Symantec Corp. – the fine folks who brought you the Norton Utilities suite of health and protection utilities for your computer – have added another tool to the home computer user's arsenal.

Norton Confidential promises to protect private information while you do business online, including guarding you against spoof e-commerce sites and "crimeware" (clever jargon for criminal software).

To coincide with the beta testing of Confidential this summer, Symantec has also set up a website, dubbed TransactSafely, that offers tips for protecting yourself while banking or shopping online.

According to data gathered by Symantec, the product is sorely needed: the firm's own Internet Security Threat Report for the last half of 2005 noted more than a one-third increase in malware (malicious software, which has a slightly better ring than "a-holeware") that could expose confidential personal information. Now, the report says, 80 per cent of the malicious programs out there have that capability.

And according to another study conduced for Symantec by Harris Research, 71 per cent of those interviewed in the study were concerned about the safety of their personal details while online, while more than half expressed concerns about online identity theft. Hence, a full version of Confidential for the PC will be available by September, with a Mac version following a month after that.

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