Norton Mobile Security product reviews

Frankly dubious to start with, this won me over pretty quickly. Installation was simple: Download, enter details, configure. From start to finish took less than 10 minutes, and it would have been faster if I hadn't wandered out of the WiFi zone and had to start all over again.

The nice little package I received - which consumers would be handed when they buy the product - came with a nice little card for my wallet, giving me all the commands... but I admit to having a brainless moment of confusion when I noticed that though it tells me WHAT to TXT, it didn't tell me WHERE to TXT it to. I foolishly assumed I would have sent the commands to some shortcode number, but of course, when you install this module it slips a hook into the 'inbound TXT' line and watches for incoming command TXTs. These, it keeps quiet, the rest get passed through to your chosen messaging system and appear as a regular TXT MSG. Clever, crafty, and utterly simple to operate.

Is your memory a little vague at times, but you don't want to make your password too simple to guess? No worries1 You can select up to four friends who can act as trusted 'spare keys' allowing them to unlock your phone for you by sending it a TXT with their own special instructions. Worried you might forget who you set as 'mates'? No worries... when your phone locks, a dinky little screen pops up that includes instructions and a list of your selected mates. A single keypress will ring them so you can ask them to unlock your phone. No, you can't ask it to send them a TXT - how would they know it was really you? It MUST be a voice call, so if you accidentally lock your phone, hope you have free plan minutes left.

SPAM filtering on the PC has long been a common practice, especially with the Norton range. Now, you can have your phone filter against SPAM, or genuine-but-annoying, TXT messages and calls. It's a fairly straightforward setup, with the ability to add a number from Contacts, Call logs, SMS logs, or manually. I did find that some blocked numbers - especially calls coming in from confidential numbers in Australia - were more difficult to filter.

Also included in this little app is an Anti-Malware scanner. Brilliant! With smartphones and computers rapidly converging, malware is making it's present felt across every digital device - smartphones are no exception now. It's simple, and I assume effective, because despite my best efforts to locate malware online, I can't find anything that, when installed, triggers an alert... and I have voluntarily installed some seriously didgy garbage on my phone to test this. -shudder- Thank Fnord for 'Factory Reset'.

And yes, there is Anti-Phishing in there as well, with "Web Protection" enabled by default. Potentially fraudulent sites will be blocked, and if you choose to ignore the warning and continue, you'll get a 30 minute window of opportunity to browser before being prompted again. Pretty good little package, and priced at a very reasonable $59.99 for a 2yr license. Not too shabby for peace-of-mind use of your smartphone.

Overall, I was hard-pressed to find any fault with this app... and the only tiny little glitch was the 'Locate' feature - no matter how I tried, I could not get it to give the right address. It was CONSISTENTLY 1 property north of the actual location. Strange... really strange. Even Foursquare and the Geocaching app I use both manage a closer, more accurate fix than that. None the less, it's close enough to be useful, nok knowing the bias, if I need to call the cops in it's simple enough to get them to knock on three doors, and listen for the ring. ;) Got a phone that runs Android? You need this app. There is a 'lite' version out there for free, so you might want to give that a go... but be aware it's considerable more limited than the full version, and at a mere 8c a day in effect, how can it NOT be worth the cost?