There’s been an argument online about whether paid anti-virus software is still required in the modern age of computing.

Growing up with computers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a need for anti-virus software; we also needed anti-spyware tools to feel protected when accessing the internet. However, there is an argument now that states just using Defender (Microsoft’s own AV solution) is enough.

If you choose whether to use a paid anti-virus or not is totally down to you.

But we still need to look out for scams – we still see a bombardment of notifications claiming that your anti-virus solution has expired. Such as;

Is the above a genuine prompt from Norton? In this post, I will explain on why it isn’t.

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Very much like a Phishing Email, a quick glance on the surface, it feels like a genuine warning from Norton, but there is a very obvious signs that we can see.

via Microsoft Edge

When we see this tagline via Microsoft Edge, this is telling us the notification is coming from Microsoft Edge.

Say, for example, you have a genuine copy of Norton installed on your device, if it were to expire – you would be notified by the Norton program or an email from Norton. We wouldn’t expect a web browser to be notify us.

With web browsers (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome), we can ask a website to notify us. For example, you might want Instagram to notify you about a reaction to your post. You may want a news website to inform us about a new article.

discoversphere.co.nz

Now that we know the notification is coming from Microsoft Edge, we are informed which website is pushing it;

Again, if this were genuine, we would expect the notification to be from Norton, here in the UK that would be uk.norton.com, and not discoversphere.co.nz.

Stop the notifications

Open Microsoft Edge, click on three dots … in the top right > Settings. In Search Settings, search for Notifications or Cookies and site permissions > All permissions > Notifications

Now we can see all the websites that have permission to send you notifications and in our case, we can see discoversphere.co.nz.

Click on three dots and select Remove or Block

This will stop the notifications; however, if you don’t feel comfortable or are unsure if the alerts are legit or not, please reach out, and I’ll be happy to help.