Android devices have taken the world by storm and so did mobile malware. Because of that, we need to virus-proof not just our computers, but also our Android smartphones or tablets. Just like most security vendors, Norton also offers a security app for Android devices. It is called Norton Security and Antivirus and it bundles many security features like web protection, anti-theft, call blocking and more. If you want to know whether it is worth buying this product for your Android devices, read this review and see what you get for your money:
What can Norton Security and Antivirus do for you?
Norton Security and Antivirus is an all-in-one security app that is designed to protect you against all kinds of threats. You can get it for free from Google Play, using this link. If you never used this product before, Norton Security and Antivirus will automatically enable its trial version for 30 days. However, after the time is up, you will have to purchase the full version of the app, if you want to still be able to use all the features and tools it has to offer.
Here's what Norton Security and Antivirus promises to offer you:
- Anti-Malware - protects you against malware threats, spyware and other similar threats. You can use this module to run manual antivirus scans, or schedule scans at various times.
- Web Protection - blocks dangerous websites that could try to steal your personal data.
- Safe Search - lets you search the web in a secure way, and can help you avoid malicious websites from your search results.
- Anti-Theft - helps you find your Android mobile device if you lose it or if it gets stolen. If you don't think that you'll get your device back, you can also lock it remotely, or wipe all your personal information from it so that nobody can access it.
- App Advisor - scans your apps and lets you know which of them could be a privacy risk for you.
- Call Blocking - blocks annoying calls you could receive from people you don't want to talk to.
- Contact Backup - backups and restores your contact information on a variety of devices running on Android or iOS.
Setting up Norton Security and Antivirus for Android
In order to test Norton Security and Antivirus , we used a Motorola Nexus 6 smartphone, running on Android 7 Nougat. Just like for any other Android app, you start by downloading and installing Norton Security and Antivirus from the Play Store.
When you launch Norton Security and Antivirus for the first time, it asks you whether you want to join the Norton Community Watch. We recommend you do that, as Norton will be able to react faster to new threats.
After a few seconds, in which it finishes setting everything up, Norton Security and Antivirus automatically updates itself and performs a full system scan for malware threats and privacy issues. We believe that this is a very good approach.
Then, if everything goe s well, you get to see the main user interface. Notice that Norton Security and Antivirus invites you to set up the Web Protection feature. Out of the three items showed on the main console - Anti-Malware, Privacy and Web Protection - the latter is the only one with a 50% score. If you tap on it, Norton will get you to the Web Protection screen, where you can enable this security module. We recommend you do this as soon as possible.
The download and install process for Norton Security and Antivirus is easy to go through. We appreciate that, after installing the app, it automatically updates its database and performs an antivirus and privacy scan.
Using the Anti-Malware module
The Anti-Malware protection module from Norton Security and Antivirus is very easy to use. If you tap to open it, you'll find that the only option it offers you is Scan Now. It doesn't say whether it will scan your entire device, or just a part of it, like the apps you have installed.
However, if you go to the App Settings section, you will find two interesting features: Norton Security and Antivirus can be set to run scheduled scans, and you can set it to Scan SD Card. Obviously, we recommend you enable both these options, as they will help you achieve a better level of security on your Android device.
On our Motorola Nexus 6, Norton Security and Android needed 8 seconds to run an anti-malware scan. Although that's a fast scanning time, you should note that we didn't have any apps installed on the test smartphone, except for the default apps from Google. Depending on the apps and files you have on your own device, an anti-malware scan could take longer for you.
The Anti-Malware module doesn't have an option to enable or disable the real-time protection, and it's not mentioned anywhere, so you might be tempted to believe there's no such feature in the app. However, such a protection layer is present, as the security suite instantly reacted when we tried to install an app that mimics malware.
Norton Security and Antivirus for Android offers a good Anti-Malware module that is able to protect you against malicious files. It's very easy to use and we appreciate the fact that it lets you run scheduled scans. However, we wished that we also had a way of controlling the real-time protection and an option to run custom antivirus scans.
Using Web Protection
One key feature of any respectable security app is the web protection it offers. Fortunately, Norton Security and Antivirus includes a security module that bears that exact name and is responsible for protecting you while surfing the web. It promises it will block dangerous websites before you land on them, and as such block them from potentially stealing information from you.
The good news is that Norton's Web Protection works very well. On our test smartphone, it blocked all the phishing websites that we tried to visit using Google Chrome. Each time this happened, Norton displayed an alert message like the one in the image below. It's worth mentioning the fact that, on our test smartphone, the Web Protection module worked only in Chrome, but not in the other web browsers we tested - Firefox and Opera.
Norton Security and Antivirus offers a good Web Protection module that was able to block all the malicious websites that we tried to visit in Google Chrome.
Using the Safe Search
Besides the Web Protection security module, Norton Security and Antivirus also includes a feature called Safe Search. Norton says that this feature "allows you to see a website's safety and shopping rating, and can help you avoid malware infected sites, on your search results". That may be true, but we must point out the fact that this feature relies on using the Ask.com search provider. And Ask.com doesn't have a very good reputation in the online world. Most probably, you will want to avoid it.
Although the Safe Search module is a good idea, we don't really like the fact that Norton uses the Ask.com search provider. It would have been a completely different experience if the app would have offered the user the option to choose his or her preferred search provider. Or at least use one with a good reputation, like Google or Bing.
Using Anti-Theft
The Anti-Theft security module is disabled by default and, to enable it, you will have to use your Norton account. Then, you can configure and use all the protection options offered by Anti-Theft.
You can perform the following actions, from your online Norton management dashboard , or with the help of SMS commands:
- Lock Device - lets you lock your lost or stolen Android device, and have it display a custom message to the person who found or stole it. An interesting thing about this option is that, when enabled, Norton Security and Antivirus will track and report the device's location every 5 minutes and it will take a picture every 10 minutes.
- Locate - tracks the location of your Android smartphone or tablet, with one condition: it must be online for Locate to work.
- Scream - makes your Android device play a very loud song, even if the smartphone or tablet is muted. If the device is not very far from you, you can easily find it using this option.
- Sneak Peek - takes a photo on your lost or stolen Android device and then uploads it to your Norton account. You can always view the last 10 photos taken by Sneak Peek. Unfortunately, we couldn't test this feature, because Norton said that "Due to privacy laws, Sneak peek feature is not available in your country". Why is this feature not available in certain countries?
- Wipe - does exactly what its name implies: it erases all your personal information from your lost or stolen Android smartphone or tablet, so that nobody can gain access to it.
- Backup - keeps your contacts information backed up on Norton servers. You learn more details about this feature in one of the following sections of this review.
Besides all the above features, Norton's Anti-Theft module also lets you configure your Android device to automatically lock if the SIM card is removed or replaced, and automatically wipe itself if it detects 10 failed unlock attempts. Enabling these two options is a good way of assuring yourself that your smartphone or tablet will protect itself when necessary.
Norton Security and Android has a very good set of Anti-Theft features. With the exception of Sneak Peek, which we couldn't test in our country, we found all the other options to work very well.
Read the next page of our review to find how good are the other security modules bundled in Norton Security and Antivirus , and how much it affects your Android device's performances. At the end, you will also see what our final verdict for this security product is.
Using the App Advisor
The App Advisor module from Norton Security and Antivirus is one of the best app auditing modules we've seen in security apps for Android. It is designed to offer information about the apps you have installed, as well as about the ones you intend to install. For instance, if you open the module, you get lists with the apps you have installed on your Android smartphone or tablet, organized in various categories depending on their level of safety.
Then, a tap on an app will make Norton load a new screen in which you get quite a lot of details about that app's Privacy Risk, Unusual Behaviour and even the Ads Displayed by it.
One other very useful feature offered by the App Advisor is called App Advisor for Google Play. This one checks for possible security or privacy risks in apps, before you download and install them on your Android smartphone or tablet. If enabled, when you are on an app's page from the Play Store , Norton will show a message on the bottom of the screen, letting you know if that app is safe for you to download and install, or not.
One of the things we like most at Norton Security and Antivirus for Android is its App Advisor feature. It's very easy to use and it helps you know if an app is safe before you actually put it on your device.
Using the Call Blocking
If there are people or companies to whom you don't want to talk over the phone, Norton Security and Antivirus makes it easy for you to block their calls. That's the job of a protection module called Call Blocking. What we like most about it is that it lets you see your Call Log directly from the app, so you can have a look at all the phone calls you had recently, and select the people or the phone numbers you want to block.
Of course, you can also automatically block all unknown callers, enter a phone number manually and block calls from it, or select a contact individually if that's what you want. Once phone calls are starting to get blocked, you will be able to see all of them in the Block History section of the Call Blocking module.
We liked how the Call Blocking module from Norton Security and Antivirus works and how easy it was to set up. However, we didn't find any way to block SMS text messages .
Using the Contact Backup
One interesting module included in Norton Security and Antivirus is called Contact Backup. This module lets you backup and restore your contacts details from and on all your mobile device s, whether they're Android smartphones or tablets, iPhones or iPads. It's very easy to use - all it takes is a tap on the upload button and then Norton handles the backup by itself. Plus, you can also schedule automatic backups if you want to, on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
The Contact Backup is certainly an interesting addition to Norton Security and Antivirus. However, if you are using Android devices exclusively, and you have enabled Google's own backup services, this feature won't add much value.
Efficiency, speed and performance impact
The first thing we checked for Norton Security and Antivirus was the toll it took on our smartphone's boot speed. Before installing the security app, our smartphone booted in approximately 38 seconds. Then, after we installed and configured Norton Security and Antivirus , the smartphone increased its boot times by a second, to 39 seconds, which is very little.
Then, we also ran a few tests with the popular benchmarking app Vellamo. We ran these tests before and after installing the Norton Security and Antivirus app, so that we could get a better idea of how much it affects the overall performance of our Nexus 6 smartphone.
In the Multicore tests, which measure the performances of the processor when it uses two or more of its cores, our Nexus 6 saw a decrease of performance of only 1%. That's a very good result.
Then we ran the Metal tests, which measure the performance of the processor when using only one of its cores. This is important for older apps that don't know how to use more cores, and for games which performances depend a lot on single core speed. Fortunately, our Nexus 6 saw almost no negative effect when installing Norton Security and Antivirus on it.
Finally, we also ran Vellamo's Browser tests. These show just how fast your web browsing experience is on a certain device. Our Nexus 6 was about 5% slower after installing Norton Security and Antivirus.
It's always worth to get a look at what others had to say about a security app, so that's why we also checked AV-Test's analysis of Norton Security and Antivirus. They gave Norton's Android app their highest score of 6 points out of 6 both for Protection and Usability.
We also checked AV-Comparatives, but unfortunately, Norton's apps are not found in their testing list.
The benchmarks we ran and the results we measured show that Norton Security and Antivirus has a very small negative impact on your Android device's performance.
Pros and cons
We'd like to mention a few of the things we consider as pros for Norton Security and Antivirus :
- The user interface looks very good and it is also very easy to use and understand;
- The antimalware protection you get is top notch;
- It does a very good job of protecting you while surfing the web;
- It lets you know if an app is safe or not, before you download and install it on your Android smartphone or tablet;
- The anti-theft features are working very well;
- You get a very good app auditing module, that gives you a good insight on the security risks your apps pose;
There are also a few negative aspects about Norton Security and Antivirus :
- It cannot filter the text messages you receive;
- The Safe Search module is good in theory, but we really don't like the fact that it relies on Ask.com to give you search results. Ask.com is a search provider with a bad reputation;
- We couldn't find a setting for controlling the real-time anti-malware engine;
- It doesn't include an app locking feature, although Norton offers a standalone Android app for this purpose.
Verdict
Norton Security and Antivirus is one of the best security apps for Android that we've tested so far. It does a great job at securing your smartphone or tablet against malware, malicious apps and dangerous websites. The user interface looks very good and it's also very easy to use, so you'll have no problems in configuring everything the way you want it. We also like the implementation of the anti-theft features and although we hope you won't need to use them, it's good to know that they will do their job just like they promised. On the other hand, we feel that Norton Security and Antivirus has sacrificed advanced settings for maximum usability. For instance, you cannot control the real-time scanning engine, and you cannot run custom scans of specific folders. Plus, we don't like that Norton works with Ask.com in order to power its Safe Search module. All things considered, Norton Security and Antivirus is a solid product that does a very good job at protecting your Android devices. It's definitely one of the best choices you can make.
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