What is the hashrate on these? Could'nt imagine it being very high...
Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency
31–40 of 94 posts
Re: Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency
#32This could be an interesting model to do out in the open. Rather than covertly mine cryptocurrency, say that the app is free if you contribute hashes to a pool, or you can buy the premium version that doesn't. Almost like the "slow" version vs the "fast" version of an app.
Or just mention it in the description and make it low priority using nice (in addition to doing it when plugged in).
Re: Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electricity and bandwidth are both resources that most people have to pay for, I would consider this theft and not a "victimless crime". The severity of financial impact on the victim is irrelevant. If I steal tiny amounts of money ~0.01c from large amounts of people and accrued significant wealth from it, is it fine? Is it a "victimless crime" because the amount is so small?
> The severity of financial impact on the victim is irrelevant. Not if it actually damage some parts of the phone like the battery because you have to charge it more often.
I agree, its theft. If I borrow your bicycle all the time without you knowing it may be innocent enough, but it still causes wear and tear on the bicycle. I am thieving bicycle time from you that you paid for. If I had simply asked for it, you couldn't blame me, but alas I took it without your consent.
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Do either of these apps explicitly state that they will access/use device in this way?
Re: Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency
#34This is pretty hilarious. Given how small the load can be to automatically contribute hashes to a pool for ___coin, I expect more of these in the future, but smarter. Runs for 5 seconds per minute on ten million devices for six months? That's no joke with some of the hardware out there. It's this close to a victimless crime (that is, unless the victim gets their CPU/GPU fried, as has happened with these nets before).…
Here's a story from 2004 about a school IT tech who installed SETI@home on the school machines. The increased electricity bill caused some consternation and he lost his job.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20041010/2225204.shtml
I imagine that mining crypto currency without permission is due for a high profile court case.
Re: Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency
#35I've been working on an idea similar to this for a few months. Instead of limiting this to crypto currency mining (a fair application, FWIW), why not approach this with the idea that people plugging in their phones every night could easily constitute the largest distributed supercomputer ever built? Everyone has the same nightly ritual: Wake up, use phone/tablet/device, plug in at night. Once it's plugged in, your ph…
I could see it being used for protein folding, but I don't think cryptocurrency mining is an application. By running your app, I'm consuming extra electricity for which I would have to pay. How would you compensate me for that?
Re: Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency
#36for all that trouble why don't they(makers of these apps) just buy a pc with a pair of reasonable ati cards?
Because they don't pay the energy costs on other people's phones.
Re: Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency
#37This could be an interesting model to do out in the open. Rather than covertly mine cryptocurrency, say that the app is free if you contribute hashes to a pool, or you can buy the premium version that doesn't. Almost like the "slow" version vs the "fast" version of an app.
Didn't this idea start with SETI@home in the 90's ?
Re: Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency
#38I wonder how viable doing this openly would be as a free-to-play business model? Being upfront with the user: "we're not going to show you any ads and you won't have to pay anything for extra content, but we'll be using a tiny proportion of your CPU time to mine cryptocurrency to pay for the development costs of this app."
Re: Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency
#39I wonder how viable doing this openly would be as a free-to-play business model? Being upfront with the user: "we're not going to show you any ads and you won't have to pay anything for extra content, but we'll be using a tiny proportion of your CPU time to mine cryptocurrency to pay for the development costs of this app."
It was done secretly in the recent past, and apparently while it lasted (weeks, i think?) it brought in something like $6k. It helps that most gamers have fairly powerful graphics cards.
If you mapped bitcoins mined to microtransaction currency (for in-game rewards) most players would love it.
Re: Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency
#40for all that trouble why don't they(makers of these apps) just buy a pc with a pair of reasonable ati cards?
For a F2P app, the cost of doing this is basically 0 and the revenue will continue to increase as long as the app keeps getting popular. Doesn't matter if the revenue is small, it's still more revenue from your F2P app.