How to Block Cryptocurrency Mining in Your Browser

A Few days back, the Piratebay experimented with running a Bitcoin miner in place of showing ads. This created trouble and users noticed that CPU usage was as high as 100% while browsing the Piratebay. Now we other websites have also started using the same thing to monetize their web traffic. I personally believe this should be optional and the website should ask users whether they want to allow it or not. But, this is not going to happen.

If you are not happy with this new practice of monetization and do not want a website to use your system’s CPU for mining, you can block it. In this article, I will tell you few ways to block Cryptocurrency mining in your web browser.

Also see: Best Bitcoin alternatives

Block Cryptocurrency Mining in your browser

Most of the websites are using Coin Hive for mining. And they are using JS based minor. To block this, you can try browser extensions.

1. Chrome extensions to block web-based bitcoin minor

No Coin and minorblock are two most notable Chrome extensions for blocking Cryptocurrency mining on your browser. Both the extensions allow one-click mining blocking solution. You just need to install any of these extensions and you will see an icon in omnibar.

Both the extensions are opensource. If you are a developer, you can use the code to learn or contribute to the development.

2. Use Ad blocker

Ad blocker not just block ads automatically but also allows you to block any ad by its URL. You can use this property to block the script: http s://coin-hive.com/lib/coinhive.min.js

Most of the people are using Coinhive for bitcoin mining, this will block mining from most of the websites.

3. Block known cryptocurrency mining domains

This is another good way of blocking the cryptocurrency mining on your system. You can add known mining domains to the hosts file of the operating system. After doing this, website or extensions will not be able to contact these domains.

Should you block cryptocurrency mining?

I am not sure what should I recommend. It depends on the website and your personal choice. If a website is asking for permission and notifying you about the mining, that is good. If a website is blocking ads for mining but putting too much load on your system, this is not good as well.

Now you know how to block cryptocurrency mining. If you are worried, you can use these ways.