After being offline for over a week, The Pirate Bay is back online with a cryptocurrency mining code.

Last year, it was reported that one of the most popular torrenting websites The Pirate Bay (TPB) was using Coinhive’s cryptocurrency mining code to generate Monero coins by using computing power (CPU) of its visitors without their consent – After criticism from visitors the website removed the malicious script only to put it back months later.

Now, for the third time, The Pirate Bay has started using cryptocurrency mining code without informing its visitors or without providing them the option to opt-in or opt-out. According to several posts on the official web forum of The Pirate Bay users have shown disappointment over the ongoing mining scheme.

One of the users going by the handle of “okremix” was the first one to identify the presence of mining script on TPB’s torrent upload page. We at HackRead can confirm that at the time of publishing this article, the mining code was also placed on the site’s torrent download page.

“I wanted to upload my torrents to TPB and because of the current upload error (file not found) I leaved the tab open and noticed that my CPU is getting really hot,” okremix wrote. “Shame we aren’t asked if we want to run it, it could damage my CPU if I leaved it open and walked away from my PC for couple hours due to very old thermal paste that needs replacing.”

Another user “Politux” wrote that “Is it time to start uploading (referring to torrent uploading on TPB) to other places? I’m not sure if it is ethical to contribute to TPB if this is what the site has become.”

Ian812 shared a screenshot of his CPU performance while visiting The Pirate Bay. “It’s definitely hitting my CPU as shown in attachments,” wrote Ian812.

According to TorrentFreak, previously, TPB supermoderator “Sid” regretted having a miner on the site, but, this time he advised visitors to enable adblocker while visiting The Pirate Bay. He went on to blame visitors for staying more than 5 minutes on the site.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. The time it takes to download a torrent is completely and utterly irrelevant. Sad wrote.”If you are ever on TPB for more than 5 minutes or so you’re doing it wrong.”

What Sid does not know is the fact that there is a “Persistent drive-by cryptomining” technique using which hackers and website owners can use visitors’ CPU power to generate cryptocurrency even after the browser window is closed.

The Pirate Bay uses Cloudflare’s security on its website and it seems like the security firm has no issues with Pirate Bay silently using the mining code, unlike last year when Cloudflare booted off a torrent website ProxyBunker for secretly using cryptocurrency miner.

In their reply to ProxyBunker, CloudFlare stated that “Coinhive mining code without notifying users. … We consider this to be malware, and as such, the account was suspended, and all domains removed from CloudFlare.”

Moreover, authorities in Japan recently arrested 16 people and sentenced one to prison in the first criminal case of cryptojacking. Troy Mursch of Bad Packets told HackRead that:

“I wouldn’t recommend using Coinhive or any other in-browser cryptocurrency miner without the consent of your users. It’s illegal.”

It is understandable that a website as big as The Pirate Bay requires revenue to keep up with its service and traditional advertising may not fulfill its requirements. Yet, the only ethical way to make money by mining is to inform users and allow them to opt-out in case they wish not to be part of it.

If you use The Pirate Bay and looking for its alternatives, here are 10 of its best alternatives.