Antivirus maker Norton is under fire for adding a hard-to-remove cryptocurrency miner called Norton Crypto to its Norton 360 software suite. Norton announced the program in June, pitching it as an easy way for users to put their computers' spare processing power to work mining Ethereum. Norton Crypto only runs on machines with a powerful graphics card, such as an AMD or Nvidia card with at least 6GB.
Of course, nothing is free: Norton takes 15% of the cryptocurrency that gets mined, on top of transaction fees, and the company also has full control over customers' crypto wallets. Online users were horrified when the feature officially surfaced.
In a statement, Norton said the tool is off by default. “Norton Crypto is strictly an opt-in tool and is not turned on without the user's permission,” a company spokesperson said. “If a user has turned on Norton Crypto but no longer wants to use the feature, they can disable it through Norton 360.”
Norton's statement only added fuel to the fire, leaving plenty of users furious.
“If it's opt-in, why is it installed by default and impossible to remove without removing the entire antivirus software?”, one Twitter user asked. Others were unhappy with the condescending tone of the customer service replies and suggested Norton should stick to being a cybersecurity company.
“Absolutely absurd,” journalist Cory Doctorow said. “Norton's antivirus program sneaks a cryptocurrency miner onto your computer, then takes a cut”.
Others pointed out that users could end up losing money with this tool, depending on how much they pay for electricity.
Security researcher Chris Vickery wrote on Twitter: “Norton is driving up energy consumption worldwide, costing its customers more in electricity than they earn from mining, yet Norton still turns a big profit.”
“It's disgusting, crude, and brand suicide,” he added.
Although Norton says Norton Crypto only mines with the user's permission, the feature is installed automatically "without asking during the product installation process," Twitter user Maxius pointed out in a tweet in December.
“There is no way to stop it from installing on your system or to disable it,” another said. Users noted that Norton 360 installs the miner on PCs through a program called NCrypt.exe, which is very difficult to uninstall.
Norton has yet to confirm whether it plans to make Norton Crypto easier for users to uninstall.
Source: PCMag
