[tgsovlerkhgsel]

If you pop my machine and use it to route 100 MBit/s, I might not notice for months.

If I hear the fan spinning at night, you're probably getting caught immediately.

If you pop my mom's TV box and use it to route data within the connection's capabilities, you're getting away with it. If you consume a little bit of resources, still. If you consume enough to be useful for these kind of challenges, chances are her TV playback will start to stutter, which will be resolved by taking the compromised TV box, and removing the malware using advanced mechanical means called "a trash compactor".

[jimmydorry]

If you're tech savvy enough to monitor your equipment, you're probably smart enough not to install "free VPNs" or "free stream pirate apps" to get pwned in the first place. You probably changed your router's default password and kept its firmware up to date, and don't give your TV internet access, right? That's more than Mom has done.

[gruez]

>chances are her TV playback will start to stutter

video decoding is hardware accelerated, and there's probably enough excess compute to be able to do some sort of PoW challenge. Besides, unlike humans, bots aren't in a hurry, so they can spread out the work across a long time to minimize disruption.

[ambigious7777]

the device acts as a proxy. i don't think any browser is running on the device, it is just forwarding packets.