It has been recently revealed in several locations such as Engadget that the popular torrent program uTorrent has started installing a new program for free. Sadly, this program actually can do more harm that good seeing as it installs Epic Scale, which is used to mine bitcoins. Now a lot of uTorrent users would of course not be running a powerful enough program to actually mine a single bitcoin, but having hundreds or thousands of computers mining for them could increase their profits considerably.
I do remember when another company tried this: Digsby. I used Digsby for a while because it was a decent program for running multiple chat clients and is still around today. A few years back when they were first starting up there was a controversy because they too installed a program that would use someone’s computer while it was idle to gather money for themselves to line their pockets. Now, in Digsby’s defense they gave a very clear window that asked if it would be okay and the same goes with uTorrent. The problem is that with both of these programs I believe they rely heavily on having the user not pay attention to what they are clicking and installing these mining programs on accident.
We all might have to find another torrenting program. Feel free to comment on what your favorite torrent client is in the comments below.