uTorrent used to be the most reputable and popular Bittorrent client, but the program has been going through some strange phases lately, after it started to include more and more advertisements, while at the same time decreasing its performance for some users. And just recently, a major scandal came to light which could seriously undermine the public trust in the application.
According to reports, one of the most recent versions of uTorrent came bundled with “EpicScale”, a hidden Bitcoin miner. The tool was installed as part of the bundled applications with uTorrent’s installation package, but according to investigations, not everyone got it. Some users instead reported a search optimizer tool in their installation packages replacing the position of EpicScale.
What EpicScale does is, it uses the computer’s idle processing power to mine Bitcoins, likely for the profit of uTorrent’s developers and/or other entities. Users have been reporting serious system slow-down issues as well as unnecessary heating up of their processors as a result of the tool, and have described it as “malware bundled with uTorrent”.
While uTorrent’s administrators were quick to respond to the issue on their forums, the situation was made worse by a brief network outage which caused the forums to go down, leading many users to believe that the administrators were actually trying to censor discussion and had shut down the forum on purpose.
Initial reports claimed that the tool was installed without user authorization, and wasn’t indicated at any point during the installation process. However, others state that this is not the case, and there is actually an option to de-select EpicScale during the installation of uTorrent.
In any case, there is now an explanation for the purpose of EpicScale on the official website of uTorrent, which is as good as an official confirmation that the company is working together with EpicScale’s owners. It’s worth noting that users who have tried to reproduce the issue by installing uTorrent on their own computers after the scandal came to light have been unsuccessful, claiming that they never got EpicScale during the installation process.
According to some, this is because the tool was silently removed from the installation bundle after the controversy started brewing up. The developers of uTorrent apparently realized the huge scale of the situation and decided to take preemptive measures to ensure that it doesn’t spin out of control, while at the same time keeping quiet to avoid drawing too much attention to the issue. It certainly sounds plausible, especially given the recent track record of the company, which has been less than spotless with regards to their relationships with their advertising partners and how those play into the program itself.