Many of the websites these days allow you to browse videos as well as movies for free. Have you ever wondered, how they recoup the investment involved in keeping these websites up and running? Recently, this puzzle was solved when it was found that many of the video streaming websites actually indulge in cryptojacking. Cryptojacking uses the computer resources of the visitors in order to mine cryptocurrencies. Since the prices of cryptocurrencies are increasing on a regular basis, the amount of profits which are generated by these video streaming websites have gone through the roof in the recent few months.
Some of the websites which are adopting this technique in order to monetize the visitors are Openload, OnlineVideoConverter, Streamango. It is assumed that these companies actually download the software on the computers of the visitors and later on, run the software in the background to mine the Monero cryptocurrency.
Even though most of the visitors would not mind it but when you look at the sheer numbers and the fact that these websites actually receive billions of visitors each and every year, you would find that this unethical practice actually affects a lot of visitors. The company which brought this to light is Adguard and according to its CEO, Adrey Meshkov, quite a few popular website use the resources on the devices of the visitors in order to mine cryptocurrencies.
Monero is more suitable for cryptocurrency mining as it can be easily mined with the help of software which is running in the background. Also, from the browser, it is a very easy to load the mining software in the computers of the visitors. The popularity of cryptojacking is increasing day by day as more and more websites realize how profitable it is. Moreover, it takes a pretty long period of time in order to detect any such software which is running on the computers of the visitors. Also, it is difficult to associate the software with a particular website. This provides an added layer of security to the websites which are using the cryptojacking technique in order to monetize the content which they have.
Also, another reason why Monero was used for mining is because it is very difficult to detect the owners of this cryptocurrency. Also, it gets mined at a faster pace as well. Even though this is borderline illegal but still, no action has been taken on these websites. Moreover, the visitors are not notified that their computer power or their computer resources would be used in order to mine the cryptocurrencies.
The only indication which the users might have is that the computer of these visitors would actually run a bit slow whenever the crypto mining is taking place in the background. Ideally, when it comes to crypto mining it would be using up at least 60% of the CPU. That is why the computer would start freezing pretty soon when cryptocurrency mining is going on in the background.
Also, the video player of Openload can also induce cryptocurrency mining in the computers of the visitors. Thus, even if you’re not using this website then also you might be a victim of cryptojacking.
It remains to be seen whether any action is taken against these websites and whether they refrain from cryptojacking in the future or the websites continue with this particular monetization method.
Sai Pinnamaneni is Co-Founder of Smartereum. He is a Sharepoint Architect with over 15 years of experience. Entrepreneur | Software Architect | Vegan | Proud Dad
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