Norton 360 Premium review (PC)

The day that the esteemed editor of this site asked if I wanted to review Norton 360 Premium was the day that I found out that one of my email accounts had been compromised in a cyber attack on a New Zealand media organisation.

I think I had entered some competition to win some glamourous prize (as you do) and didn’t give entering my email address as a contact point a second thought. Turns out it was one of thousands caught in the compromising attack.

There was no harm done in the breach, but it did make me think about just how secure I was online, which is where Norton 360 Premium steps in.

Norton 360 Premium does what it says on the tin.

I’ve reviewed a couple of Norton products for this site over the past few years and I’ve come away impressed. This time around, it was Norton 360 Premium and all-round program that offers anti-virus software, a VPN (virtual private network), software updater, dark web monitoring, cloud backup and a password manager.

A nice touch is that one subscription will let you protect up to five devices and on booting up the program, I could enter my email addresses and Norton’s 360 would search the web (and dark web) to see whether my accounts had been compromised.

I used the VPN, for example, to watch Netflix movies that aren’t on my local provider. I used it to hide my movements as I browsed the web (visiting legitimate sites, thank you). I used it to just generally keep my online identity private from prying eyes. To be honest, Norton Utilities does what it says on the tin and gives you peace of mind when you’re online.

In my latest monthly report, Norton’s advised that of all the dark web monitored categories (Gamertag, phone, email, credit card, driver’s licence, bank account) none of my personal information had appeared on the dark web in the last 30 days. More than 760,000 files on my PC had been scanned and secured.

So far so good, then.

But that’s not all…

If I had any complaint with Norton Utilities, it was that despite it being a paid anti-virus solution, it’s a little heavy handed on the hard sell to upgrade to a higher tier.

At the bottom of the menu screen, Norton’s displays the “thousands” of issues that are slowing down your PC down, but don’t worry, for a “special” price until the end of your current subscription you can upgrade to Norton Utilities Ultimate which will remove all the dead registry entries and other bloat. C’mon, Norton, I’d expect this type of hard sell from the free anti-virus programs not one that you already pay for.

At the end of the day, Norton 360 Premium offers an excellent solution to keep your PC and privacy safe when you venture online and just want your PC virus free.