Norton 360 Antivirus is now mining cryptocurrency, according to a new update. The update, which was released on Wednesday, adds support for the new mining algorithm, Equihash. The company said that the new algorithm is designed to reduce the amount of time it takes to process and analyze data, which is why it’s included in the latest Norton 360 Antivirus update. Cryptocurrency mining has become increasingly popular in recent years as more and more people start using digital currencies as a form of payment. Some experts have warned that cryptocurrency mining can be dangerous because it can lead to large amounts of heat being put into the computer system, which can damage it.
The crypto-miner actually rolled out in July 2021 to some users, but the company has started a wider rollout recently. Some users are upset because the mining software is installed automatically as part of Norton 360, and the software pushes mining on users through a prompt that says, “Turn your PC’s idle time into cash,” as shown in the image above.
Thankfully, you have to turn the feature on and meet Norton’s strict system requirements (an NVIDIA graphics card with a minimum of 6GB memory will be the main sticking point for most). However, there doesn’t appear to be a way to completely uninstall the crypto mining software, which has upset some users.
Norton says it made its crypto mining software because it “allows the customers to mine for Ethereum, a popular cryptocurrency, more safely during their PC’s idle time. They will operate within a “pool” of Norton Crypto miners, delivering greater efficiencies and enabling all users to share in the rewards.” Essentially, Norton believes this is a safer way to mine Ethereum than other methods.
Of course, Norton isn’t offering this mining service out of the kindness of its heart. The company charges a high 15% fee off the top and an additional fee to transfer your currency to another wallet, so the company stands to make decent money off of its mining tool.
There’s nothing malicious happening here, but users are never thrilled when they get a piece of software to do one thing (in this case, protect their PCs), and it adds something else without their permission. With that said, as long as it’s not turned on by default and Norton is upfront about it, the company isn’t technically doing anything wrong.
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There is a coin mining fee to use Norton Crypto, but we do not charge users transaction fees once the cryptocurrency is mined. The transaction fee that users may see is the traditional Etherium network fee that is associated with digital currency movement, and not paid to NortonLifeLock.
