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I applaud you for taking this
initiative! I have 3 home computers, but only two had the fatal
combination of Norton's and CYBERsitter. Many thanks to Cybersitter for the
professional action you have taken to identify the source of the problem.
What a shame that Symantec's behaviour in this regard would appear to be the
exact opposite of Cybersitter's. It appears that Symantec treat their
customers with utter contempt and I sincerely hope that Symantec suffer
considerable reputational damage as a direct result of their actions (I will
certainly advise anyone I know to avoid using any Symantec products in the
future). In that regard, I would imagine that Cybersitter are also likely by
some users to be linked to the problem caused by Symantec and will probably
suffer a consequent lack of revenue and unfair damage to Cybersitter's
reputation. As well as the huge inconvenience (and anxiety) that was a
consequence of being denied internet / email access for a number of days as
a result of Symantec's appalling behavior, this problem has resulted in the
following: I have a 15 year old son who is in
special education. He has significant developmental delays, which is
why we run Cybersitter (he has no judgement and little self control related
to web content, plus he is prone to tantrums when he gets frustrated).
He went ballistic when his Internet access was locked out by Norton
disabling Cybersitter. I basically lost an entire afternoon of work
figuring out what was wrong, uninstalling Cybersitter, trying a newer
version (which I had to pay for), and finally giving up and sitting next to
him to supervise all this web access (instead of working for my employer).
Two days later, we were offered the workaround by the Cybersitter vendor and
I could then reinstall it. I lost at least a half a day to this
foolishness. I saw the bloodhound virus warning
right before my internet went down. My husband got the email from
Solid oak describing what happened. I called the phone number provided
in the email and call Norton. If there is a tech hell line this was
the number to call! I was turned over to three different techs whom I
could hardly understand their english. One told me I had very bad
virus when I told him about bloodhound he asked me if we visited certain
websites:i tunes, zune, myspace etc. and he told me it would cost $
99.95 to have tech help. I was very upset it is the holidays and I do
not have alot of money! Than I paid and he took me through several
steps and none worked. Transfered me to someone else who sounded the same.
He informed me that bloodhound was not a virus but an update and they would
refund my money. Which took days later to come back into my bank account.
I tried to explain about cybersitter they seemed to not understand I think
theyare based in India. I am back online not because of any help from norton
but by your help in the email you sent I had my husband print up the
directions from your website. Problem is I do not have cybersitter
anymore I can't find my original cd rom. Please help! I want you
to know I cannot stand NORTON NUTS! Worse tech help ever! Thank you for what
you provide to keep us safe as a family! We lost internet access on 3 of our
home computers running Cybersitter and Cybersitter could no longer be found
and would not function on two of them nearly simultaneously apparently after
updating our Norton Antivirus. We have spent at least 8 hours on the
phone trying to get the problem corrected and still have one computer that
has no internet access. We ended up buying a $199 3 month service plan
through Symantec to try to correct our the problem. It now appears
that the company that sold us the service plan (Symantec) was the very
company that caused the problem. We need a refund on the service plan plus
compensation for lost use of our computers and the time we have spent trying
to fix the problem.
I tried all the standards (reboot, reset,
reboot again)for a couple days. Blamed my wireless router, until I realized
my signal strength was "excellent" & connected. On the 4th day, I discovered
our desk top (not protected by Norton)had internet access & the problem was
only on the laptop where I had responded to the virus notice. My "IT" nephew
spent an hour on the phone with me trying all the tricks he knew. When I
told him all the trouble started after the Norton notice about the virus, he
suggested I uninstall Norton & see if I could get internet connection after
that. I still could not, so did not know where to turn for advice because my
other components were working & no one's help desk would have been able to
help me with this unknown problem. On the 5th day, I was working at the desk
top & thankfully received Cybersitter's e-mail with the fix instructions. First of all, I would like to mention
that it is very professional and responsible of the CYBERsitter team to send
out this mass email to the customers. It has solved the mystery for us
in my household. Until receiving this email, we had no idea why we had
lost access to the Internet that night, as our main computer and network
were working perfectly. I admin a few machines at a private
school, Trinity Classical and Christian in Phx, Az. On Tuesday, December 4, 2007 I came to
office to find I could not log onto the internet or connect to my office
computer network. I spend a couple of hours trying to resolve the
problem myself and finally called a computer company to come out and try to
resolve the problem. They came and spent over three hours trying to
resolve the problem and at one point told me I needed to wipe my hard disk
and start over. They tried something short of that and I was
able to use my network and access the internet but could not access my word
or excel programs. I truly believed I had a virus and spend the next several
days trying to make these programs work myself and by calling my computer
company. I am a CPA with a substantial amount of data that I believed
was at risk. I can't begin to tell you the mental anguish I suffered through
during this ordeal. I then received an email Cybersitter and realized that
this was my problem. I called Symantec and after a hour and half on the
phone the problem was finally fixed. My net loss was bill from
the computer company for $500 plus many hours of grief. I told
Symantec I wanted to be reimbursed for at least my out of pocket costs to
the computer company and they refused. They also stated that they
somehow believed I was at fault for not knowing what the problem was.
How can that be as the experts from my computer company did not even know
what the problem was. I will support any a every action against
Symantec and will no longer be able to refer their product to any of my over
1,000 clients. Lost all internet access. Rebooted computer
a few times. called up a few different techs. Called my internet provider -
wasted 1/2 hour of their time. Tried new updates of Norton & windows
explorer. Turned off all Norton for a couple of days. Checked their website.
Finally received email from CyberSitter - followed instructions & fixed it
as per there recomendations - Thanks to them I didn't waste more money &
time - spent over 4 hours trying to get my business computer to connect to
the internet - thanks to Norton! Certainly will never upgrade, buy there
stuff or recommend them to anyone. I could not access the internet at
all & my Norton antivirus pop-up wouldn't go away. I called a friend to
see if he knew anything about what was happening...he didn't, but gave
some ideas to help. After doing a lot of research & realizing it was all
caused by Norton I was able to uninstall Norton (with great
difficulty!). I had to go into my root directory to do this. I took
Norton off all both the computers I own & will not purchase Norton
again. I spent a whole day cleaning up their mess! Yes, I was affected by this issue -
the worst part was that I could not figure out what program Norton's
Auto-Protect was complaining about - it just kept showing it's popup
message over and over again as if it were in a loop. The was a
"detail" link from that message - but all it showed was a very generic
error which was not helpful at all. My internet access was
disabled because of it so I was stuck searching their website from my
work computer. I tried several times to run a full NAV virus scan
- the program crashed after scanning a few hundred files - so I wasn't
sure what was affecting my machine! Finally on the 2nd day of this
happening I decided to disable as much of NAV as I could and finally my
internet access returned!! On a lark, I ran the norton live-update
to see if there were program updates. I also ran other tools such
as Yahoo's Anti-Spy... anyway after rebooting things finally returned to
normal! I never knew what the problem was or what really fixed it
until I got your email (Thanks!) The children's computer gets a
repeating message of bloodhound.unknown that makes it impossible to
access the computer. I haven't had time to deal with it. Since I
cannot access the internet on that computer, I would appreciate knowing
how to update cybersitter, or whatever fix is needed, to render the
computer usable again. I was unable to access the
internet from my childrens computer until I completely disabled
Norton's from the computer. I have now removed it in its
entirety from their computer system. I was receiving a message that
some Bloodhound agent was tracking.. I don't recall the exact
message, but I was unable to view any webpages until I disabled the
product. inability to access the web at
first. Spent nearly 3 hrs figuring out why/what problem was-
was extremely surprised to see a conflict between these 2 programs.
After issue was figured out, I deactivated the cybersitter on our
kids computer and had to monitor them during their homework.
To date I have tried re-activating the cyber sitter and norton
together, to no end. My final solution was to remove the
Norton from the kids computer and install a freeware version of AVG/Grisoft
anti-virus. I prefer the Norton, however now I am left with a
paid for subscription to a good anti-virus program that I cannot use
as they have made my other solution set for protecting my children
into a marginallized program. I have all my backup emails in
case you want me to forward them to you. On Tuesday, Dec. 4 exactly
9 p.m., I received a "virus" notice that Norton had found a
"bloodhound." This message came up several times. Of course, I ran a
scan, stupid me. Anyway, I was unable to connect to the Internet.
After rebooting several times, I called Comcast my service provider.
They sent a technician out on Dec. 6. He spent THREE hours here. He
replaced a cable, but he still could not get my desktop to work.
Since I work out of my home and rely HEAVILY on email, I needed a
computer. Thinking a virus might have wiped out my system, I
purchased a laptop on Dec. 5. The laptop received a connection on
Dec. 6 so I know there is no problem with my connection. On Dec. 10,
I received your email. I tried the solution that Norton gave to you
about running the internal live update and then trying to connect.
That didn't work so I tried your solution of resetting the winsock.
That did not work either. Over the next several days, I corresponded
with both Cybersitter support and Norton support. NOTHING HAS WORKED
YET. They suggested downloading the newest version of Norton. That
didn't help. I have totally deleted all Norton Antivirus from my
desktop; however, I don't know what it has damaged in Cybersitter.
On Sunday, Dec. 16, I received an email from Norton telling me it
obviously was my ISP and not the antivirus software. That really
ticked me off. I sent a LONG email that basically reiterated what
you and PC World magazine had documented. I still CANNOT get on the
Internet using my desktop computer. I don't know what else to do.
Since I last sent Norton an email early Sunday morning (it is now
9:48 p.m. Monday), I haven't heard a word from them. I am glad you
are considering action against them. As I said, I have all of my
emails from you and from Norton should I need to forward them to
you. I will gladly assist you! I had the issue and spent
several hours on to Symantec, have about three different case
numbers. I eventually had to pay $69 to their Premium service. None
of them mentioned this particular issue, and I think I may still
have it as I received the bloodhound popup again today. i will be
contacting them seeking a refund. As a result of this error I was
knocked off of the Internet for several days. This caused much
inconvenience for the students in my house, and for te adults who
rely on our connection for work related purposes. Yes, this Norton Norton
Antivirus update did impact my internet access. I had to follow
Cybersitter instructions to delete the Cybersitter .EXE application
, reboot my PC. Once I rebooted, I was able to access teh internet
and download the Norton Antivirus fix update. Once I installed tu
fix, I had to reinstall Cybersitter version 9. I have already
ordered the Cybersitter version software. once it arrive, I will
install the new version 10. I was baffaled by the impact. Before I
received the cyber sitter alert, I have placed calls to MS OS
support, and Norton Antivirus support. I guess Nortan new they had a
problem because they told me to call back in a couple of days. I
didn't have internet access for 6 days due to this problem. I have 2 computers and both
crashed due to the Norton error. Fortunately the computers
were mostly backed up and I was able to restore them after several
days of computer work. It was grueling and frustrating.
When my Norton subscription runs out I will seek another internet
security software package. I have been using Norton for
several years on both my computers at home and at work, as well as
Cybersitter. Recently, after a Norton update, every time I would try
to get online or check my e-mail, I would get a pop-up message from
Norton that had identified a "Bloodhound.unknown" virus. I tried
several things, including uninstalling Norton from the "Add/Remove
Programs" in the Control Panel (at the request of our computer guy),
but still, to no avail. My office had to contact our computer guy
and pay him to come and fix my computer. I have already decided that
when my Norton is up for renewal, I am going to opt out and go with
Trend Micro or another IS program. I had my internet explorer down
for days because of the norton antivirus shutting it down. I paid a
computer tech man $150.00 for 1.5 hours of service to "fix" my PC.
In the process I lost the norton antivirus year subscription and I
lost cybersitter because I had to uninstall it to try to solve some
of the problems I was having before the PC was fixed. A lot of
aggravation and frustration for over a week due to symantec's
failure to properly program their software. I am looking bfor some
compensation for the norton antivirus program I had to uninstall
because of what it was doing to my PC and I haven't heard back from
2 mailings to symantec--very unusual becaus ethey always email back
within a short time but it's now been 4 days and no response. This issue affected two
computers in my home. There was a pop-up from the toolbar that
said 'Norton has detected the virus bloodhound.unknown', and I had
not internet access. I attempted to run a scan of both
systems, and they failed at the same point on each system. I
then used my laptop (which does not have cybersitter) to access
symnatec live help. I described the issue in great detail,
having written down all the things I had done and the specific
errors that I got right down to the file on which the scan locked
up. I had to repeat this to three different techs on the chat,
and then was told that it was the 'latest threat' and they had not
resolved it yet. I was told to run liveupdate in 24 hours.
I told them I couldn't access the internet to run liveupdate and
they still insisted that I try back in 24 hours. I waited 24
hours, and accessed the chat again. This time I was told by
three different techs that I would need to get a local technician to
fix my systems since they could not access them online. What I
ended up doing was starting up the systems in safe mode, accessing
norton's website, researching the specific error code, downloading
the fix to my desktop, running it, and scanning. This fixed
the problem. The "help" that I received from symnatec was
laughable. Not once did anyone ask me if I had cybersitter,
nor did anyone offer to tell me how to fix the problem; I had to
figure it out for myself. If I had taken both of the systems
to a technician as they advised, it would have likely cost me two or
three hundred dollars. As it was, it cost me two days and a
lot of headaches, and then I ended up fixing it myself. I
think I have the transcript from my initial chat saved on my laptop;
I will be happy to supply it if you want it. I, too, think
something should be done. The internet explorer and MS
Outlook email programs just stopped working. I took it to get it
fixed and they told me that my Ethernet card needed replacing. After
replacing the Ethernet card, the computer did not shut down properly
and I was told to replace the power suppler. The cost to fix was
$154 labor + $20 Ethernet card + $45 for power suppler, not to
mention my time and frustration driving back and forth for a week. Hello, I received a fatal virus
alert when logging onto my computer about a few weeks ago. My
computer was unable to deal with the 'virus' and I was instructed to
contact the Symantec web site for further information. There I
clicked on a link which to me eventually to a Symantec chat help
page where I spoke with a customer service representative who
eventually convinced me to speak to symantec technical support
who could fix the 'problem' remotely for the low price of $100.00.
I felt like I was being held hostage and informed them of this but
agreed non the less as I was concerned the 'virus' could do more
damage than it already may have. That's about it except to say
that I am out $100.00 US dollars and would like to be compensated!
That and the remote 'cleaning' up of the virus took about 3 hours of
my time which I can't get back. We lost internet connectivity
on our computer that has Cybersitter during the first week of
December. Since we have two computers at home, and did not
lose connectivity on the non-cybersitter computer, I assumed that
the problem was with my internet (network) card, and went out and
purchased a new one ($25). It was several days before we
received notification of the fact the problem was a Norton induced
problem. As a result, I made a purchase that was ended up
being unnecessary. My computer kept saying that
auto protect had detected bloodhound. I googled bloodhound and
was lead to the Norton site, but it was just a goose chase. I
was in the middle of some very high priority work at the time, and
needless to say, I was more than a little aggravated. I tried
calling Norton...good luck! After three days, I was ready to
reformat and start over. I read many blogs and finally
realized the problem by accident. I went into the computer
manager and noticed that there was an error every time Cybersitter
was being opened. The next day, at work, I searched the Norton
site for Cybersitter hits and it lead me to the fix: Turn of
auto protect, download the Norton updates and install, turn back on
auto protect, and WOW...it worked! For the sake of my sanity, I hope
this doesn't happen again! On December 5, 2007 my computer
lost all connection with the internet. The Ethernet port
showed that it had limited connection but no information could be
accessed on line. I lost my internet connection
as I was online. My system broke down at that point, so that I
was afraid to continue use of my computer. Also had a virus
called bloodhound.unknown. Don't know if they were related.
The virus was fixed rather easily, according to the computer tech,
but not the internet connection. We were charged $210.00 by our
computer tech company and were without our computer for a full week,
resulting in great inconvenience. My husband intends to send the
bill to Symantec. We are happy that you are pursuing this issue. On December 5, our Norton
Internet Security stated that Bloodhound.unknown had been detected
on our computer. We then lost internet and e-mail access. My husband
is a student and relies on internet access to communicate with his
professors, and I use the internet daily for homeschooling purposes.
That evening we took our computer to the "Geek Squad" at Best Buy.
They stated that Norton had determined a virus was on our computer.
We paid them $212 ($199+tax) to remove the virus from our computer.
A couple days after we picked it up, we received your e-mail
informing us of Norton's error. I contacted Norton through their
website, which states that they will reply within 48 hours. I told
them how their product wrongly determined my computer had a virus,
and how much I had to pay to correct it. I still have not heard from
them. In addition to the money we spent, Norton cost me hours of my
time trying to resolve this issue. Norton indicated that
Cybersitter had an issue and asked if they should fix it. I
assumed it was a Norton setting that needed fixing to allow it to
work with Cybersitter so I said yes. Cybersitter was broken.
I did not completely lose Internet connectivity, but I lost a
majority of it. It was as if Cybersitter was half alive and
blocked random items. This made it very difficult to resolve
the issue because I couldn't get a reliable internet connection to
download V10 of Cybersitter. It also impacted two of my
children who could not use the Internet for school work (my daughter
takes on-line classes from both the Michigan Virtual High School and
Lansing Community College and my son had a project that was due).
We have two computers.
Both have cybersitter, one has mcafee, the other norton. The
computer with norton was totally disabled as far as internet access.
We have five children. Losing one computer resulted in much
stress for homework. In addition, my daughter did not receive
a very important social invitation sent via facebook, as that is the
only computer with facebook access, causing much heartache. We
spent hours trying to fix the computer and were in the process of
purchasing a new one when we received your email. Needless to
say, when it comes time to renew Norton, if not before, we will
probably switch to McAfee for both computers. One day I suddenly started
getting "bloodhound.unknown" virus alerts, and Norton helpfully
quarantined a couple of files. This took away all Internet
access, so I had to explore possible solutions at work, most of
which suggested downloading various apps online - which I couldn't
do. Symantec's site was no help at all. This took several days. I
was just about to call in a professional to try to fix my system,
when I got the email from CyberSitter informing me of the real
nature of the problem. Their fix fortunately corrected the problem.
Total time on my part investigating the problem and applying the fix
was probably 6 hours. I wish I could send Symantec a bill at my
hourly rate for the time they wasted. Norton just really sucks.
I wiped Norton and installed Avast. Reinstalled Cybersitter.
I spent about 2 hours total but an hour of that was cheerfully
deleting Norton from the hard drive and registry. While running Norton 360, our
Cybersitter has been disabled. I had contacted Cybersitter and
received some directions on how to correct. However, I had to
contact a professional to repair three computers. We have three systems running
both Norton Internet Security 2007 and CyberSitter 9.0 - two systems
local and one remote on a college campus several thousand miles
away. All three systems were affected with the problem
manifested by the Norton update. I spent approximatly 4 man hours
trouble shooting the local systems and, more significantly, a half
of one night troubleshooting the remote system as my college student
daughter needed the system for her finals and had no internet
access. Total time expened approximatly 7 man hours. and
several hours of lost sleep and increased 'finals anxiety' for my
daughter. My billable rate to my clients is $250 per hour.
I highly support your efforts in organizing a unified claim to
Symantec in response to thier irresponsible and unprofessional
handling of this issue. On about December 3rd, I began
to get a warning that said something like '... has found
Bloodhound.unknown' with some other info. I tried to get on the
internet, to find out about it, but was cut off from the internet.
E-mail also didn't work. I turned off Cybersitter, but that made no
difference. I use CYBERsitter for my son's
computers. They were both informed by a Norton Virus alert
that the bloodhound virus was detected and prevented them from using
the Internet. Use of the computer itself was difficult due to
the messaging received by Norton in the form of a continuous pop-up.
Fortunately, I was able to troubleshoot the issue resulting in
clearing up the problem because of my computer experience.
Otherwise, I would have spent hundreds of dollars having a
professional troubleshoot and fix two computers. However, it
did take several hours of frustrating time and aggravation. I
am very disappointed in Symantec that their users were not notified
immediately and it seems like this may have been used to prompt
CYBERsitter users into cancelling their subscriptions and using
Symantec software for parental controls. The time I spent on
this issue was ridiculous! The negligence of not notifying
Norton users was unacceptable! I assist a small catholic
school in the Boston area with their PC's and network. All of
our PC's are equipped with Cybersitter and Symantec AV. We
have about 25 PC's in a lab environment, and about 40 other
throughout the school, used extensively in classrooms and for school
administration. On December 3rd, at about noon, our lab PC's
are programmed to get run Live Update for Symantec. At that time,
all our lab PC's were littered with error messages for the
bloodhound virus, and could not access the internet. Slowly,
the remainder of the school PC's were affected in the same way.
I was called in to fix the problem, but was unable to figure it out.
We called in a network service person at $90 an hour to address the
problem. It took over 15 hours of the technician's time to
finally find a solution to the problem, and fix all the PC's.
The technician contacted Symantec, but the Symantec technician on
the phone claimed we were infected by a virus and there was no issue
with Symantec. I was skeptical, since before this, there were
two other instances whereas Symantec Live update would not work
without disabling Cybersitter- I suspected it was a conflict between
the two again. As I was away on business, the
house internet connection was disabled for 2 weeks. My small son was
paranoid that he had accidentally infected his computer with a
virus. On approximately December 4th,
our family PC (which is the only one our children are allowed to use
because it has Cybersitter on it) stopped allowing access to the
internet. Norton anti-virus said it had detected an unknown
bloodhound virus but the Norton anti-virus program did not know what
to do with it. After a week of trying to resolve online with
Norton, I finally took the CPU into a local computer repair shop.
I was told that a bloodhound is extremely difficult to get rid of as
it can 'sense' when it is about to be deleted and will move.
The end result is they recommended a complete wipe of the hard drive
and then re-installing the operating system. I didn't lose all
of my pictures and music files (as I back-up once a month) but I did
lose some as well as $285 in service fees as the computer repair
shop pulled out what files they could and then reinstalled an
operating system. Symantec shut down my internet
access. I kept getting popup indicating "bloodhound.unknown".
Reported this to them and they stated they had many calls on this
and I should check back in 24-48 hrs for a resolution. First noticed a problem when
Norton started to behave strangely on 2 computers at home which kept
on flashing up messages about a 'Bloodhound' virus. I had not heard
of this and on looking it up saw that it might be related to a
macro. Then both computers were unable to access the internet
whereas my own wireless laptop (with Norton but no Cybersitter) was
still ok. For each of these 2 computers I then spent several hours
trying to figure out what was wrong as the network connection to one
was wireless and the other wired directly to the wireless
router/modem. I assumed the Netgear router was ok but there was a
communication problem with the other 2 computers. I tried all sorts
of things to try and reset the internet connection of both computers
and after several hours found a way to get one to work only to find
that the next day I had to do it all over again. As you can imagine
I was pretty relieved when Cybersitter e mailed me to tell me what
was happening and their advice worked. Needless to say I am very
unimpressed by Symantec who haven't done anything to bring this to
my attention - certainly no apology. During this period they have
just sent me reminders to renew my subscription!! At the very least
they should have the politeness to apologise to their users and make
amends to Cybersitter for their actions. Lost internet access a week or
so ago and spent around 2 hours trying to re-connect. Kids
could not do homework assignments, I lost vital e-mail communictions. I spent one hour on the phone
with my local ISP to find out that I did not have any problem with
my internet access. They encouraged me to call Norton and see
if they could help with this bloodhound virus we saw. I spent
2.5 hours with Norton and upgraded 6 times to finally being told I
could pay them $95 to fix this problem. I lost it and told
them this was crazy. What was I paying them for in the first
place? The following day I placed the error code and
wording into Google and found an answer on the internet to renew my
winsock and that fixed my situation in seconds. No thanks to
Norton. I plan to disable Norton and find another security
program. The Norton Antivirus update
basically disabled my computer. As an IT professional, I went
through standard troubleshooting techniques, but I knew from the
start it was related to the update that had rebooted my machine.
I could not access the internet and was being bombarded with a
Bloodhound detection message. I shut off Cybersitter and got
internet access back, but every time I accessed the web, I got the
Bloodhound warning. I tried to research it on the Symantec
site and find info on updated that caused the problem, but could not
find anything helpful at all. Finally, I went into Norton
Antivirus and disabled any related to Bloodhound heuristics, and
after a few reboots, it seemed to work, but I'm sure my computer is
not as well protected as it should be. BTW, I have this
configuration on 5 machines! Altogether, I spent several hours
troubleshooting, researching, and attempting to fix Symantec's
mistake. I appreciate your email
alerting me to this issue. I experienced what you discribed except I
didn't lose anything from my Cyber Sitter files atleast I don't
think I did. The first thing that happened is I had a messege from
Norton saying I was attacked by a virus called "bloodhound"....then
I lost my internet access. I went thru immense frustrations trying
to figure it out. Especially because I am in Romania and not knowing
the language very good. So I finally took my computer to a
technician who thankfully spoke English. To make a long story short
I ended up uninstalling Norton and installing a free trial version
of AVG Internet Security and my problems went away. The bad part is
I had just renewed my Norton subscription about a month earlier.
Norton has lost me as a customer! The technician told me I may have
to reinstall Windows and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I am the director of
Information Systems for Shilo Inns. I started getting calls
from one hotel after another about the bloodhound virus being
detected and that they were unable to connect to the internet.
I spent a lot of hours troubleshooting the problem. Symantec
support gave me a list of entries in the registry to edit.
This did not seem to help. Then I received the email notice
from Solid Oak Software with instructions to resolve the issue, and
it did. Norton AV apparently deleted
some of my Cybersitter files and made it impossible for me to access
the internet in any way. It was necessary for me to re-install
Cybersitter in order to gain access to the internet. Thank you
Cybersitter for your help in resolving this issue. We were unable to access the
internet. When we called our local service provider, they ran some
tests and determined everything from there stand point was OK and
that we needed to call Dell. When we called Dell, they initially
told us we would need to reinstall the entire operating system and
the possibility existed that we would loose everything on our hard
drive. When we spoke to another individual in tech support at Dell,
they said there were other options they we should look at first.
Since our warranty had expired and we did not get a service
contract, the cost to provide this analysis was $39.00. After more
than 2 hours on the phone "enabling" things that had been
"disabled", we were back in business. I'm extremely disappointed
this happened but fortunate the damage wasn't worse than it was. I
agree that Symantec should be responsible for reimbursing the cost
for fixing our system since they caused the problem. I lost my internet connection
about 4:00 PM on December 4th. I need the internet for my job
search, my wife uses it for e-mail information and my sons use it
for homework. Below I've pasted the final e-mail from/to Dell
Customer Service. Internet access on my home
computer stopped working, NIS "Bloodhound.Unknown" warnings kept
popping up. Googled "Bloodhound.Unknown" from another computer
to find out what it meant and started to suspect the problem was
with NIS, i.e. a false detection. NIS logs showed that
LiveUpdate had run shortly before the problem started. Running
LiveUpdate again manually did not help presumably because Symantec's
fix was not yet in place. Uninstalled NIS, installed McAfee
VirusScan Plus, and ran a scan which indicated my computer was
virus-free. I had much trouble and all
norton related. I discussed the problem with two computer nerds and
both agree: Take Norton Off My Computer. So I did, and not only does
cybersitter work, but everything else works better. Turns out,
Norton is not a good company anymore. To replace my Norton I was
told to get: AVG Free. It works well with your product. Currently,
I'm paid up for another year with Norton, but after twenty years a
Norton customer, I'm done. We lost internet usage on two
of our kids computers, both have Cyber sitter and Symantec Anti
virus installed on them. I had to hire an outside IT company
to get the problem fixed. I have not received the invoice yet
but it took them approx 2 hrs to fix the problem and they bill
$125/hr. Was having problems getting on
the internet. Spent about three hours troubleshooting the
problem. Finally uninstalled Norton360 and the problem went
away. Am not going to install Norton again, even though they
say the problem is resolved. This situation caused me to
lose over 3 days of work from my business!!! As I have Norton
on two business PC's, it caused considerable problems to both
computers. What a mess! It disabled my internet
connection and dinged up my networking settings. I am still
not completely fixed with one of the pc's as I tried many different
options through Norton's guidance. They claimed they were
aware of this but at the time didn't mention Cybersitter. I
currently have Cybersitter uninstalled on both PC's due to this.
I also had to totally uninstall my Adobe Professional 8 - Yes it did
affect this as well. This all happened on Dec 4th (or 3rd)
cant remember exact date. Norton has a log of me calling as
well. I still have a message on the first (most important pc
for the business) saying a bloodhound.unknown virus is on my pc -
then I receive a 2nd message saying Norton has it taken care of
though. This is part of this LiveUpdate problem miscorrectly
identifiying Cybersitter. If I could have waited long enough
for the Cybersitter email guiding on how to fix this, the message
would be off the one pc. I used the guidance from Cybersitter
for the 2nd pc and it looks like I am in the clear for it.
Honestly, you could say probably 4 days of work were out the window.
That is over $1100 of paid work time that I lost. (I am paid
$35/hour). I am a web designer which includes maintenance for
websites. Also am a business manager for my husbands company. Our company runs 4 computers,
all of which have both Norton and Cybersitter running. We are
an internet company, MouseMemories.com, so our internet access is
critical to our operations. All records and active customer
orders are stored in databases on a dedicated server that is not
housed at our location. We also have a walk in store that
allows customers to shop in our warehouse. The POS system is
tied to our online inventory database, so internet access is
required to be able to check out our customers. When all of
our computers were affected, our company was crippled. Our
webmaster and the "computer guy" that works here, spent about 4
hours trying to figure out what in the world was going on. He
even did upgrade Norton, but that didn't work. In the end, we
had to call a local Computer Technology company to send a technician
to see if he could figure out what we couldn't. We were unable
to get one to come until the following day. He spend 2 hours @
$95 per hour trying to fix the problem. In the end, he did
resolve it, but by doing what our own computer guy had tried the day
before...he installed newer versions of Norton. Apparently,
they had created the fix by then. In a Windows client/server
configuration, all machines that had Cybersitter and Symantec
AntiVirus installed failed all network connectivity after the
Symantec DAT updates. Symantec reported Bloodhound findings
and called for a reboot to Safe Mode to properly disinfect it.
After performing this on the affected machines, there was still no
network connectivity. I had to call Dell tech support to
troubleshoot the network issue. The resolution, after
disinfection, was to execute 'netsh winsock reset catalog' to fix
the IP stack. Bill to customer was $300 for Symantec's error.
Then I had to tell the customer that it was time to renew Symantec
licensing. Not an easy sell. Internet access shut down on my
computer. No e-mails or internet. I own and run a .com business. My business
was shut down for days, I spent hours trying to repair the problem. The
computer repair store spent hours trying to repair this. I have canceled my
symantec subscription and will NEVER return. They have never informed me of
this problem and their only communication was to renew my subscription. NO
chance of that. I will tell everybody I come in contact with of the Symantec
debacle and their non-service afterword. Thanks, Alan I am the director of a small, rural
public library, which means we have no IT dept to help with this sort of
problem. We had no access to our computer.
I called our internet provider Cox to have them check to make sure that we
were connected. Everything from their end and our computer was fine.
I kept getting a notice from Symantec so I thought it might be them.
You cannot get in touch with this company. The phone numbers have been
disconnected and if you cannot use the internet you have no way of getting
help from them. I used Cox tech support to help solve the problem.
They in fact told me the problem was Symantec/Norton. They removed
Norton from my computer put on another system. This took 6 hours and
cost $175.00. We did not have access to the computer for this period
of time. No connection to internet on two
machines with Norton reporting a bloodhound virus found and then resolved
every two minutes ! Norton detected a threat using
bloodhound My son (computer) was completely unable
to access the internet. I had to call my IT provider who solved the
problem after we received your email on how to fix it and I have just
received the bill for $230.00 (australian). It was most inconvenient!! On December 4th, 2007, my internet
access was blocked, all of a sudden, while online. I called tech
support for Roadrunner, three different times, troubleshooting and trying
everything they told me to try, to no avail. I COULDN't log on!
I had a constant yellow triangle with a black explanation mark in the middle
of it, on my computer icon in the bottom right hand corner of my screen,
with a pop up bubble saying "limited or no connectivity". Roadrunner even
sent someone out to hook up their laptop and again, they couldn't figure it
out either. It finally took someone coming to my house, (a friend who
works on computers), to alleviate the problem, which he thought was a virus.
Only after I had internet access again, did I read the email from
cybersitter regarding this matter. I couldn't read my emails for
almost 2 weeks, because I didn't have internet access! This was an
extreme inconvenience for my whole family, as we all use the internet for
various things, one being a home based business. So, I agree with
cybersitter, if their is any compensation to be made, it would be greatly
appreciated. On Dec. 4th I found the my computer
could log into my service provider, but I could not access the internet
using Internet Explorer or Firefox. I found that software updates could be
downloaded, but not email (I use Eudora). After several days I contacted
Symantec, thinking botware may have taken over my computer. The next day
their service rep emailed back with two suggestions that did not help
because I could not use the internet to go to their web site. I then noticed
three days in a row that when I connected my computer to the service
provider, about 60,000 bytes of data were sent, and 40,000 were received
with no control on my part. That convinced me that my compute was controlled
by a bot. I spent all Friday afternoon trying to find a solution and
evaluating software that would clean up my machine. I had already spent
several hours with this issue before that, and a couple since I found out
what the problem was. The latest email from a Symantec rep on Saturday 12/15
still did not mention the CyberSitter possibility!!!! On Sunday 12/167 I
discovered the Cybersitter email dated 12/10 on my service provider's
website. To solve it I had to delete Cybersitter which I had purchased in
2005. I plan to purchase the latest version asap. Cybersitter was installed on my son's
computer. When Norton released the virus update that affected
Cybersitter, my son's computer lost all internet access. We kept
getting an error message saying that there was a bloodhound virus on his pc.
I did hours of research on my pc trying to figure out how he would have
gotten this virus (and then hopefully how to get rid of it). His
computer began to send error messages and was practically unusable.
This was a considerable inconvienience since he uses his computer for school
research as well as his own entertainment. Because of this, he needed to use
my pc for school work - and I had to monitor it so he didn't 'mess up' my pc
since at this time I thought he was doing things on the computer to contract
virus's. To fix his computer I had a computer tech come to my home who
charged me $80.00 for basically nothing. He also could not determine
what was really going on, so we had to do a complete restore of my son's pc.
So, all data and music etc he had on there was lost. He now has to
'rebuild' his computer to where it was at. To say that this was an
expensive inconvienence is an understatement. I was so upset when I
thought that my son 'ruined' his computer - and now I find out it is because
of Norton. All of this hassle and money and turmoil is because of a
security system that I paid for. I am furious at Norton and unless I
see some action taken on their part to resolve this issue and publically
apologize - I will not buy their products anymore and I will advise others
to do the same. We lost internet access to our home PC
about two weeks ago with an error message from our Norton software that
referred to the "Bloodhound" virus. We tried to clear the message and
resolve the problem with no success. We then called a customer
assistance number we had on file for Symantec, which we had used
successfully earlier this year, but the number was no longer in service.
At that point we used another PC to access the Symantec website only to find
there was NO phone numbers, NO e-mail address and NO CUSTOMER SUPPORT
available. Instead there was a standard list of failure modes to work
through, all of which required internet access to diagnose the problem PC,
and none of them mentioned the Bloodhound virus...it was useless! This was basically the straw that broke
the camel's back with Symantec and Cybersitter. After wasting 4-6
hours on this problem, with no email or call back from Symantec (still never
heard weeks later), I uninstalled both Norton Internet Security 2007 and
Cybersitter. I had already suffered through hours of previous bugs
with Norton Internet Security, and couldn't take it any more even though I
had over 9 months left in my subscription. Cybersitter probably got
taken out in the crossfire, but I had had enough. It was a full time
job trying to keep NIS up and running. I was afraid it was going to
kill my computer. During the 3 months I had NIS 2007 installed, I
probably wasted 30 hours getting around bugs and trying to get everything to
keep working. I had to turn Cybersitter off every time I sent or
received email, so when I uninstalled NIS, I just uninstalled Cybersitter
also. I probably should've upgraded to Cybersitter 10, but I didn't
know that NIS was causing Cybersitter not to work. I was so
exasperated I just gave up on both. I would love at least a refund on
the money I spent on NIS since I through the piece of junk in the trash.
They can't compensate me for my time, but they could at least reimburse the
money I wasted. I did not realize that my
Symantec/Norton anti-virus protection caused this problem until receiving an
email several days ago and now this email. I suddenly had no Internet
or email connectivity. I took my CPU into Data Doctors here in
Phoenix--the Tatum and Thunderbird store. They hooked it up and
confirmed that I did not have a connection. The told me it would cost
$249 to fix the problem. It took 3-4 days to fix this problem, but
they did fix it and everything is fine now. I appreciate your good
customer service efforts to offer your customers some type of monetary
relief. I await your reply on how you intend to go about compensating
your customers. Thank you very much for the opportunity to make
comments and to read my reply. We had the issue Thursday AM with two
of our client's computers on the network at a local law firm. We had
no other option at that time but to reload the OS and applications on both
PC's. Total cost- 5 hrs each at $135 per hour. $1035!! After the erroneous Symantec virus
defination was downloaded using their Live Update product, I lost all
internet connection. I determined that I was getting a bad IP address
and tried everything that I knew to fix it. Thinking that it was a
problem with my wireless router, I spent 4 hours on the phone with Linksys
tech support but they were unable to determine a fix. I then tried
connecting to my router with a hard cable (I had to purchase 25 feet of
cable to make this connection)but that didn't work either. Then I
downloaded a Spyware product (CounterSpy) on the hopes that it would find a
hijacked port or something, but that was unsuccesful also. I had
finally given up on fixing it myself and had it packed up and ready to take
to a computer service firm when I finally got the email from the Cybersitter
people. I followed the instructions that Norton suggested first, and it did
not resolve the problem. Then I followed the instructions that
Cybersitter provided and it was fixed in 10 minutes. Yipee! What a lovely surprise to
hear a company (Solid Oak) echoing what I felt during this entire fiasco! I have both Norton Anti-virus and
Cybersitter on my computer. The recent issues with Norton did disable
the capabilites of the Cybersitter program. I didn't realize that day
what had happened. I couldn't get online and started receiving
messages that there was a program attempting to enter my computer and that
Norton could "fix" the issue. Once "fixed" I could immediately get
online. There was nothing in the message from Norton that would have
identified an issue with Cybersitter. I installed Cybersitter
primarily for the safety of my children. I realized the filtering
system had been disabled when trying to find information for my son about
XBox games and images were displayed that are normally blocked...while my
son was standing by the computer. I have since updated to version 10
of Cybersitter and have had no further problems. Feel free to add my
name to any consumer list you are compiling for Norton. Compensation
of the $24.95 for having to upgrade my cybersitter program would be greatly
appreciated!! I blamed my daughter and in fact she
did nothing wrong. I spent .many hours and ultimately gave up without
internet until I was noticed (on my Palm) by Cybersitter of the cause and
resolution. I agree Norton should make it right. Thank you for
following up and God bless you and your work. My one computer was not affected (it
doesn't have cybersitter on it) so I was able to get on the internet to look
up the issue. I spent a day and a half running all kinds of utilties,
removing files, restoring my computer to a previous date. Norton
wanted me to pay 99 dollars for them to fix it which I thought was a crime.
It was a horrible experience and very stressful since I lost a lot of time
and information. Had 2 affected, one laptop one desk
top. It started I believe on Dec. 4th. First I contacted Cablevision. They
checked it out and said it wasn't them. They said the message I kept
receiving "Norton confined Bloodhound as a security risk Auto protect
activity is complete. your computer is secure." . Then I got another message
that read "Symantec email proxy can't scan your email because your network
is not properly configured." I called Symantec/Norton and they tried to
repair it. I have my priority code from norton. They said they had to get a
second level security person to help and had to charge me $99.00 per
computer. I paid for my daughter's computer because she needed her computer
for school. My daughter's laptop was repaired.I decided not to spend $10. to
repair my computer because it was older. I was actually going to get a new
computer the day after I got your email. Symantec keeps calling me to ask if
my computer is working. I said yes but I want my money back. That they don't
respond to. We have about 20 PC's using cybersitter
here at the Morristown public library in NJ and most lost internet because
Symantec AV cooporate deleted the lspcs.dll file which was identified as a
virus. We were down all day until a fix was put in. This is the
second incident in the last few years with Symantec and we purchase over 100
licenses from them a year. I'm considering switching to Mcafee next
year. Was working on the computer.
Stepped away from it for a second. Tried to get back on the internet
and couldn't. Phoned in a problem to my cable company. Waited
for them 1 1/2 days to come to see what the problem was. Nothing wrong
on their part because he hooked up his personal computer through my modem.
With the help of a friend that has a computer business we were able to
figure out that it had come through Norton. We removed Norton 360 from
our computer. (Will never use again) and was able to get back online.
My husband lost a lot of EBAY business for those days. Also
compensated friend for his time in helping us out in a jam.
We are a K-8 parochial school. I teach
and provide the IT support. When this happened, it knocked out the 20
notebooks for middle school students, the 23 PC lab which supports all the
students, and all the teacher computers that also had Cybersitter. It also
blocked network access. This affected 250 students and 20+ adults. |