The Japanese cops cracked the whip on Coinhive users a mining software, without their website consent. On being investigated and having their property confiscated, users have gone public to explain their predicament.
The cops have been investigating website owners using coinhive to mine cryptocurrency.lately,cops from 10 prefectures apprehended 16 people using such programs; three were arrested while others have their information sent to the prosecutors.
Nevertheless, some experts are casting aspersions on police crackdown. The famous researcher Dr. Tagagi Hiromitsu noted some irregularities with police action. According to him, the cops initiated the investigation after some anti-virus companies informed that Coinhive was a virus. Moreover, most of the information related to Coinhive were based on interviews with major anti-virus firm,Trend Micro.Dr Takagi said,
‘’It’s a simple story, antivirus software dealers are profitable enough to threaten people. In this way, it encourages everything as a cybercrime and advertises its own products.’’
The other issue is that cops in many prefectures, unlike Tokyo police, are not informed enough to deal with cybercrimes. Lately, the Metropolitan police department issued a notice warning website operators considering mining tools that:
‘’Even in the case of installing on a website operated by himself/herself, there is a possibility of [it] becoming a crime when installing a mining tool without clearly indicating to the viewers that the mining tool is installed.’’
Merely on suspicion that coinhive could be extra-constitutional police started to investigate and make an arrest, a coinhive user informed to a news agency. According to him the action was taken arbitrarily based on opinion rather than clarity of law.
People who are being investigated started using Coinhive since last September and many have stopped using it long before the investigations began. The possibility of Coinhive being a crime wasn’t pointed out until a Nikkie article of Dec 10.
Moreover, it is believed that the Japenese media was looking at only one side of the coin,portraying Coinhive based on Police interpretation
