Norton Anti-Virus checking out the competition.

This is a screenshot from the SysInternals app called Process Monitor. It checks what files and registry values other applications request in real-time. I was looking at it, and I saw something flash by that looked weird. I scrolled back up and found this.


(As always, blogger does mean things to my images, but if you click it, you will see what I mean)

It seems that Norton Anti-Virus makes it their business to know if McAfee or PC-cillin is installed.
I have no idea why, and it's probably benign, but it doesn't seem like it is any of their business whether a computer has competing software installed or not. I wonder if this gets sent along with requests for virus definition updates.