Joe -

There are many different kinds of threats out there. Norton (and any other Anti-Virus/Anti-SPAM/Anti-Adware/Anti-BrownRailroadTracksInYourShorts program) can only protect you against the kinds for which the program is designed.

An icon on your computer is not necessarily a virus or other malware. The most likely source is that somewhere, sometime, someone actually "clicked" on something that made them curious, and the click was rigged to appear to do something innocent but actually did something unexpected. In this case, it probably said "save icon to desktop" and/or "add link to webpage."

If your Anti-everything software prevented you from telling it to save something from the web to a file (including to your desktop) your computer would be pretty useless. A shortcut that connects you to a web site is a very normal thing, and doesn't have to contain anything that distinguishes it from any other shortcut on your computer - except possibly the destination.

Some programs, including recent Norton, have lists of suspect or known-malicious destinations, and can even try to warn you about that, but until we have a complete list of every actual person and website who "doesn't play nice" there can't be complete protection.

Your burglar alarm can detect when someone jimmys open a window and tries to sneak in; but it's probably useless if they knock on your front door and talk you into inviting them in. If they happen to pick up the keys to all your treasures while they're there having a cool one with you even the cops may tell you that it's not a "reportable crime" since they were an "invited guest."

If your Internet Security is pre-2007 or so, you may not have the "Fraud Monitoring" plugin, and some of the Adware extensions are "extras" but all the anti- guys are trying to protect you. The problem is that MOST OF THE CRUD in circulation now is phishing, and no software can protect you from (intentionally or inadvertently) being "taken in" by a good con game. You have to do it yourself.

As to aggressive, doesn't anybody remember when Sony said it was okay to put a rootkit on your computer, to track every bit of music you played, if you played one of their CDs? Or the year that TurboTax replaced your Internet Explorer with their own version, modified to collect and send all your financial data to them if you used their tax prep program? Perfectly legal(?) if you do it "in the name of profit" and if you can convince the one driving the computer to "insert the disk" or "click the button" or "open the door and let me in."

John