Opera Browser adds protection against mining for smartphones: additional protection against unwitting virtual currency mining.
The unconscious activities of mining of cryptocurrenciesembedded in some websites are becoming more and more of a problem for i smartphone owners, who often find themselves dealing with various types of inconvenience (of which we have already introduced something at the time). However, the Opera web browser seems to be able to reserve good news for all its users.
Opera, which has already introduced protection for cryptocurrency mining in its desktop versions, it is now incorporating the same functionality into its smartphone browser. The announcement of a few hours ago specifies how the new functionality will be available on Opera Mini e Opera for Android and, according to a press release, will be part of the ad blocking feature.
According to the press release,
the new functionality of cryptocurrency mining will be activated by default when ad blocker is activated on Opera Mini (iOS and Android) or Opera for Android. The ad blocker can be enabled by going to "Settings", and will be able to automatically detect - and stop - the mining scripts present on the code of a web page.
On this occasion, Opera estimated that more than a billion devices worldwide are slowed down by cryptocurrency mining activities based on a visited website, and that more than 3 million sites with embedded cryptocurrency mining are .
The effect is soon said: mining activities can overload the smartphone CPUs, forcing 100% of usage and causing the phone to overheat. The damage can sometimes be permanent: according to a recent ZDNet article, some Trojans can generate so much heat in a phone that it can inflate the battery and permanently damage the phone. According to the same article, those Trojans are so effective that they destroy a smartphone in just 48 hours.
The new Opera feature is already available on Android and the browser can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.
