Avira, a free antivirus, sets out to mine cryptocurrency (and that’s a terrible idea)

It is one of the most popular antivirus programs in the world, and it has just gained an advantage that we would have done quite well without it. The popular Avira, an antivirus that has tens of millions of users around the world, now already includes a cryptocurrency miner. It’s called Avira Crypto, if you decide to activate it, it will take advantage of your computer’s inactivity time in order to use the power of your graphics card to mine Ethereum.

Avira Crypto has not yet launched in France, but we can already, from the project’s FAQ, see what it all looks like. The module integrates a wallet and tells you how much ETH you have mined, how much dollar it represents, and what to transfer that money to your Coinbase wallet.

We haven’t been able to experience this unit ourselves, but it does ask a lot of questions. First, what do you do in the security solution?
Even a paradox: traditional antivirus software tends to alert you that there is a crypto-mining program on your device, and then remove it: these programs are sometimes actually installed unbeknownst to users by cybercriminals who want to take advantage of computing power without having to lose money . As reported by journalist and cybersecurity specialist Brian Krebs, many antivirus programs reported the Avira executable for this exact reason.

Good deal for Avira, not planet Earth

We better understand Avira’s parent company NortonLifeLock’s interest in integrating this module into free antivirus software, in light of our recent FAQ question. Because, shown in black and white, the company charges a 15% “mining fee” when using Avira Crypto. Thus you give yourself a portion of the profits that you can derive from this activity.

Yes: With this module, NortonLifeLock first of all found a good way to earn more money with its free software. Since Avira is installed on millions of computers all over the world, mining could earn it a good deal.

On the other hand, don’t depend too much on Avira Crypto to get rich. Unless you have a disproportionately powerful machine (and still do), mining Ethereum will only earn you a few dollars a month, minus that famous commission.

On top of that, it forces your graphics circuit to run at full capacity as quickly as possible. In other words, you will be consuming lots and lots of electricity at the same time. This, in fact, is the main problem with integrating the mining functionality into a popular program like Avira.
Activating it, even on a few tens of thousands of computers, would certainly be great for NortonLifeLock’s finances, but bad for the environment. From this, the company does not say a word of course.

NortonLifeLock recently acquired Avast, the most popular free antivirus. We dare hope that Avira’s fate will not be known. But we can doubt it: NortonLifeLock has also integrated “Norton Crypto” into its suite of paid software. We wonder why he stopped there.