Norton’s antivirus now also mines cryptocurrencies if you let it: it takes 15% of the income (and they don’t pay the electricity bill)

The NortonLifeLock company, responsible for Norton Antivirus software, announced last summer the preliminary launch of Norton Crypto, a feature that allowed users of this antivirus to use their computers to mining cryptocurrencies while your team was idle.

That option now reaches all users, and in Norton they boast of how if you want to become a cryptocurrency miner, they take care of everything: they create a wallet for what you collect, and you can activate the service to your liking. They only keep 15% of what you earn, but yes, they don’t say anything about helping you pay the electricity bill.

Norton wants to “empower users to mine cryptocurrencies”

The press release NortonLifeLock published in June 2021 indicated that the cryptocurrency economy was becoming an increasingly important part of their users’ lives, and they wanted to “empower them to mine cryptocurrencies with Norton, a brand they trust“.

That release was on a limited basis, but Norton Crypto is now available to all users of its Norton 360 platform. The option is not activated by default and to be able to use it there is an important requirement: it is necessary to have an NVIDIA graphics card with at least 6 GB of graphics memory.

The feature FAQ also states that the feature takes care of mining Ethereum, although they explained that they are considering other cryptocurrencies for the future.

In Norton they basically provide what is necessary to start mining cryptocurrencies without the user having to do practically anything. They create a digital wallet with a key “encrypted and safely stored in the cloud”.

It is also possible withdraw the proceeds from that wallet to a personal wallet on Coinbase – there is no talk of other exchanges – and Norton’s proposal is basically that we can take advantage of our equipment so that it generates income when we are not using it.

It might seem interesting, but the truth is that suspicions appear when Norton makes it clear that they keep 15% of the cryptocurrencies that we manage to mine.

It is true that the volatility of cryptocurrencies means that mining them can make sense if at one time those cryptocurrencies rise a lot in value, but today the profitability of small-scale miners is debatable, especially due to a key factor: the cost of the light.

With the electricity bill going through the roof, having our PC with our graphics running at full blast (if we are not using it for something else) to mine cryptocurrencies does not help to lower that bill, and the profitability may not be that bad.

Online calculators like the one in MinerStat reveal that for example with an RTX 3070 and the current price of electricity in Spain (for today the rate ranges between 0.22 and 0.42 € / kWH) the estimate of net income (discounting the estimated energy consumption) is 2.16 euros per day.

At that amount 15% Norton commission would have to be subtracted, which leaves it even more depleted. Actually, anyone can do the same thing Norton does and configure their computer with applications like NiceHash.

It would avoid much of the commission that the Norton service takes, but still the income is very discreet. In both cases it must be taken into account that neither Norton nor NiceHash care about potential problems or deterioration of our equipment when using it for cryptocurrency mining, which makes Norton’s ad moot to say the least and has generated critics in social networks.