Product Reviews

With some justification, many Mac users feel immune to virus threats. But nowadays the real malware action lies in platform-agnostic identity theft, or phishing, which involves tricking users into revealing personal data.

To combat this, Symantec has released a Mac version of Norton Confidential, its online transaction security system.

Confidential is made up of four different protective elements. All are managed through a central tabbed control panel, which provides an overview of your protection against phishing threats. The control panel also logs attempts to compromise your data or access protected files. If you have admin privileges, you can also adjust program settings.

It works like a virus-scanner and is designed to protect you against fraudulent websites posing as reputable online banks or shops. A browser plug-in adds a bar underneath your browser's toolbar and its colour indicates the safety of the current page. A green bar shows that the site is secure, black is neutral, while red indicates that the page may be a phishing site. If a page is identified as potentially fraudulent, Confidential blocks entry to it, although you can override this if you want to.

The flaw - and it's huge - is that the protection only works with Firefox. Anyone using Safari, OmniWeb or Camino is left out. Restricting protection to such a small minority of Mac users is a bizarre move, exacerbated by the fact that of all browsers, Firefox is the least in need of help.

Confidential does install Firefox 1.5 but the newer version 2 boasts built-in phishing protection. In other words: if you don't

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use Firefox, you're unprotected; if you do, you probably don't need it. Firefox does lack Confidential's heuristic analysis and measures only against lists of known phishing sites; but in our tests, both were adept at spotting fraudulent sites.

Phishing protection isn't Norton Confidential's only feature. Information Guard attempts to prevent information, such as passwords or bank account details, from being passed over the Internet. You enter data to be protected into the control panel and a series of checkboxes tailor the scope of protection to different types of application, for example web, email, chat or file transfer programs. Confidential also monitors outgoing traffic and warnsif an attempt is made to transmit your chosen data.

File Guard lets you prevent files on your Mac from being opened or modified without permission. As a means of protecting individual files it offers little more comfort than a variety of other free options, such as storing files on an encrypted disk image, but it's much easier to manage and its logging features are useful. Another handy touch is the ability to scan your Mac for files containing data such as the passwords protected in Information Guard. You can then add these files to the File Guard list. Again, there's a critical drawback. Our test Mac's Finder frequently slowed and warnings appeared when simply navigating folders containing a protected file from an application's Open dialog box.

Confidential's fourth feature is difficult to value. Vulnerability Protection attempts to block network attacks that can steal personal information. It's easily configurable and there's no doubt that it's extra protection, but as long as Mac OS X's built-in firewall is turned on and Mac OS X is updated regularly, Mac users tend to be well protected against such malware attacks.

It's worth noting that as with most Norton products, the purchase price is actually an annual licence fee that includes 12 months of updates.

Norton Confidential is simple, inexpensive and its release highlights the threats to our Macs beyond viruses. But poorly-chosen features mean its clearest value is as an example of how a great idea can be badly implemented.