Would you run a browser based crypto-miner to get free extra bandwidth or even a Pro account?

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Honestly, that payment method is ingenious for a VPN provider. And that is what it is: A payment method. They don't do it in secret. They don't do it without your knowledge. It's not buried somewhere in their ToS or hidden somewhere in their browser extension or desktop client.

They offer you to pay for the subscription and stay completely anonymous by letting them use your CPU resources to mine cryptocurrency for a certain amount of time. There is no trail of it. No transfer noted down in a blockchain. No exchange of names. Just you pay your power company. That's it. I wouldn't be surprised if more VPN providers did it and to be honest: They really should.
 
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Steaming link site Alluc.ee, often used by pirates, is one of the first. While they use the same mining service, their implementation is more elegant.

Alluc shows how many hashes are mined and the site allows users to increase or decrease the CPU load, or turn the miner off completely.

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So you would disable your adblocker to help website you like if doesn't have ads?
 
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I have changed my vote to "sure", as some of the arguments were pretty compelling and as some of the members have already pointed out that nothing is free, the websites/softwares companies have to earn their bread and butter somehow. Some do this by selling personal information/user behavior of their customers to 3rd party. I actually like this idea now (of course only if it is offered as a choice and not forced, cause some of the old hardware may not be able to cope with it properly).
 
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I'm not against the method actually as long as it's not hidden and is completely optional and what is going to be done is explained to those who choose to do it.

Crypto miners use quite a lot of CPU and may cause overheating in notebooks with bad heat dissipation and there are a lot of those out there.
 
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Think before do. This is just an optional payment service provided by Windscribe. And honestly, for free users like me, this is not really a bad idea. I wouldn't personally use this but for some people this can work.
Nothing is done in secret. There is a choice. Unlike whole ccleaner debacle.

Uninstalling Windscribe is not an option for me. It is one of the good VPN's. When my license expires, i will use the free 50gb/month option. Windscribe alternative - ProtonVPN is an hassle for me, as to use it i have to install it's app & on top of it, it uses powershell scripts in it's installation, which i had disabled.

FYI - Kaspersky detects the secret coin-mining scripts & webpages. So nothing to worry about.
 
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Email answer:

Hi,

There's nothing to worry about. We just saw an opportunity to have another small source of revenue and thought why not give it a shot. The crypto mining is completely isolated on just that one page which very clearly states what is happening and if you don't want to mine anything, you don't have to. We're not packaging this into our applications or extensions or anything like that, it's simply a fun little thing we're trying out and it's 100% voluntary.

We're not short on money or have too many free users, we just wanted to explore some other cool tech features that are available and our users can benefit from this if they want.

Let me know if you have any other questions,
Thanks!
 
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