After the recent shutdown of Kickass Torrents as part of Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) movement against online privacy, web browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox flagged the torrent site for safety issues. However, in Google Transparency Report, the web browser has already lifted the ban or suspension against The Pirate Bay.
Google Chrome now tagged The Pirate Bay as safe for browsing. According to the transparent report, thepiratebay.org is on a "not dangerous" status, which translates that "safe Browsing has not recently seen malicious content on thepiratebay.org."
Because of the lifted status for the torrent site, TPB community need not take a drastic move to have The Pirate Bay return in Chrome.
According to reports, The Pirate Bay is flagged by Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox due to safety issues. Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox tagged The Pirate Bay and other popular torrent providers as fraudulent sites.
In the past, both Chrome and Firefox rely on Google's Safe Browsing report to launch a block that will render access to the TPB as unreachable. In the process, users still have access to the main page and can still navigate through the search pages but will encounter problems once the user navigates to an actual torrent page. A big warning message will greet the user indicating the website's illegal activity.
"The site ahead contains harmful programs," Google Chrome informs its users. The warning added, "Deceptive site ahead: Attackers on Thepiratebay.org may trick you into doing something dangerous like installing software or revealing your personal information."
According to previous YIBADA report, Firefox also followed Google's footsteps in lifting The Pirate Bay ban. In addition to the two browsers, people who use Comodo's Secure DNS also experienced problems reaching the site. Comodo DNS still blocks access to ExtraTorrent, the second largest torrent site trailing just behind The Pirate Bay.
The operations of Google's Safe Browsing technology examine billions of URLs per day looking for unsafe websites. Every day, its team discovers thousands of new unsafe sites, many of which are legitimate websites that have been compromised. When they detect unsafe sites, the team shows warnings on Google Search and in web browsers.