Considering the high cost of obtaining the appropriate cryptocurrency mining equipment, such as Bitcoin, many people use their websites to use your computer and mine these types of currencies; even if you don’t realize it. To counteract this type of violation of user privacy, different methods have been developed that you can apply to assess whether a page is using you to mine cryptocurrencies and prevent it from continuing to occur.
Index( )
- How can a website use you to mine coins from your PC?
- How to see who is using you to mine coins from the ‘Task Manager’?
- Viewing the consumption of browsers
- To analyze a specific web address
- What should you do to prevent bitcoins from being mined with your browser?
- Use of specialized extensions
How can a website use you to mine coins from your PC?
People who want to mine coins prefer to save the cost of suitable equipment and use the PC of different users to handle the power required to mine a cryptocurrency. To achieve this, they infect a certain website with mining malware , as well as a certain download link and even certain content on social networks.
In this way, around every 10 minutes that you stay on a website infected with mining malware, a new coin is generated without you knowing that your computer has been used. Which consequently slows down most of the functions of your computer, leaving the execution of your commands in the background to prioritize the mining of coins.
How to see who is using you to mine coins from the ‘Task Manager’?
The clearest evidence that your computer is being used to mine coins is the slowdown in the execution of its processes . This happens because the coin miner tries to make the most of the connection with your team and generate as many coins as possible while you are within reach.
To be able to evaluate whether your equipment is actually being used to mine coins, you can rely on the task manager of your operating system. To enter the Windows task manager , you can right-click on the taskbar and select the ‘Task Manager’ option. To enter the task manager on a macOS computer, you must press the [CMD] + [ALT] + [ESC] keys simultaneously.
Once you are in the task manager of your PC, you will have to inspect each of the processes that are running on your computer. In general, processes do not usually occupy a percentage greater than 10% or 20% in the CPU of the background execution. Otherwise, you could be a victim of coin mining; be it Bitcoin, Monero or another cryptocurrency.
Viewing the consumption of browsers
The consumption of RAM memory and data from your CPU that your browser occupies, are the clearest evidence that your computer is being used by a website to mine coins. To evaluate it, you must access your task manager and select the browser that you are using on your computer, by double clicking on it.
In this way, a panel will open that specifies the process consumption of each page that you are visiting in the browser. The maximum consumption that usually reaches the data transfer between the computer and the website, does not exceed 10% or 20%. If this figure has been exceeded, it is likely that the page you have visited is mining coins with your PC through the browser.
In this case, you will have to terminate the process, clicking on the particular box on the page with the right button and selecting the option ‘End task’ . Following this, you must go to the specific website and close it; Also try not to enter the site in the future to avoid mining with your computer.
To analyze a specific web address
In case you consider that some of the websites that you frequent is not safe and that it could be using your equipment to mine coins while you log in, you can use tools to scan the URL of the particular web domain. One of the most efficient tools is the Notmining search engine , which performs a thorough inspection of the website to assess whether it contains mining malware.
You can use this platform to find out if the page you visit contains coin mining software, but the Notmining platform does not offer any tools to block mining. Therefore, in case you evaluate that a site is mining coins with your team, the best option is not to visit the site .
What should you do to prevent bitcoins from being mined with your browser?
Evaluating each suspicious website can be quite tedious, as well as constantly checking that your PC’s data consumption is somewhat conventional. For this reason, you can purchase an extension so that every website you access is immediately evaluated and blocks the coin mining software on your computer .
Use of specialized extensions
These tools can be compatible with different browsers depending on the interface that each one has. The choice of the extension will depend on the needs of each user.
- AntiMiner: Despite being one of the most efficient mining blocking tools, the AntiMiner extension is only compatible with the Google Chrome browser. This extension verifies that the website is not on a list of mining websites.
- NoCoin: It is an extension that evaluates the domain of each website you visit using a black list of potential risks. The NoCoin interface is compatible to be installed in the Google Chrome, Opera and Firefox browsers.
- MinerBlock: In addition to evaluating the domain of the site to identify if it is a potential coin miner, MinerBlock inspects that this malware is not hidden in the navigation scripts of the page. This extension is compatible with the Opera browser, Google Chrome and Firefox.
- Browse with Opera: Although it is not an extension, the Opera browser has a configuration method that allows you to block coin mining software. This option is activated together with the ad blocking service.
