Adguard, the company behind the advertising blocking program of the same name analysed the top 100,000 websites ranked by Alexa. It looked for cryptocurrency mining scripts and found that 220 of these websites had installed scripts such as Coinhive and JSEcoin and had utilized their visitors’ computers to mine cryptocurrency without their knowledge.
The most common script used by these unethical websites is the in-browser cryptocurrency mining script which is launched when an unsuspecting visitor opened their main page. It was estimated that the 220 sites have unique visitors totalling 500 million which means that half a billion computers are affected. Most of the visitors are from these 4 countries namely United States (18.7%), India (13.4%), Russia (12.4%) and Brazil (8.1%). These websites have made a fortune without virtually any cost and it seems that currency mining have replace advertisement as a source of revenue.
Most of the 220 sites using the mining scripts are video streaming sites. When users download videos, they keep their browsers open in the site for a long time, making it ideal for mining. So the next time you download a “free” video, you are actually paying for it by unwitting letting your computer being used for mining cryptocurrency. Please help me to share this news to alert other Steemians.
Source: Adguard Research
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