Cryptocurrency mining has been the rage ever since 2017 and people have been trying to increase their mining efficiency ever since by spending thousands of dollars on equipment that can perform these calculations faster and more efficiently.
Mining refers to the act of performing calculations that add a new block of information to the blockchain network, which results in the miner rewarded with a certain amount of cryptocurrency that their calculation deserves.
Cryptocurrency miners usually use gaming equipment because these can provide high enough power for them to make a profit over a certain period.
Cryptocurrency mining in your web browser
We mentioned that miners have been using gaming GPU’s for doing their calculations but imagine having millions of computers around the world doing this for you.
Although your efficiency might not be high, the amount of resources that you can generate is undoubtedly far more significant than you would imagine.
This idea is where cryptocurrency mining in a web browser originated from, but this is not at all beneficial for the end user of the browser.
Because of specific code in the javascript of a webpage, the page owners can use your CPU’s resources for solving calculations earning them cryptocurrencies, but this leads to your CPU being heavily taxed and causes your computer to perform in a sub-par manner.
The problem mentioned above can be solved by installing an extension that prevents mining in your web browser; some of them are discussed below.
Also read: Cryptocurrency: Can it replace real money? Why does its value fluctuate?
NoCoin Extension
This extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.
MinerBlock
MinerBlock can block inline mining scripts and those running through proxies. It can block all cryptocurrency mining codes irrelevant to their source.
This extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.
MineBlock
MineBlock is an extension that blocks miners like coinhive, jsecoin, crypto-loot, etc. before they load and prevents them from using your CPU power.
This is available on Chrome and Firefox.
NoScript for Firefox
NoScript is an aggressive script blocker since it blocks all scripts that run on a page and can break multiple websites because of that. It will block out all the scripts are running on a page.
You can find NoScript here
AdBlock Extension
AdBlock is software that everyone has to be aware of because you have probably been using it to block ads ever since you got a computer. But what one can also do with this software is that they can manually add certain scripts to it, so that it prevents them from running.
In Chrome, install the Ad Block extension and then go to Customise > Block an ad by its URL and paste the following URL there: https://coin-hive.com/lib/coinhive.min.js
You can find it here.
Also read: 10 best Gmail extensions available on Chrome
