Japanese engineer fined 100,000yen for embedding Coinhive script on his website

doocts.com

4 pointsSenHeng2 comments

The article is in Japanese so I'll post a short summary.

- Japanese engineer (JE) read about Coinhive on gigazine (Japanese IT mag)

- decides it would be cool to embed it on his website (sometime in September)

- removes it sometime in November after mining 1000yen ($10) worth

- 3 months later in February, presented with a search warrant by police at his workplace

- all networking equipment at home confiscated for forensic investigation

- called in for additional questioning in March

- eventually let off with a 100,000yen (~$1000) fine without pressing any charges

Basically, using Coinhive without user consent is equivalent to illegally commandeering a user's computer under a 'Virus Law'[0]

Heh - now we need to point those investigators to the ad networks and their stupidly javascript heavy advertisements!