There’s only one thing that movie studios and streaming sites have in common: their hatred of Kodi. Anyone can guess why movie studios hate Kodi, but why streaming sites? The reason is simple: streaming sites don’t make any money off Kodi users, not a penny – ever. By streaming through Kodi addons, you’re effectively bypassing all forms of monetization and advertising; this includes the latest form of malware known as crypto-jacking, by which cryptocurrency is mined from your web browser without your consent.

Anyone who’s ever tried streaming the latest TV show online has probably experienced popups, viruses and G-d knows what else. Kodi addons are designed to scrape useful content from online sources, while leaving all the hooey behind. We define “hooey” as anything that isn’t absolutely necessary to the streaming experience: fancy web design, advertisements, promotions, upsell offers and popups. Kodi addons scrape the web site structure and streaming links, that’s it.

While Kodi addons might be great for the user, they are definitely not good for the streaming sites and cyberlockers. The reason these sites show ads, popups and other nuissances is so that they can generate money to keep their servers online. Streaming high quality video is quite bandwith intensive, and probably not too easy without revenues. That being said, we’re fairly certain that these sites make enough money as it is, so there’s really no need to risk exposing yourself to malware and sketchy ads just to throw them a bone.

It should be noted that streaming sites and cyberlockers might not be the ones who are directly spreading the malware and crypto-jacking code, although you could argue that they are indeed facilitating it. Due to the nature of these web sites, they are unable to use conventional online advertising networks, so they turn to the darker side of online ads. They might not even know what type of ads are being displayed to which users of their web sites, it could just be that bad actors have tricked the unsuspecting ad networks into serving their popups.

At the end of the day, you’re definitely far safer streaming through Kodi addons as opposed to visiting sketchy online streaming sites in your web browser. Hollywood might be trying to destroy these addons, but as far as user experience goes these Kodi addons may have saved millions of people from being exposed to malware, crypto-jacking, popups and a whole lot of other “hooey.”

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