It
seems that the BitTorrent client uTorrent has silently installed
Bitcoin mining software on it's users computers, without it's users
knowledge or permission. You have been warned.
The bitcoin
software which has been added to the latest version of uTorrent is
called EpicScale, which is a bitcoin miner which uses your "unused
processing power to change the world". Many users of uTorrent found the
addition "easily noticable by the increased CPU load when the computer
is idle".
The
largest problem with the addition of this bitcoin mining software is
that users of uTorrent were not asked if they wanted it during
installation or that it was included in the installation, which means
that the software was installed without their expressed permission/
consent.
The build of uTorrent in question is version 3.4.2 build
28913 (32-bit), an uTorrent employee did say that you could simply
delete the EpicScale software from your PC and it would not try to
reinstall itself.
"Feel
free to delete this folder. You certainly won’t see any persistent
auto-reinstalls of the software, it will be gone from your machine for
good.”
The problem with this statement
is that users report that this is simply not true and that it does not
uninstall completely using add/remove program on Windows or by deleting
the application folder.
This comes not long after the Lenovo PR disaster which was SuperFish, when
they installed an adware program on some of their consumer PC, which
left their PCs vulnerable and insecure, not to mention the fact that
this was unknown to many users.
The installation
of programs onto a computer without the users consent or permission is
simply put wrong, as it can leave PC vulnerable to attack or at a
minimum degrade the PCs performance by wasting CPU cycles and/or storage
space.
I advise all users of uTorrent or similar
softwares to be careful that your systems are secure, until uTorrent
remove the program or update it's installation process.
Source : OC3D.net
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