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Badass alert: 1 in 5 Brits don't give a damn about webpage crypto-miners

More sensible users would like regulation or permission first

More than 20 per cent of Britons don't mind letting websites hijack their CPUs to mine cryptocurrency, a slightly stale survey has found.

YouGov's survey of 2,174 people, conducted back in September/October but now apparently relevant again thanks to "Computer Security Day" yesterday [EVERY day is computer security day, kids – ed], found that around a fifth of folk don't care about web pages stealing their processing power to make magic computer cash.

The data also shows that da yoofs are more in favour of crypto miners than greybeards – 20 per cent of 18-24s are happy for websites to mine alt-coin, against 4 per cent of over-50s.

How about if adverts on web pages could be cut as a result of letting mining take place? That only takes the average of those in favour up to 20 per cent, with nearly half (46 per cent) of respondents saying that they would prefer to keep the ads as they are.

62 per cent are worried about damage to their PC (with one in ten not caring), while 83 per cent fear for the safety of their data. 72 per cent want the practice regulated either by the UK or EU, and 84 per cent want to be asked for permission before a site uses their PC for crypto-cash mining.

Government backing for Bitcoin and friends seems a long way from reality, with countries shutting down exchanges in recent months, and the Bank of England and US Federal Reserve telling the Gruaniad that bitcoin isn't a proper currency anyway. ®

Bootnote

Confusingly, the You.Gov press release liberally tosses around "Bitcoin" as a catch-all for cryptocurrency, stating: "Pirate Bay utilised the PC processing power of people who visited its website to analyse or 'mine' bitcoin data." It was, in fact, mining Monero. Coin Hive's JavaScript code focuses on reaping this increasingly en vogue alt-coin. Tsk, when normies attack, am I right?

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