Pirate Bay, the famous torrent site, has recently experimented with crypto-currency mining script to replace their renowned and sleazy ad bars. However, this technology can also be used for far nefarious purposes and can have drastic impact on the performance of the computers of people who access the sites using this technique.
Pirate Bay utilized a tool called Coin Hive to hijack the browsers of their visitors and use them for mining coins. The customer base of Coin Hive is currently unclear but it indeed is famous and is gaining traction as an effective method of making money out of sites.
The recent trial by Pirate Bay shows that this can be an effective way to monetize the site and get rid of the conventional methods such as banners ads. These conventional methods are not as lucrative as they were before due to users installing ad blockers, which enables them to stop the ads from running on the website.
One of the world’s most famous ad blocker, uBlock Origin, has already implemented a feature in their application that has the ability to block the scripts that abuse the computers of people who access these kind of websites.
A Scotland based programmer, Rafael Keramidas has developed a simple google chrome extension called No Coin, which blocks the scripts that enable sites to hijack the visitor’s browser. It works like an ad blocker and lets you add in sites that you find to be using cryptocurrency mining scripts.
Using cryptocurrency mining scripts is not a bad idea for making money through websites, but using the computer resources of the visitors without their consent is where the problem arises. It is understandable that the content creators are exploring new ways to monetize their sites. The correct and the ethical way to use the scripts would be to give the users with the choice to opt out of providing their computers for cryptocurrency mining.
Pirate Bay utilized a tool called Coin Hive to hijack the browsers of their visitors and use them for mining coins. The customer base of Coin Hive is currently unclear but it indeed is famous and is gaining traction as an effective method of making money out of sites.
The recent trial by Pirate Bay shows that this can be an effective way to monetize the site and get rid of the conventional methods such as banners ads. These conventional methods are not as lucrative as they were before due to users installing ad blockers, which enables them to stop the ads from running on the website.
Adblocks to the rescue
One of the world’s most famous ad blocker, uBlock Origin, has already implemented a feature in their application that has the ability to block the scripts that abuse the computers of people who access these kind of websites.
A Scotland based programmer, Rafael Keramidas has developed a simple google chrome extension called No Coin, which blocks the scripts that enable sites to hijack the visitor’s browser. It works like an ad blocker and lets you add in sites that you find to be using cryptocurrency mining scripts.
Using cryptocurrency mining scripts is not a bad idea for making money through websites, but using the computer resources of the visitors without their consent is where the problem arises. It is understandable that the content creators are exploring new ways to monetize their sites. The correct and the ethical way to use the scripts would be to give the users with the choice to opt out of providing their computers for cryptocurrency mining.