Recently, Norton – a very popular anti-virus software brand, has integrated the Norton Crypto virtual currency mining feature into the software package Norton 360, instead of separating it into a separate part.

Notably, Norton Crypto is very difficult to remove. Norton’s move received a lot of negative feedback, as well as harsh criticism from activists, experts, and their customers.

“It’s a myth that Norton ‘anti-virus’ software surreptitiously integrates a virtual currency miner into a user’s device, and then ‘steals’ the commission from it,” journalist Cory Doctorow expressed frustration on Twitter.

Leading US security expert – Chris Vickery, also criticized this move: “Norton is amplifying massive energy consumption worldwide, causing customers to pay more for electricity than it costs. that they spend when mining and Norton makes a huge profit from it.”

Silently installed, hidden deep and hard to find

In response to a tweet by security expert Chris Vickery, Norton said: “Norton Crypto is an opt-in-only feature and is not activated without the user’s permission” and is “designed to help exploitation of electronic money currently safer “.

However, this reassurance is said to be counterproductive. By default, Norton Crypto is disabled, so customers will not be able to mine any coins. Meanwhile, if you activate mining, Norton will charge a 15% fee, along with a series of other amortization and service fees.

In addition, the mining feature is silently installed into Norton 360 without consulting the customer. This was pointed out by users as Norton 360 installs the miner itself via an executable file called NCrypt.exe and once installed it cannot be removed easily.

If the user wants to turn off this feature completely, then go to the Settings of the application and then turn off “tamper protection”. However, this feature will not be removed from the application, it is just turned off.

In response to customers’ frustrations, a Norton employee offered the following remedy:

· Open Norton 360

· Go to Settings, find and disable Norton Tamper Protection (when asked for time, select 15 minutes)

· Go to C/Program Files/Norton Security/engine/(product version), find and delete NCrypt.exe

However, this is only a temporary solution. Norton still refused to give an “appointment” to add the option to completely remove features peach virtual money.