78 TECH ADVISOR • MAY 2021GUIDE TO PC SECURITY
however,it doeslovetonotifyyoufrom
timetotimeif youdon’thaveallofthe
Nortonbrowserextensionsinstalled.
Theessentialoneis NortonSafe
Web,whichwarnsyouaboutmalicious
sites,andputsa greencheckmarknext
tosafesitesin yourGoogleresultsanda
red‘x’nexttobadones.
In ouropinion,theotherextensions
arelessimportant.NortonHomePage
andNortonSafeSearchareparticularly
unimpressiveandessentiallydothe
workthatoneextensioncould.Safe
SearchmakesNortonSafeSearchyour
defaultbrowsersearchengine,and
HomePageredirectsyourbrowser’s
newtabpagesandtheHomebuttonto
NortonSafeSearch.In ourexperience,
thesetwoextensionsjustgetin your
way.There’salsoa NortonPassword
Managerextension,whichis essential
ifyou use this
program for
storing all your
passwords.
Backup
is pretty
straightforward.
Setting it up
allows you to
keep copies of
essential files in
Norton’s Secure
Cloud Storage.If you don’t want your files in Norton’s
cloud there’s also an option for saving it
to local storage.
Norton Deluxe also includes some
system optimization features including
disk optimization, file clean-up, a start-
up manager, and a graph showing
performance history. You can find a lot
of these features in Windows itself or in
free third-party programs, but if you’re
getting Norton 360 anyway it’s nice that
they’re there.
The Dark Web Monitoring runs off
Norton’s website and lets you add key
information such as a bank account or
credit card number, phone number,
address,insurancepoliciesandupto
fiveemail accounts. If any of this data
shows up in a hacked database being
traded on the so-called Dark Web,
NortonLifeLock will alert you to it.The parental time controls for Norton 360 Deluxe.