Norton antivirus under fire again over crypto mining feature

Reprensentational image depitcting a mine worker toiling to mine cryptocurrency

(Image credit: Yevhen Vitte / Shutterstock)

Security company Norton is facing renewed criticism over its decision to bundle a crypto miner with its antivirus service.

The feature was introduced in June 2021, assuasive Norton 360 subscribers to mine for Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network. At the time, the motility was criticized as an opportunistic attempt to capitalize on the crypto boom, irrespective of the environmental impact or the financial chance to users.

Now, Norton customers take taken to Twitter to mutter that the crypto miner is far more difficult to uninstall than it should exist. Others advise it should not be installed on machines in the first place without the explicit consent of the user.

Norton responds

The situation went from bad to worse after Norton replied to the original tweet, pointing out that the crypto miner is "an opt-in feature only" and is not enabled without the user's permission, which sparked a series of aroused responses.

"If information technology's opt-in, why is it installed by default and non removable without getting rid of the whole antivirus software?," asked one Twitter user. Others, meanwhile, took effect with the condescending tone of the response from client service, and suggested Norton should stick to its lane every bit a cybersecurity company.

In a statement provided to The Annals, Norton attempted again to articulate up the confusion:

"Norton Crypto is an opt-in feature just and is not enabled without user permission. If users have turned on Norton Crypto but no longer wish to apply the feature, it can be disabled through Norton 360 by temporarily shutting off 'tamper protection' (which allows users to modify the Norton installation) and deleting NCrpyt.exe from your estimator."

TechRadar Pro asked Norton whether it volition consider making the crypto miner an optional component or making the uninstall process more attainable to customers with limited technical knowledge. The company responded only indirectly, with the aforementioned statement provided to other outlets.

Too check out our lists of the best malware removal software, all-time ransomware protection and best endpoint protection services

Via The Annals

Joel Khalili is the News and Features Editor at TechRadar Pro. He's interested in receiving pitches around cybersecurity, data privacy, deject, AI, blockchain, net infrastructure, 5G, data storage, business organization software and computing.