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by perennate 1626 days ago
> You can however "pause" the mining forever while keeping everything installed which is what support will suggest if you ask.

Just to clarify because this sentence sounds a bit misleading -- according to https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v... the cryptocurrency miner is off by default, so if you haven't turned it on, then there's no need to pause it if you don't want it running.
2 comments
itronitron 1625 days ago
How about letting the user know how they can fucking uninstall the cryptocurrency miner that was uploaded and installed to the user's system without the user's consent?
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handoflixue 1626 days ago
Do you actually have any knowledge of the product, or are you just quoting a support page? I wouldn't trust a support page's definition of "opt-in"
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perennate 1626 days ago
> I wouldn't trust a support page's definition of "opt-in"

The support page doesn't have any definition of "opt-in". It simply says that users need to click under "Turn your PC's idle time to cash" and then accept a "License and Services Agreement" before they can access the "Norton Crypto dashboard" and enable "mining during idle time". I would consider that opt-in given that the user has to perform multiple steps before they can even enable the miner, and given that there isn't any suggestion to enable this by default during the installation process. If you don't consider that "opt-in", then please explain.

There seems to be a mob here that has been misled to think that the cryptocurrency miner is enabled by default and runs on every Norton user's computer in the background, whereas in reality it IS installed by default (as in the binary takes up storage space on the user's hard drive), but can only be enabled with multiple steps including agreeing to a separate services agreement that is dedicated to the Norton Crypto product.

(I still think it's dumb to bundle a crypto miner with an anti-virus product. But all this talk about it running without the user's consent is nonsense.)

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steffanA 1626 days ago
On the other hand, do you have any proof that its enabled by default?

This is a crappy thing to add to an antivirus program but there is no indication its enabled by default.

Yeah, it makes the software bloated, but if its not mining by default this is overhyped.

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