Bitcoin Forum

In a hilarious twist of irony, thepiratebay.se has been caught out "testing" a script that uses the CPU cycles of its visitors to mine cryptocurrecy. Apparently, this is going to replace ads though.

To be honest this isn't a terrible idea and it was announced on their blog first

Plus 'stealing' CPU power from people 'stealing' content isn't exactly something for everyone to get upset about.

They did not get "caught". Try reading about it before posting. https://thepiratebay.org/blog/ . Its a great way to get rid of adds, hope they update specifics and charts.

As technology changes the way people live and work, police are warning the public that scammers are also using technology to advance their scams.

Police are seeing a variety of ways criminals are duping unsuspecting people out of their money using phone spoofing technology and bitcoin payments. Typical victims include the elderly and those new to Canada.

Cpl. Scotty Schumann said the Surrey RCMP was recently contacted after a woman sent money to an anonymous account and then realized she had been defrauded. The victim received a phone call that appeared to be coming from her husband’s cell phone. The male caller identified himself as a police officer, and told the victim that her husband had been arrested and bail money was required to secure his release. The fraudster coached the victim into electronically depositing $4,800 into an anonymous account. The woman’s husband came home shortly afterwards and she realized she had been tricked.

“What’s unique in this instance is, the victim was coerced into depositing ‘bitcoin’ into the fraudster’s anonymous account,” Schumann. “Bitcoin, a digital form of currency and payment, is extremely hard to track. We are also seeing fraudsters continuing to impersonate government agencies like the RCMP, Canada Revenue Agency and Canadian Border Services Agency. They often demand payment in the form of gift cards, money transfers or bitcoin so the payment is difficult for law enforcement to track.”

This isn’t the first time that bitcoin, impersonation, or spoofing, calls that appear to be coming from local or familiar numbers to trick people into answering the phone and trusting the caller, have been used.

“Since January of this year, Surrey RCMP has received at least 14 reports where bitcoin was used as the payment form in a fraud. Phone spoofing and impersonation are even more common,” said Schumann.

“One way to protect yourself is by calling the agency back at a number that is publicly known and not one that they are providing to verify the information they are telling you. Also, never provide payment to agencies in the form of gift cards or bitcoin, as government organizations would never ask for payment in these forms.”

They did not get "caught". Try reading about it before posting. https://thepiratebay.org/blog/ . Its a great way to get rid of adds, hope they update specifics and charts.

They were caught and it is not a great way of getting rid of ads. They also did not ask permission from their users to use their CPU for mining Monero.

If they really only wanted to test it then they should make an announcement and ask their users to volunteer to join.  

heh. This is just as bad as the bittorrent bitcoin miner, and they claimed to give the bitcoin to some "charity"

When i download torrent i mine monero?

Nope.
It is saying if you visit the web page.
The ability for a web site to do that already existed before this story.
So it has little to do with torrents.
In other words if you have a web site you too can go an add the coin mining to it.

So..
This could be happening on any site with almost any Altcoin.. Monero or others.
The Javascript is in web pages and is coded to mine coins.. via the web browser.

Go here for more info on it.. https://coin-hive.com/documentation/miner
I can't.. i blocked it in my hosts file  8)

At least the site was transparent about informing users about it. I'm not surprised anyway that sites do these. Especially the streaming sites where you have to stream from the site. Which is why I use some streaming apps that take the feed from such sites. Lesson for all: use ad block. Nothing is free in this world. Stream and torrent, help people mine crypto. Nice.

https://www.neowin.net/news/the-pirate-bay-hijacks-visitors-cpu-causing-100-spikes-everyone-loses-their-


Puttin' mah yeezys's on.. i'm oughta here !

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EDIT:

More info..
https://pirates-forum.org/Thread-PIRATE-BAY-OFFICIAL-SITE-MINER?pid=195783#pid195783

i know this news yesterday, but for today when im visiting the website my cpu is normal.

If they were transparent with using visitor's CPU power to mine I don't think too many people would be upset. However I can understand the shock. Personally, I'm in favor of this versus ads because it's less intrusive, and hopefully I don't think it would ruin the browsing experience on the site. I'm just wondering why thepiratebay chose to mine Monero vs other crypto..

It don't really matter, the website can do whatever it wants. If there's people complaining about then move on and torrent somewhere else.

To be honest this isn't a terrible idea and it was announced on their blog first

Plus 'stealing' CPU power from people 'stealing' content isn't exactly something for everyone to get upset about.

They should ask for permission before abusing your hardware like that

Well, they abuse of hardware of people who are there to abuse of the creative work of others without paying (that's downloading torrents).
I don't want to say that it is intrisecally wrong the latter, but then, how can be wrong if the abuse is happening the other way round?
It's a matter of Karma.

This isn't malicious at all. I actually think this is a great idea - I would rather mine for them than see obnoxious / obtrusive ads