By Dan Ilett, 16 September 2004 08:30
NEWS Symantec's Norton AntiVirus product has blacklisted a piece of software which enables users in China to access websites which are blocked by order of the government.
According to a report in the Financial Times, the firm has said the program, called Freegate, should be considered a Trojan horse.
The result is that users of Symantec's antivirus product in China will be unable to download the Freegate program and use it to access banned sites. Freegate is explicitly designed to bypass controls and there is no suggestion that it contains any malicious or hidden functions normally necessary to qualify a program as a Trojan.
The move raises the question of whether antivirus technology should be used to support government censorship.
A spokeswoman from Symantec UK said it would be "inappropriate" to comment on the matter.
There are more than 68 million web surfers in China. The Freegate program, which supposedly has 200,000 users, gives access to the banned websites by regularly changing proxy server IP addresses.
Security is a growing issue for China's online population. According to research from Chinese Ministry of Public Security, 87.9 per cent of computers in the country were infected with a virus this year. The report said that the worst viruses were the Sasser and Netsky worms.
The government surveyed more than 7,000 departments and 8,400 users.
Dan Ilett writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Well can you blame them? If by including this they are seen by the Chinese government as a "friendly" company, then that could open up the huge Chinese market to Symantec and be worth millions.
2. Dr John Dimmock
Symantec would do much better if they spent the time getting there own software in good order rather than wasting time trying to police the impossible
3. anonymous
Maybe Symantec could change their logo to a big tank and a little fellow standing in front of it.
4. Keith Williamson
I think it's more likely that users would prefer to continue using FreeGate than to install Norton.
5. David M
The Symantec rep says it would be inappropriate to comment? Does she mean it would not be in our interest to tell the truth? If that software is a trojan, from now on I consider Norton Antivirus a virus.