It is believed that the use of mining scripts on mobile devices can cause them to overheat, which can affect their operation and cause physical damage to them.
Opera, one of the most popular web browsers, implemented new features and properties in its software for mobile devices, precisely to prevent them from being used for mining activities without the consent of its users.
According to information published in a press release, the mining scripts implemented by a large number of web pages seriously compromise the operation of smart devices, which is why the company's representatives seek to provide users with their products (Opera Mini and Opera for Android) of the necessary tools so that the hardwares are not affected by these activities.
In the press release it reads:
The new 'Anti-cryptocurrency mining' property can be activated by default when the ad blocker is enabled in the Opera Mini browser (iOS and Android), as well as in Opera for Android. To do this, users must go to the configuration section, and the browser will automatically detect the mining scripts written in the code of the website and prevent the device from being used for that purpose. "
Opera executives estimate that millions of devices around the world are affected by mining scripts on websites. At the same time, it is also believed that there are more than 3 million internet pages that make use of these codes to take advantage of the resources of the visitors for the mining of digital assets, especially of Monero balances.
It is believed that these activities could have a detrimental effect on mobile devices, since mining activities can force the use of 100% of the team's resources and therefore the overheating of the equipment.
According to an article published by ZDNet, Trojans on mobile devices could cause them to generate so much heat that the batteries swelled, which caused permanent damage to phones and tablets. It is believed that mining scripts can generate a similar effect on the internal functioning of hardware, so it can be very risky to use this type of equipment to carry out mining activities.
New updates for Opera are now available and the browser can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.