The company has announced that it has updated both its main Android browser and Opera Mini to block the cryptocurrency miners. If you switch on the ad-blocking feature in the browser, the miners will automatically be blocked. Opera is the first major browser developer to bring this feature and the company had earlier provided the same blocker in its desktop browser.
“When you browse the web, there are no visual clues that your device is exposed to mining. A single webpage you visit can take up to 4.5 hours of your battery time, if you keep the tab open. This often turns out to be just the battery time you needed to use a ride-hailing app or check the map to get home,” said Jan Standal, VP Product Marketing at Opera, in a statement.
Opera says that there are reportedly 3 million websites in the wild housing these cryptocurrency miners. So, this is not a small problem.
Since the crypto-mining blocker is a feature of the Opera browsers, the protection against the miners is limited to their browsers. If you use Chrome or any other browsers on your phone, the malicious websites will still be able to mine cryptocurrencies on your phone. If like to use Samsung’s own browser a lot, you might have want to install the Adguard content blocker to block the cryptocurrency miners.
You can download both Opera Browser and Opera Mini from the Google Play.
