I was referring to the army of computer's they don't own.
I do know people who Botnet Mine on their own private pools, and I see no harm that they are doing with this.
You're talking about people using other people's computer resources without their permission, and you see no harm in it? Is it okay to use someone's car without their permission? Why or why not? The same answers would apply to botnet/zombie mining.
It's not okay to use someone's car without their permission, because it uses up their gasoline and causes wear and tear on their tires, transmission, etc.
(It's not okay to zombie mine without permission, because it uses their electricity and causes wear and tear on their power supply, cpu, etc)
It's not okay to use someone's car without their permission, because there is the possibility that you could wreck it.
(It's not okay to zombie mine without permission, because there is the possibility you could overheat it and wreck it) -- you don't know whether they keep their computer clean, it might be filthy and clogged with lint but never overheats normally because they only use it for email/web browsing
It's not okay to use someone's car without permission, because they can't use it while you are and so you're depriving them of the use of it.
(It's not okay to zombie mine without permission, because it uses system resources even if only a small percentage, that is still system resources they can't use themselves, if they try to play video games or do video editing or cad or other high-intensive activity, it will not function to the level of performance it should
See where I'm going with this?
Now, that's not to see it's a HUGE crime if done in small amount, but it is still not right/ethical -- like you can use somebody else's dumpster and does it really harm them? But it's still illegal (theft of services), they paid for the dumpster, now there's your trash in it and maybe there's not enough room for all the trash they were gonna put in it
But the really bad/wrong/evil/illegal/unethical part comes when you multiply it out. Using somebody else's dumpster one time, although not the "right" thing to do, you may not consider a big deal, but if you do it every day, and start using everybody else's dumpster in the city for your massive amounts of trash, well now you're starting to be VERY unethical
When people talk about botnets / zombie mining, they're not talking about using 1 person's computer without their permission. They're always talking about using multiple, sometimes hundreds or even THOUSANDS of other people computer's without their permission... Now you're talking about bring seriously bad karma your way... Definitely a NOT COOL move, dude
