Ok, I made a huge mistake: I put Norton onto my mac and now I cannot get rid of it!

System: macOS Catalina 10.15.7

I tried:

1. Drag app icons to trash and select "uninstall"
2. Run Norton's utility here ()
3. Using Terminal, I did the following:

a) I had to give it Full Disk Access first

b) $ sudo find / -name "norton" >> norton.txt

I was able to get rid of everything in the norton.txt file, but when I rerun find I get "Operation not permitted" for a lot of files & directories in "/private/var/folders" and "/System/Volumes/Data/"

I know Norton isn't fully removed because each time I try to install Avast it tells me:

"Norton Internet Security has been detected. To install the Avast product, please uninstall the incompatible software first."

(I posted this in StackOverflow but they suggested I try over here) (I see a similar question here: How do I remove kext files after uninstalling Norton Antivirus on mac to then install Avast? but I am not sure if I am able to unload the kext files because my Find command may not even find them yet!)

4

1 Answer

It turns out I needed to disable System Integrity Protection first and then find and remove the offending files.

1. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy panel, and give Full Disk Access to Terminal.
2. Turn off System Integrity Protection (not generally recommended.) This disables full protection for system-related items on the disk, as well as some other protections including restricted access via Terminal.

Source: Operation not permitted using Find in macOS Terminal

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