Opera Browser Adds Cryptocurrency Miner Protection for Smartphones

Cryptocurrency miners embedded in websites is increasingly becoming a problem for smartphones & tablets, but the Opera web browser is trying to remove the threat for its users by adding a protection system.

Opera, which already introduced cryptocurrency miner protection in its desktop-based versions, is now putting the same feature into its smartphone & tablets browsers, the company announced Monday morning 22/01/2018.

The new feature will be available on Opera Mini and Opera for Android, according to a press release and is part of the browser’s native ad-blocker function which has been part of the Opera software already.

According to the statement release:

“The new anti-cryptocurrency mining feature is activated by default when you enable the ad blocker on Opera Mini (iOS and Android) or Opera for Android. The ad blocker can be enabled by going to ‘settings’, and it will automatically detect and stop the mining scripts written into the code of a webpage.”

Opera estimates that more than a billion or more devices worldwide are slowed down by website-based cryptocurrency miners that are mining without your knowledge. On the other side of the browsing experience, the company believes there are now more than 3 million websites with embedded cryptocurrency miners. I personally think that’s just a lie and the numbers can’t be that high, however Opera it’s saying otherwise

All websites are complex and are very hard for a normal user to even notice why their hardware it’s slow or why their devices are overheating. Many web based cryptocurrency miners tend to force the and overload smartphones to their max and then you can run in trouble. The damage can sometimes be permanent and according to a ZDNet article, one trojan generated so much heat in a phone, its battery became swollen, permanently damaging the phone. While excessive ads were one reason for the heat generation, the main cause was that the phone’s CPU was hijacked to mine for Monero.

The trojan was so effective, it “wrecked the phone within 48 hours,” according to the article.

Opera’s new feature is already available, and the browser can be downloaded from the Google Play store, so make sure you get yourself protected to avoid getting your phone used without your consent.