Norton, a large and sometimes controversial cybersecurity company, recently launched Norton Crypto as part of Norton 360. However, some complain that the company prevents them from uninstalling the program.
Norton Crypto does not keep running in the background. Users can manually turn it on and off. Additionally, users are pooled with other Norton Crypto users to improve their efficiency, and everyone shares their mining rewards. It should be an easy and safe way to mine Ethereum.
However, according to mAxius et al. there is no way to abandon the program completely, you will have to dig into and remove NCrypt.exe from your computer directory.
It sounds like a no-brainer, but Norton doesn’t have a good relationship with its user base, and the company has been controversial in the past for low transparency and incomplete file deletion.
Norton Crypto is not compatible with all systems as certain hardware configurations may not prove sufficient. Users need at least 6GB of memory and an Nvidia graphics card with Windows 7 or later. Norton Crypto does not support macOS or Windows 10 S.
Norton receives a significant portion of the cryptocurrency after being mined. The company withdraws 15% of the maximum amount and maintains variable transaction fees when transferring cryptocurrencies to another wallet.
Considering that users are already paying to use the service, Norton seems to get the better end of the deal. Thankfully, there have been no major security issues yet, except for the complicated way of giving up Norton Crypto.
If you have Norton 360 and don’t want to use the mining feature, make sure that feature is turned off. Be careful that others do not enable this option for their own [nefarious] benefit.