PCA Forums

Kaspersky had been tagging coinhive on a few sites lately, this add on takes care of it and you don't get the notification pup ups like from an AV/malware scanner.

https://github.com/keraf/NoCoin

Looks like uBlock Origin in Chrome & Firefox will also start blocking it. That's the ad blocker I use in Windows and Android FF:

uBlock Origin Developers Take Steps to Block Cryptocurrency Mining Scripts
https://themerkle.com/ublock-origin-dev ... g-scripts/

Also worth noting that it's easy to tell if a coin mining script is running by keeping an eye on CPU usage. If CPU usage pegs while you're on a web site, that's a good giveaway.

I keep a CPU monitor running all the time.

Followup on this:

Steve Gibson pointed out that - assuming the site notifies you they're doing this - this isn't a bad thing. It could end up being a legit way to allow sites to make revenue WITHOUT annoying ads.

As Steve pointed out, there is no down side to this on the user's end. It's running javascript which is contained in the browser, so it can't do anything malicious to the OS. At most it's costing you a few tenths of a cent in extra electricity, but only when using their site. Most news and retail sites are already running a TON of javascript in the background for ad tracking, which tax your CPU already (which is why budget PCs choke on sites like CNN).

Hypothetically, what would be wrong with ArsTechnica, The New York Times, or Wikipedia running a coin miner to make a few tenths of a cent off you reading an article to support their site, instead of annoying ads or a paywall? Again, assuming they were up front about it. Or even giving you a choice of ads or coin mining? This could be the way sites in the future get revenue, and I would love to see the ridiculous and abusive ad networks shrivel up and die.

I suspect we'll eventually see the three major browsers incorporate a cpu throttle to keep any one script from pegging your cpu, which we could use right now to keep all these ad scripts from bogging things down.

As long as it's the site I'm reading running the miner and it's not pegging my CPU, I'm actually okay with this. I'd rather have that than ads covering the content. It would be an interesting experiment to set up. Give the user an option of viewing ads or having running a miner. See how many opt for each and how much revenue is produced over a month.