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Pirate Bay is Mining Cryptocurrency Again, No Opt Out (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the watch-out dept.

The Pirate Bay is mining cryptocurrency again, causing a spike in CPU usage among many visitors. From a report: For now, the notorious torrent site provides no option to disable it. The new mining expedition is not without risk. CDN provider Cloudflare previously suspended the account of a site that used a similar miner, which means that The Pirate Bay could be next. Last month The Pirate Bay caused some uproar by adding a Javascript-based cryptocurrency miner to its website. The miner utilizes CPU power from visitors to generate Monero coins for the site, providing an extra source of revenue. [...] The Pirate Bay currently has no opt-out option, nor has it informed users about the latest mining efforts. This could lead to another problem since Coinhive said it would crack down on customers who failed to keep users in the loop.

3 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. I'm surprised by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would have thought the people who knew about torrents were among the same people who use adblockers and NoScript.

    1. Re:I'm surprised by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would have thought the people who knew about torrents were among the same people who use adblockers and NoScript.

      People that use adblockers and NoScript want privacy.
      People that use torrents want free stuff.
      There is some overlap, but they are mostly different groups.

  2. Who cares? It's better than advertising. by ErikTheRed · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Seriously. Most of us have cores sitting idle. Instead of being abused / tracked / annoyed / occasionally infected by advertising, why not let sites do a small amount of mining while we visit?

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