Symantec Poll: Spam Puts Canadians at Risk

Survey Highlights Need for Greater Awareness of Spam Reduction Tactics

TORONTO, ON. - May 20, 2003 - Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC), the world leader in Internet security, today announced the results of its recent Canadian spam survey. The survey indicated that Canadians feel spam or unsolicited commercial email, is intruding on personal privacy, and is placing an increasing burden on both consumer and enterprise users. The survey also indicates that Canadians require more information about spam reduction tactics. Completed in May 2003, the survey of 500 Canadians was conducted for Symantec by InsightExpress, the pioneer in online market research services.

"Spam is flooding the Internet, invading the privacy of users as they are forced to deal with increasing numbers of unsolicited and often deceptive email messages," said Michael Murphy, General Manager for Symantec in Canada. "However, a combination of common sense and technological anti-spam solutions, such as Norton Spam Alert found in Norton Internet Security, will help users deal with this potential risk and reduce their susceptibility to future spamming."

A key finding of the survey was that 49 per cent of respondents absolutely agree that spam intrudes on their personal privacy. Privacy is a growing concern as spam proliferates. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US, a recent study by market research organization the Radicati Group estimated that 32 per cent of the 7.3 billion email messages sent are spam, and that the figure is likely to increase substantially in the future.

"The increased volume of spam has increased the potential for fraud on the Internet," the FTC stated in its notice announcing an upcoming public forum on spam email. "Although not all spam is fraudulent, fraud operators have seized on the Internet's capacity to reach literally millions of consumers quickly and at a low cost through spam." Buying products offered through spammed email, for example, carries with it several risks, including defective or counterfeit product, the exposure and sharing of sensitive personal data over the Internet, and credit card theft.

The unsolicited and deceptive nature of spam was also underscored in the FTC study which revealed that 100 per cent of the email addresses the Commission posted in chat rooms received spam; the first received spam only eight minutes after the address was posted. Eighty-six per cent of the email addresses posted at newsgroups and Web pages received spam, as did 50 per cent of addresses at free personal Web page services and 27 per cent from message board postings.

In addition, spam emails have been used to lure unwary users to Web sites that contain viruses, spyware or other malicious code. Late last year, for example, an Internet adult entertainment company created a Trojan horse program that routed unsuspecting users to the company's pornography sites. Users were tricked into accepting the program through a spam email message that promised to deliver an electronic greeting card.

The results of the Canadian survey underscore the need for consumer education, particularly in how to effectively manage spam. For example, although nearly 73 per cent of respondents deal with spam through deletion, almost 20 per cent of respondents will deal with it by asking to be removed from the spammer's list. According to Internet security experts including Symantec, responding to spam may actually result in even more unsolicited email as these responses confirm to spammers the accuracy of the targeted email address. When the FTC and law enforcement partners tested whether "remove me" or "unsubscribe" options in spam were being honored, their findings showed that 63 per cent of the removal requests were not honored.

The May 2003 survey revealed that Canadians feel that spam is costing them time and money. Nearly 53 per cent of respondents indicated that dealing with spam places a burden on their individual time and 36 per cent feel spam imposes unwanted costs in the form of connection time, server and disk storage space.

Users can learn how to protect themselves from spam by visiting Symantec's Spam Watch Response Center at http://www.symantec.com/spamwatch. This free site includes the top 10 tips for protecting privacy and avoiding spam scams. Users can also reduce their exposure to unsolicited email by using Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2003, which contains Norton Spam Alert to allow users to filter out annoying spam email messages.

About Symantec
Symantec, the world leader in Internet security technology and services, provides a broad range of content and network security software and appliance solutions to individuals, enterprises and service providers. The company is a leading provider of client, gateway and server security solutions for virus protection, firewall and virtual private network, vulnerability management, intrusion detection, Internet content and e-mail filtering, remote management technologies and security services to enterprises and service providers around the world. Symantec's Norton brand of consumer security products is a leader in worldwide retail sales and industry awards. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Symantec has worldwide operations in 38 countries. For more information, please visit www.symantec.com.

Symantec’s Canadian operations are headquartered in Toronto with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver. For more information on Symantec products or current promotions, contact the Canadian office at (416) 441-3676 or access Symantec’s Canadian Web site at www.symantec.ca. Symantec is an active member of the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST).

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FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENT: This press release contains forward-looking statements, including forecasts of future revenue and earnings, expected activities, and other financial and business results that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from results expressed or implied by this press release. Such risk factors include, among others: the sustainability of recent growth rates, particularly in consumer products; the anticipation of the growth of certain market segments, particularly enterprise security; the positioning of Symantec's products in those segments; the competitive environment in the software industry; general market conditions, fluctuations in currency exchange rates, changes to operating systems and product strategy by vendors of operating systems; and whether Symantec can successfully develop new products and the degree to which these gain market acceptance. Actual results may differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements in this press release. Additional information concerning these and other risk factors is contained in the Risk Factors sections of Symantec's previously filed Form 10-Q for the quarter ended December 31, 2002. Symantec assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release except as otherwise required by law.