Below is a comment from a Norton Community Forum administrator regarding the disappearing posts referencing the PIFTS.exe situation (read up on PIFTS.exe here and here). We thought it best to share this as a new blog post rather than have it sit in the comments section.

Hello everyone,

I’m one of the administrators for the Norton Community Forums. First off, I would like to apologize for the removal of legitimate posts, and delayed response in acknowledging the PIFTS.exe issue. While the reason for merging like-posts in to a single thread was not intended to silence the voices of the users, we do understand that it ended up causing a lot of suspicions about the topic. We are sorry for the confusion that we have caused, and have developed new strategies to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

We launched the beta of the Norton Community Forums in April 2008. We’ve been very transparent with many issues that have come up on the boards, and utilized this opportunity to have more open discussions with those who use our software. We have also been very lenient with posts. There are threads on the forums that are critical of our products and discuss non-Symantec scanning software recommended by other users, as well as other non-relevant 3rd party software. I’m not saying this to get a pat on the back, but to acknowledge that we encourage open and honest communication on our forums. We strive to be transparent and give our customers the best information as quickly as possible.

We’ve spent the past 2 days compiling all the information regarding PIFTS.exe and detailing what it does. We’ve also included information regarding the timeline of events that happened on the forums. To view this information, please visit this forum thread: http://community.norton.com/norton/board/message?board.id=nis_feedback&thread.id=39119

We also have a discussion thread for all things PIFTS.exe related at the following thread: http://community.norton.com/norton/board/message?board.id=nis_feedback&thread.id=39123

Please read through the above two threads if you have any questions, as many questions have already been addressed (such as rumors that we sent personal information to our servers, rumors regarding sending information to Google, and other rumors that we were involved in a conspiracy or “cover up”).

We welcome you to join in on the discussion if you have any concerns that need to be addressed.

Again, we’re sorry for the mishap and all the confusion that this has caused.

Cheers,
Tim Lopez
Norton Forums Administrator
http://community.norton.com

I don’t envy the folks at Symantec who had to deal with this situation. It’s never fun to admit to a mistake. To make matters worse, Symantec’s approach to addressing the mistake confused and frustrated users even more than the initial PIFTS.exe message. I do admire their commitment to transparency. Hopefully if there are ever any similar incidents in the future, Symantec will avoid some of the mistakes that helped fuel the fire of paranoia we saw last week.

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