Is the reward from mining good enough that you can ignore the high fees, or consider them a convenience cost for not having to figure out how to join a pool on your own (which is usually a reasonably technical process)? We tried it out for ourselves, measuring electricity consumption using a Kill-A-Watt power meter. Our tests pretty much exactly broke even when factoring in electricity costs
And, of course, there’s the elephant in the room: anyone using Norton’s software to mine has already paid the company a subscription fee for its security software (and after we purchased a copy, we also had to provide our payment information so that it could automatically renew itself every year).
However, the fees are usually closer to 1 or 2 percent, which is obviously significantly lower. Pool operators do often take a cut or fee for bringing everyone together.
It’s that reward from which Norton is taking its cut. Without diving too deep into how mining works, Norton Crypto’s terms of service (PDF) say it’s running a mining pool, which combines everybody’s computing power to increase the chances of mining a block - when that happens, everybody who contributed power gets a share of the reward.
As BleepingComputer pointed out when it tried the software last year, Norton takes a whopping 15 percent of any earnings you make from mining. Norton has incentive to get people using the feature. Any earnings will be periodically deposited in the wallet set up for you, and once you reach a minimum threshold you’ll be able to withdraw your earnings to Coinbase. Screenshot: Sean Hollister / The VergeĪfter you turn on Norton Crypto, it’ll set up a wallet for you, and immediately start using your computer’s GPU to mine Ethereum (its system requirements say you need an Nvidia or AMD card with at least 6GB of memory). Screenshot: Sean Hollister / The Verge Norton promises that it’ll only mine when you’re not otherwise using your computer (and you can manually pause it if need be). Norton Crypto isn’t a hard feature to find. While the service may be opt-in, Norton isn’t making it hard to find - when Sean installed the software, its control panel had a big green banner at the top with the text “Turn your PC’s idle time into cash.” Clicking the “show me how” button shows you a slideshow about the feature, a large “Agree and get started” button, and some smaller text letting you know that the feature you’re turning on is Norton Crypto. None of this is to defend Norton’s inclusion of a crypto miner in its security suite - it’s simply to explain what is and isn’t happening.Īs mentioned before, we installed Norton ourselves to get first-hand experience with the miner. We are transparent about how our software performs on user devices and we have no intention of changing this.” We asked Norton if it would make a pledge that the feature would always be opt-in, and spokesperson Spring Harris told us that “ feature requires special device hardware and user consent to function. We confirmed that ourselves, and it could be good news for anyone worried about Norton remotely activating the feature. You can delete NCrypt.exe if you turn off the tamper protection featureĪ NortonLifeLock spokesperson also told The Verge in an email that you can completely remove NCrypt.exe by temporarily turning off Norton’s tamper protection feature, and then deleting the executable.
But it isn’t going to do anything unless you specifically opt in, so it’s not a situation where you’ll install the security suite and instantly start seeing your computer lag as it crunches crypto in the background. The TL DR is that yes, Norton does install a crypto miner with its software, without making that clear in the initial setup process. Norton’s FAQ says that it won’t mine without permission and that “in addition to having a device that meets system requirements, you must also turn on Norton Crypto on your device.” Sean says that as far as he could tell, this appeared to be true the feature didn’t surreptitiously activate after he installed Norton. However, that doesn’t mean that Norton will automatically start mining on your computer, as some seem to believe. In a very technical sense, that’s true - my colleague Sean Hollister installed a copy of Norton 360 for himself and did indeed find that the mining app NCrypt.exe was included in the program’s directory.
Now, it’s suddenly the center of a backlash, with some Twitter users accusing Norton of installing a crypto miner on users’ computers without any warning. Norton "Antivirus" now sneakily installs cryptomining software on your computer, and then SKIMS A COMMISSION.