Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

Real life | 6 September 2018

I have unsubscribed from the software but I can’t remove its presence, or personality, from my computer

Leaving Norton, the antivirus software package, is a bit like trying to leave the EU.

You may think, once you have decided to click the ‘X’ button in the box that says you don’t want to subscribe to this expensive protection outfit any more, that you have left. You may think that it was your decision to make, and now you’ve made it, you’re free. You’re right if you hold your nerve. But then there is the whole issue of Norton’s feelings on the matter, which are only marginally less difficult to deal with than Jean-Claude Juncker’s feelings about Brexit.

Like Juncker, Norton 360 antivirus software wants you in a way that you didn’t really grasp the potency of until you decided to say goodbye. I mean, you had some inkling, but you didn’t quite understand it fully.

Even though it’s a big outfit, you still half expected them to say something along the lines of: ‘We’re sorry to hear you’re going. Thanks for all the loyal years you’ve been with us. Take care and do let us know if we can do anything for you in the future.’

It’s not as if they didn’t play their part in you having to leave. Like the EU, Norton was costing me so much money to do something so convoluted that in the end I decided I would rather run the risk of encountering whatever complex catastrophes it was claiming to be keeping me from by going it alone.

It has been taking my money on an automatic subscription renewal for years and I have been too confused about what it actually does, and who else might do it cheaper, to do anything about it. But they must have an old credit card number because a month ago they started asking me to put in my payment details again, in advance of the subscription running out.

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