There's no honor amongst thieves. At least, that's the perception given off with the latest version of the bittorrent client uTorrent, which is a bittorrent client used for download files, many files of which can be of the pirated variety. uTorrent recently had an update to the platform released. Within the latest update lies a little secret that many users of the application are likely completely unaware of, and that secret is using your computing resources for its own personal gains.
Epic Scale is a bitcoin mining program that has managed to leech itself onto the latest version of uTorrent. Epic Scale uses your CPU to mine bitcoin and bank it for uTorrent's parent company, BitTorrent. This is by no means a mistake or hack on the Epic Scale side of things: BitTorrent knowingly included the bitcoin miner in the latest version of uTorrent and even made a statement regarding it:
"[Epic Scale is] a great partner for us to continue to generate revenue for the company, while contributing funds to (philanthropic initiatives)."
While BitTorrent acknowledges the presence of Epic Scale, it's still unclear how frequently it's landing on uTorrent users' PCs. Some users are spotting the Epic Scale application while others don't have any evidence of it on their systems at this time. It's more likely that only recent updates or new users of uTorrent would have the bitcoin miner stored away on their hard drives.
If you find yourself on edge about having this extra software on-board your PC, follow this link to see where the program lives and how you might remove it (if Epic Scale is in-fact presently living on your hard drive). Given recent bouts of unwanted bloatware from Lenovo and the fact that uTorrent is the client of choice when pulling content from major torrent sites like The Pirate Bay, which is still up and running, it's unlikely that many users of uTorrent will willingly surrender their CPUs for a company's financial gains.
Source: Engadget
100 Comments - Add comment