Norton 360 Installs a Crypto Miner on PCs by Default

Norton 360 Installs a Crypto Miner on PCs by Default

We picked up the following story this morning from ghacks and wanted to pass it along to you.

As most of you know, we’ve never been fans of Norton for many reasons, not the least of which is that’s its protection against common malware isn’t even as good as Microsoft’s own (free) built-in Microsoft Defender. Norton 360 is an invasive and bloated program. Not to mention Norton’s false advertising claims — that its LifeLock and VPN features protect you from identity theft.

Now it appears Norton is including a crypto-miner in Norton 360 and installs it by default without the user’s explicit permission.

Here’s the story from ghacks.

Norton 360 is installing a crypto miner on users computers, it’s called Norton Crypto.

Users claim that Norton 360 antivirus installs a crypto miner on PCs by default

Are you wondering how an antivirus vendor can resort to such shady measures. Isn’t the product supposed to prevent such potentially unwanted programs from being installed, and running on the computer? Well, it’s all legal, and well documented too. It was first announced last year, here’s an FAQ page on Norton’s website that explains how Norton Crypto works.

The cyber-security firm terms Norton Crypto a “feature”, which will utilize your PC to mine cryptocurrency when Norton 360 detects that the system is idle. The settings will be managed by Norton.

You can read the entire article on ghacks here.