Adguard, the company producing the ad blocker program of the same name, made an in-depth analysis of the top 100,000 websites as ranked by Alexa, in search for a confirmation of the alleged usage of cryptocurrency mining scripts on websites, that would activate each time these websites are visited; and the results they found are extremely intriguing.
In a nutshell, over 500 million people have been mining cryptocurrencies, unbeknownst to them! Adguard were seeking the Coinhive and JSEcoin codes which are the most commonly used mining scripts for browsers. The results showed that 220 websites are using these scripts, and the countries they target the most are US (18.66%), India (13.4%), Russia (12.44%) and Brazil (8.13%), with people from China, Iran and certain European and South American countries following closely behind.
Each of the websites using these scripts have made a profit of $43,000 during the three weeks they were being examined by the company! Most of the websites who are using these mining scripts belong to the TV/VIDEO/Movies category (22.27%), which are the ideal platforms for this sort of thing as they have a huge audience that spends a lot of time on the site, viewing the videos. The second most common websites are the file sharing/torrent ones, with a 17.73% of the share, followed by porn sites with 10% and news and media with 7.73%.
This practice, uncommon and strange as it may seem, is not technically illegal and a recommendation that sites should ask for visitors' consent to use their processor power for mining cryptocurrencies is not simple to enforce. As Andrey Meshkoc, co-founder of Adguard explains: “The ethical way for a website to earn money by mining through its audience’s computers is to ask the audience for permission first, and to allow them the possibility to opt out. Actually, such a practice could make mining even more ethical than ads. After all, nobody asks us if we would like to see ads on a website.” he said, adding that “they cannot forbid stealth mining. A popular CDN service called Cloudflare recently started to suspend accounts and deny service to sites that mine without user permission.”
What do you think of such actions; is it ethical to make money by using visitors for cryptocurrency mining without their knowledge? Is this more appropriate to you than seeing the obtrusive ads you don't want to see? Shout it out in the comments below…
Source:
“Research Shows Half a Billion People Are Mining Cryptocurrencies Without Knowing It”, Helms Kevin, bitcoin.com, October 14, 2017.
james jenicek
6 years ago
Full Member
You must use your bowser to mine as well. I've been doing that since August of 2017 and have done very well. I focus on Litecoin and have accumulated close to 2 coins. Cloud mining with a mining pool can be more profitable.
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kylie333
6 years ago
Sr. Newbie
this is stealing from people. IF people wanted to mine for bitcoin they could sign up to do so and actually make money from it...but using peoples computer power to gain profit off of them without compensating them is down right thievery.
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JohnnyK
6 years ago
Forum admin
It definitely is not ethical, it's closer to stealing rather than anything else.
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zuga
6 years ago
Admin
I think Pirate Bay was/is one of the sites doing this if I recall right
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jade
6 years ago
Super Hero
I have to agree with Leon21. If there is transparency, it shouldn't be an issue, but there will always be those who believe that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission!
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Mil E Na
6 years ago
Full Member
Thanks for this article, Andrej! This is something to have in mind next time we visit some of the file sharing websites!
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2Late4Me
6 years ago
Hero Member
This article and news is very interesting and true. I just found out this same information yesterday, because since I've been participating in online gambling and cryptocurrency activity, etc. there has been a sudden change in my computer functioning. So, I was trying to make it perform better, and came across a few websites...
This article and news is very interesting and true. I just found out this same information yesterday, because since I've been participating in online gambling and cryptocurrency activity, etc. there has been a sudden change in my computer functioning. So, I was trying to make it perform better, and came across a few websites with the same and other type of shocking information. You would never believe what goes on in the world wide web. It's very scary. And there is nothing you can do about it or profit until you find a solution. Thank you for this article. In example, "Today, any webmaster can sign up for new services such as C..... or J...... and start profiting from your visits. For the past several days, A.... has detected C.... miner. As one of the top 10 detections, it should come as no surprise that many well-known and legit websites use this type of monetization"
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Leon21
6 years ago
Full Member
I found this message on a media website I visited once.. Not asking permission but simply giving a notice that you will be contributing by allocating your processing power to contribute. Personally I would prefer a site to run no adds. And instead generate their income from this revenue stream. I did receive a notice...
I found this message on a media website I visited once.. Not asking permission but simply giving a notice that you will be contributing by allocating your processing power to contribute. Personally I would prefer a site to run no adds. And instead generate their income from this revenue stream. I did receive a notice that it was very clear on what the campaign was about. And had an option to opt out very easily. As long as there is transparency in the way sites incorporate this strategy for revenue, I honestly do not find this to be an issue and it might be the future of website revenue streams.
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