problem was that they deleted the first thread related to this subject .... if they didnt had, and if they had answered ... we wouldnt been discussing it right now

I think i may have found information like this. You just have to put all of the peices together. Anyone heard of the Scams by match.com or by yahoo personals? Its not just them. It is every single internet dating site out there paying their employees undercover to go on dates with people or create fake sites so that they will get their money. It is widely known under the table but for some reason no one speaks about it. These companies are making billions all together and are backed by yahoo and google. The pretty much only two search engines that we have on the web which easily block posts that bring them down. It is funny how any case brought up agianst them has vanished. People are being paid under the table big time including news networks and even Dr. Phil to promote their scam. The weird thing is when i read this post reference to Africa was made. What does everything have to do with Africa for? On almost all of your dating site reference to something to do with Africa is made. Look deeper into it. Internet is being taken over and monitored for some reason. Check into it. if anyone wants to read about all this check out this site and tell me if you get the same out of it that i do. www.theinternetpatrol.com...

All good noobs use Norton to begin with.
I remember back in the day I actually paid for it once
Then eventually most people realize it uses half your computer as one of symantecs personal pc's, and detects the same stuff as other free AV's.
And is loaded up with opinion orientated false positives.
Basically if symantec doesn't like someone, its a security threat

[edit on 10-3-2009 by CaptainCaveMan]

That will tell them just the number of downloads. Not the number of installations.



I am in no way defending Symantec here. I got rid of their products years ago. And I think it's wrong for them to collect any data from a pc and sent it without consent. But are we sure that they access temporary files, cookies or history and sent that to their servers? Or is that part just speculation. I have not seen any traffic dump.

Some of you who are saying that it is just a huge troll are forgetting something important: Symantec is actively erasing posts about PIFTS.exe on their forums. This is a fact.

It doesn't matter whether they were actually in on something or not. Hell, even if some troll just made a random exe file and then said "ZOMG IT WAS INSTALLED BY NORTON!!!!!", Symantec failed moment they started deleting posts. Trying to censor any kind of information is the one single thing you must never ever do online, the only cardinal sin on the internet. Censorship online will ALWAYS backfire.

I hope Norton loses lots and lots of business over this, whether there is any truth to it or not.

Everyone keep spreading this story.