When we contacted Symantec about this issue, we received the e-mail response: "Although we strongly recommend that our customers use the Phishing Protection and Identity Safe features together, we don't penalize users who prefer not to use our toolbar by preventing them from using Identity Safe. Again, we recommend that our customers use the features together, but we won't limit their choice of toolbars by penalizing customers if they don't use ours." Yes, that's great that I can use the native antiphishing tools within Firefox or Internet Explorer, but Norton Identity Safe will still ask me if I want to use stored personal information on a fraudulent site. Apparently, that's not a problem for Symantec.

Another feature that's important today keeps malware sent via IM from infecting your PC. Norton Internet Security 2008 does that, but only if you have Microsoft (6.0 or higher) or Trillian (3.1 or higher). If you use older versions of the most popular IMs, AOL (4.7 to 5.9), Yahoo (5.x and 6.x), you're golden, but both of these products have updated significantly in recent months, and Norton just hasn't kept up. To test this, we installed Yahoo Instant Messenger 8.1 and sure enough, Norton Internet Security 2008 reported that we did not have any instant messengers installed. Given that both AOL and Yahoo have suffered large-scale attacks in recent months, it's odd that Norton doesn't yet support the latest versions of these.

What Norton Internet Security doesn't include is backup and restore protection or PC maintenance--both of which are provided in the less expensive McAfee Internet Security 2008. For the Norton version of these, you'll have to purchase additional Symantec products. Symantec did beta test another product this summer, however, Norton Anti-Bot is not available in any of the traditional 2008 Norton security products. For Norton Anti-Bot, which simply provides signature and heuristic protection against botnets taking residence on your desktop computer, you'll also have to pay $29.99, almost the same price as the standalone Norton AntiVirus 2008. As such, Anti-bot is simply not worth it a standalone product. We look forward to Symantec adding PC utilities (such as backup) and including its antibot technology to next year's release of Norton Internet Security.