Today in “Things Your Tech Service Shouldn't Do” we present YourFreeProxy from Mutual Public AKA We Build Toolbars, LLC. The company, which offers proxy servers for routing around firewalls and censorship, has been secretly using its tool to mine Bitcoin using their customer's computer. This “feature” even appears prominently in their terms of service.

While I suspect they'll change this once they all wake up from their Thanksgiving slumber on Monday to a swirl of Internet invective, given the processor power required to mine Bitcoin and potential for system degradation, this is a massive affront to the user and a clear abuse of the freemium model.

Full story: http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/01/yourfreeproxy-is-caught-installing-a-toolbar-that-mines-bitcoin-on-the-sly/

There's many a free service that has hidden costs unfortunately. All that needs doing is never install any type of toolbar.

On the plus side, there are some decent folk out there that do provide free services without any strings attached. Caveat emptor.