As revealed in this recent article over 500 million PCs could be mining cryptocurrency. Can we know which entity might be in control of all these PCs?
Research by ad blocking firm AdGuard found 220 popular websites with an aggregated audience of half a billion people use so-called crypto-mining scripts when a user opens their main page.
So these websites are in essence stealing CPU cycles from PC owners without permission or consent? What are the ethics of this and should websites require permission?
References
http://www.newsweek.com/500-million-pcs-secretly-mining-cryptocurrency-research-bitcoin-683982