• Longstanding consumer complaints about aggressive upselling, scare-style scan warnings, auto-renewal, and hard-to-cancel billing
• Product often came preinstalled on PCs; many users treated it as unwanted bloatware
• Mixed reputation: lab detection scores often decent; customer-service and billing scores often poor
• 2011–2016 class action (Symantec and Digital River): alleged hidden “download insurance” / extended download service added at checkout; settled for about $60 million
• Canadian class action over alleged defects in an older Norton “decomposer” component (software sold roughly 2010–2016); later settled for tens of millions
• 2013–2022 Columbia University patent case: jury found willful infringement of malware-related patents and awarded $185 million; case later settled
• False Claims Act / GSA contracting: Symantec accused of hiding extra commercial discounts from the U.S. government; 2023 trial findings plus a 2024 Gen Digital payment of $55.1 million to satisfy the judgment
LifeLock (bought by Symantec in 2016; later NortonLifeLock / Gen Digital)
• 2010 FTC settlement: about $12 million for deceptive identity-theft advertising
• 2015 FTC action: about $100 million after LifeLock violated the 2010 order (weak security program and more false claims)
• Recurring criticism that protection/reimbursement marketing overstated what the service actually did
• 2022–2023 credential-stuffing attacks on Norton Password Manager / LifeLock logins using reused passwords from other breaches; company said its own systems were not hacked; thousands of accounts had some personal data accessed and hundreds of thousands of logins were targeted
NortonLifeLock / Gen Digital
• 2021–2022 Norton Crypto: Ethereum miner bundled with Norton 360; company said it was opt-in and took a cut; users and researchers criticized it as inappropriate in a security product; later dropped
• Ongoing complaints about subscription renewals, refunds, and support after the Symantec → NortonLifeLock
→ Gen Digital rebrands
• Privacy/tracking investigations (alleged sharing of site/app data with third-party analytics such as Quantum Metric); not a final court finding
• Separate consumer suits alleging LifeLock failed to alert users or honor “dollar-for-dollar” identity-theft reimbursement promises
> But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier.
> Government should require regular, mandatory reporting by technology service providers to document abuse of their systems including financial support of violence, harassment, and terrorism.This includes implementation of mandatory financial abuse reporting requirements for internet services operating in the United States, including social media services, infrastructure providers, banking institutions, cryptocurrency exchanges, crowdfunding sites, video streaming platforms, and the like.
> [These companies] should be required to investigate and report the details of harms and abuse of their service. There should be … penalties applied to services that refuse these tracking and reporting responsibilities.
The criminal money and money laundering has been researched since 19th century. It has stayed at constant 2-5% of world GDP. However the cost of compliance has gone up exponentially.
Today banks use $250B/year on KYC checks. You could fix the world hunger and still have $50B leftover money with this amount.
The board of directors recognizes the cost savings and immediately start solving world hunger. Meanwhile a gangster in Moldova intrinsically knows that world money laundering has hit 5% GDP and decides not to.
It's not a fair comparison. Money laundering controls likely have also been implemented since the 19th century in some way shape or form. Therefore, that 2-5% figure also includes the effect of those controls. This might just the natural equilibrium below which the juice is no longer worth the squeeze.
Access to information and interconnectedness have also increased exponentially so it might make sense that the costs have increased proportionately.
Finally 200B/year would not solve world hunger if nefarious actors grift away most of that money (especially because you wouldn't be able to track them with out some form of KYC)
You also have to ask if money laundering is bad enough of a crime to warrant all of the overkill responses to it. At some point the medicine becomes worse than the disease. Lawmakers tend to get into these inescapable loops:
Crime X exists -> Try solution Y -> Crime X still exists -> Try harsher solution Y0 -> Crime X still exists -> Try harsher solution Y1 -> Crime X still exists -> Try harsher solution Y2...
I think the problem here might be that while Crime by its definition might be the same, the way that it is executed changes drastically so Solution Y/Y0/Y1/Y2 are not required to exist in terms of severity (very likely solution Y was severe enough if you were tried and convicted of the crime) but they are needed because the way Crime X is executed changes (especially this Crime X)
You mean the government that has been kidnapping the neighbors with whom I do have a real "social contract"?
I mean, I don't generally think that it's a very useful contact, but of all the things I've studied in my life, taking a long, hard look at the material history of the US government has done teh most to make me think that social relations and responsibilities have nothing do with formal governance.
They kidnapped and confiscated the phone of a previous coworker of mine who was born here as a US citizen for a week after arresting 7 other people at his workplace. His mom had no idea where he was or if he was safe until he called her a week later asking to help him get home from a detention center 3 states away.
Shutting down the isp doesnt let them read what you've sent. There wouldn't be intensive government efforts to eliminate private encryption if it wasn't effective.
Did you know they can just beat you with a wrench anyways?
The "maybe if we do what they say and don't make a fuss they'll be appeased and stop" strategy fails when matched up against those who will never be appeased and stop.
> maybe if we do what they say and don't make a fuss
I never suggested that. Encryption is necessary but not sufficient.
Encrypt your shit. But above all vote, be engaged, and defend your rights like hell. If you're relying on encryption alone to protect you, it's already too late.
> In what universe does using encryption to evade the government function as a survival strategy?
Could be read as either
- It functions as a full and complete survival strategy
or
- One of it's functions is as a survival strategy
The former is saying it's all that is needed, the later is saying it's something that can be used in that way (but not saying it's enough). Kind of like saying that food is a human necessity vs saying it is _the_ human necessity.
True for all the Galilean Moons more or less. Their orbits all lie within the Jovian equivalent of the Van Allen belts. And Jupiter's magnetic field is much stronger than earth's.
Not Callisto. Being within Jupiter's magnetosphere but out of reach of Io's shenanigans makes it one of the mildest radiation environments in the solar system.
Io is in orbital resonance with Europa and Ganymede, which causes its orbit to be slightly elliptical. Due to Jupiter's immense gravitational field strength, Io experiences a very high changing tidal force, which causes a changing stress and strain on the entire structure of Io, which causes tidal heating due to friction. This makes it by far the most volcanically active body in the Solar System. Its surface is regularly completely resurfaced, and is covered in sulfur compounds.
Jupiter and Io have a very interesting symbiosis. Jupiter melts Io to form dusty volcanos. It then magnetically sweeps Io clean of dust. The dust forms a plasma ring that enhances the same magnetic field.
https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2098973625252708460
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