Starbucks Buenos Aires Accused of Cryptocurrency Mining Using Customer's Laptop 💰

A customer of Starbucks Buenos Aires accused the popular café company of illegally mining Bitcoin using his personal laptop.

Starbucks’ not-so Free WiFi

Noah Dinkin, the man who discovered that his laptop was being used to mine cryptocurrency via Starbucks’ free WiFi, tweeted a screenshot to prove it on Dec. 2.

His screenshot shows that the WiFi provider in Starbucks Buenos Aires forces a 10 second delay when you first connect to the WiFi so it can mine crypto using the customer's laptop.
Multiple people commented that the script of Starbucks’ free WiFi is in fact mining Monero and not Bitcoin.

ther commenters suggested that the whole thing could be a publicity stunt for the company. This theory is supported by the fact that, if this operation was in fact only taking place in one store, it could potentially bring in only a few cents per day, according to another commenter.

Starbucks responds

In their non-apologetic Tweet to Dinkin, the company was sure to point out that the incident only occured in one of their stores, and noted that they took “swift action” to resolve the issue.