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NortonLifeLock Unveils Norton Crypto
- rejectedandsad 5y agoThe intersection between people that buy their product and the people that has powerful machines that can mine crypto seems small
- walrus01 5y agoI think the target market is rubes who are 36-48 months or more late to crypto mining, think they can get rich quick, and desire to hop on board the bandwagon.
- bob1029 5y agoI simply cannot get over the haphazard rebranding effort. They literally took their logo into mspaint and appended "LifeLock" to the right side of it.
- walrus01 5y agoI took a double take at this because it seemed like a headline from The Onion. But then I realized this might actually be a real thing? Overall it left me with a very gross and icky feeling. If I were to make a ranking of businesses that I consider highly ethical and reputable, the lifelock company would be somewhere towards the bottom. https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=life+lock+guy+gets+hacked https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=lif...
- vmception 5y agoThis is actually hilarious if you read the article. They created a problem of their antivirus software flagging crypto miners, and instead of fixing that, they made their own crypto miner that is exempt from their flagging and said "see look, now its simpler and you don't have to disable your antivirus!" And then they said its more secure and even simpler because all your crypto and keys get stored in the cloud, so you keep your crypto even if your harddrive/storage crashes. Server side crypto hack incoming in..... three... two.... (double facepalm)
- spideymans 5y agoNow that’s a name I haven’t heard in a decade.
- jayrot 5y agoApologies for a crass and unsophisticated reaction comment here but....this is the dumbest shit ever.
- walrus01 5y agoIf ever there was a technology press release that was deserving of a response consisting simply of a facepalm emoji, this is it.
- kstrauser 5y agoThat's more polite than my immediate reaction.
- zippergz 5y agoI hope Peter Norton got paid enough to be worth enduring this running of his once good name into the ground.
- mercer 5y agoI remember both him and McAfee staring at me from software boxes back in the day, and both products being considered scammy even back then.
- freitasm 5y agoHmmm. Nope - I think this one was even dumber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin
- twoknee 5y agoI assumed this would be an append-only/timelock backup solution for ransomware.
- lvs 5y ago> select Norton 360 customers in Norton’s early adopter program will be invited to mine for Ethereum. Wait, what? I thought this was going to be a ransomware product. What in the world is going on here?
- azornathogron 5y agoSnake-oil company realises there is a new and poorly tapped market they can go for.
- LegitShady 5y agoMy bet is in the long term a distributed crypto mining scheme where it uses the powers of everyone's grandmother's computer that still has norton installed.
- dane-pgp 5y agoYeah, presumably computers will come with a "free trial" of a Norton Suite, which, after the trial period expires: 1. will not even pretend to improve your security, 2. will nag you for credit card information to extend the service, and 3. will continue to mine cryptocurrency in the background, to be "safely" stored in Norton's cloud wallet, which Norton will periodically reap "expired" coins from.
- fuddle 5y agoEthereum is moving from PoW to PoS, will this even be usable after the transition?
- arthurcolle 5y agoIsn't lifelock the thing where the CEO bro said "here is my social, try to hack me" and then he was immediately hacked? Wow, can't imagine any sane person who would use this. Galaxy brain move to release it though.
- rhizome 5y agoLifeLock only advertises in media channels popular with the ignorant, vulnerable, and/or paranoid. People who don't know that story and definitely don't know better.
- vmception 5y agoJust like Protonmail if we're being fair Except with that one, a lot of otherwise tech savvy people just refuse to acknowledge the limitations and inability to verify privacy claims at any given point in time
- simias 5y agoHas protonmail's advertising been misleading? I'm a happy user myself, but I don't think I've ever looked into their marketing.
- vmception 5y agoPeople believe it is private and uncompromisable because of their use of client side encryption and claims of server side encryption and that their Switzerland location means they exist in a land where intelligence agencies won't coerce them or find a way to leak data. The reality is that they are forcing users to use client side javascript which can have anything in it. And Swiss privacy laws do not do what users claim. There is no way to verify the claims of privacy.
- arthurcolle 5y agoNot contradicting you in any way, but you can check out the javascript. Javascript deobfuscation is pretty sophisticated nowadays (maybe not) from my naive perception.
- AaronFriel 5y agoIt's only a matter of time before bloatware shipped on OEM devices and "free subscriptions" for antivirus, warranties, etc. pay for themselves by doing a little mining in the background. And then, of course, it's only a matter of time before they're doing a lot of mining, and they're subsidizing the cost of the device, and a contract will require you to run the miner until it's been paid off.
- ryanmarsh 5y agoI’m curious if it even makes sense to manufacture a computer and sell it, as opposed to renting it for whatever the highest value compute happens to be at the moment.
- firebaze 5y agoApologies for whatever, but thanks for this post; one more thing to look for to uninstall on relatives/acquaintances computers. Reason: products having "Crypto" or "Secure" in the name are usually a bag of bugs, doing much more damage than anything else. Why this is so is kind of a riddle to me; I don't know any product promising to secure a PC that isn't buggy and insecure, with the only exceptions being the inherent security of operating systems (windows, MacOS, Linux in ascending order).
- simias 5y agoIsn't Ethereum going to migrate to PoS in the near future anyway? Not that it's the only red flag here, but it seems like this product is going to have a short shelf life lest they migrate to other coins.
- nailer 5y agoFor anyone else: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/proof-stake-pos.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/proof-stake-pos.asp
- tibbydudeza 5y agoOdd they still using the Norton branding - it has been a while.
- Applejinx 5y agoWhat is the sound of one bubble popping? :)
- woodruffw 5y agoLifeLock is, of course, known best for: 1. Having their CEO be the target of multiple effective identity thefts, despite claiming to be protected by their signature product[1]. 2. Their previous CEO being an identity thief himself[2]. 3. Being fined by the FTC for outright lying about the efficacy of their product, and then being fined again for operating in contempt of the original FTC agreement[3]. Given their shady history, this foray into cryptocurrency is no particular surprise. [1]: https://www.wired.com/2010/05/lifelock-identity-theft/ https://www.wired.com/2010/05/lifelock-identity-theft/ [2]: https://www.wired.com/2007/06/lifelock-founde/ https://www.wired.com/2007/06/lifelock-founde/ [3]: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2015/12/lifelock-pay-100-million-consumers-settle-ftc-charges-it-violated https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2015/12/lifel...
- freitasm 5y agoYes, those were some antics there... LifeLock was acquired by Symantec back in 2016 and integrated into their Norton 360 product. The Norton division was spun off as NortonLifeLock when Symantec sold the enterprise part of the business to Broadcom. NortonLifeLock is a completely different company now.
- jessewmc 5y agoAside from the branding and history problems here, actually kind of surprising its been this long before a mainstream brand came up with a "vetted" crypto miner. Interesting. Press release is extremely vague, but I read this to be they have implemented their own eth mining client to set up their own pool? Normally miners and pools take a small cut, there is no mention of that here. Surely they are going to do the same? Are they going to cover their own payout transactions, or charge end users? Its possible this could actually be a bit compelling if they're not taking a cut, although way too late to the party, and ironically their reputation is starting out far worse than anonymously developed miners on popular pools.
- chris_wot 5y agoSeriously, why do CEOs talk like the following in press releases: As the crypto economy continues to become a more important part of our customers’ lives, we want to empower them to mine cryptocurrency with Norton, a brand they trust,” said Vincent Pilette, CEO of NortonLifeLock. “Norton Crypto is yet another innovative example of how we are expanding our Cyber Safety platform to protect our customers’ ever-evolving digital lives.” Every time I hear words like "empower" and "innovative" I turn off. Perhaps that's the goal though? Because I read further and it says one of their risks are: matters arising out of our completed Audit Committee investigation and the ongoing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation)
- chris_wot 5y agoHoly crap, it's worse than I thought... Shortly after Greg Clark took the reins in November 2016, Symantec acquired consumer credit protection company LifeLock for $2.3 billion. Combined with the Norton consumer AV business this represented $2.2 billion in annual revenue for the consumer division. [1] So basically, this has gone from consumer credit protection to... Ethereum mining?!? 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardstiennon/2020/03/16/the-demise-of-symantec https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardstiennon/2020/03/16/the-...
- henvic 5y agoAntivirus and stupid power-hungry Proof-of-Work in a single product. Geeez....