Symantec joins McAfee in selling useless mobile security

A fool and his money are soon parted, and Symantec’s Norton division is hoping you are a fool. Today, it announced that its Norton Anti-Theft has left beta and is now a paid service offering. It can locate and remotely wipe or lock your Android smartphone or tablet or your Windows laptop, starting at $40 per year for the first three devices. The problem is, you already have this capability — for free — on some Android devices.

McAfee introduced a similar service a few weeks ago for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry OS, also trying to get users to pay $20 each a year for something they likely already have.

Remote locking and remote wiping are built in to several operating systems and can be accessed in most cases through an online tool, or in other cases via Microsoft Exchange or other mail servers. Often, both options are available:

• Apple’s iOS has long allowed remote lock and wipe of iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches using its free Find My iPhone service, which you can access from an Apple website or from any iOS device using the free Find iPhone app. You enter your credentials, and the service shows the current, or last known, location of your device. You can then send a message to that device; have it play a sound so you can, say, find it buried under a couch; lock the device; or wipe its contents. iOS also lets you set a required password to use the device and to set automatic wipe after a specified number of failed login attempts.
• iOS devices, Android 3 “Honeycomb”-based tablets, and many of Motorola’s Android smartphones can be locked or wiped via Microsoft Exchange. Once they have been connected to an Exchange server, an IT admin can use the EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) capabilities in the Exchange management console to lock or wipe the device. Some devices, including iOS ones, can also be forced via EAS to require a password to use the device and to wipe its contents after a specified number of failed attempts.
• Research in Motion offers a free service similar to Apple’s for locking and wiping BlackBerry smartphones. The BlackBerry Protect service exited beta and became a formal service in September.
• Samsung offers a similar location, locking, and wiping service (whose name seems to change with each product launch) for its Android tablets and some Android smartphones for those who register for a free Samsung account.

There’s clearly no reason to use either Symantec’s paid Norton Anti-Theft “scareware” service outside of Windows laptops, for which BIOS-level passwords and whole-disk encryption are cheaper, more certain options anyhow, or McAfee’s paid “scareware” service. Don’t be a fool.

This article, “Symantec joins McAfee in selling useless mobile security,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.