Torrentz.eu follows KickassTorrents, shuts down

Torrentz.eu, the Mega Torrents Search Engine Shuts Down

2016 is a bad year for torrent websites and the torrents community as a whole. Just weeks after one of the most popular torrents website, KickassTorrents was shut down, another Torrents community icon, Torrentz.Eu has mysteriously shut shop.

It has been exactly sixteen days since US Department of Justice announced the arrest of Kickass Torrents’ admin in Poland and seizure of KickassTorrents domains like Kat.cr. Now, Torrentz.eu, the Internet’s biggest BitTorrent meta-search engine, has shut down, according to messages displayed its home page.

At the time of writing, the Torrentz.eu displays a message that reads “Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines.”

Trying to run a search, or clicking any link on the site changes that message to “Torrentz will always love you. Farewell.”

Its not just the most popular Torrentz.eu domain, in fact, all Torrentz domains feature the same page. This includes the Torrentz backups .ME, .CH, and .IN. The site’s HTTPS version features the same messages.

Torrentz.eu was never a torrents website but a very popular mega torrent search engine. It was so popular that we had listed it in our most popular torrents websites for 2016 and before its abrupt shutdown, Torrentz.eu had #186 Alexa rank.

The site was launched in July 2003 by an individual named Flippy. The site’s purpose was to index torrents from several large portals and aggregate all the different trackers. This allowed users to download torrent files with multiple trackers in their source, speeding up downloads and preventing dead links in case servers went down.

SOURCES: TECHWORM

KickassTorrents Community Site Return Online Admins Vow to Bounce Back

The arrest of Artem Vaulin the leader of KickassTorrents (KAT) in Poland by the United States’ Justice Department last week was an internet sensation. The website KAT was shut down but now it is slowly coming back to life.

The admins of KAT and also thousands of its members have regrouped to resurrect their community by launching the katcr.co website and vowed to bounce back soon.

Torrent Freak quoted KAT forum admin, Black “We should remember that Kickass Torrents is not just about uploading, but the heart and soul of KickassTorrents is our members, they are family and family is important as we know. Nothing can take that away and whatever happens we will never let our community down,”. He

added “We guarantee that KAT will continue in one form or another and we will come back stronger than ever”.

At present, the official KickassTorrents website with .cr domain is not up yet, but various clone sites have emerged on the Internet, tricking the torrent users by charging them fees for downloading the files. We urge you to be  very cautious about such fake websites.

The very popular BitTorrent site, IsoHunt also launched a mirror site of KAT with name  KickassTorrents.website the design layout of the page is looking very similar to the original. It is now hosting files that date back to the last one-and-a-half years, and urged people to archive more files.

Until the KickassTorrents makes a complete return, here are six best alternatives to fill the void.

Torrentz

2. RARBG

3. Extra Torrent

4.1337X.to

5. ISOHUNT.TO

6. Lime Torrent

SOURCES: CODINGSEC.NET

The Pirate Bay down, Is it next after Kickass Torrents demis

Following KickassTorrents, The Pirate Bay website down; TPB suffering a worldwide outage

Torrent lovers are in for a bad week. First, the news about the arrest of one of the members ofKickassTorrents admin in Poland and then the news that a federal court in Chicago ordered the seizure of several KAT domain names such as kickasstorrents.com,kastatic.com, thekat.tv, kat.cr, kickass.to,kat.ph and kickass.cr.

Now another big unfortunate news awaits them. ThePirateBay is down and it has been suffering a worldwide outage since past four hours. The TPB status website shows that ThePirateBay has been down since 10.30 am, the same time the news of KickassTorrents admins arrest percolated to mainstream news websites. The TPB status website shows that the Tor version of TPB was also down but has been restored and is working as of now

Interesting thing about ThePirateBay this time instead of showing a CloudFlare messages, the website shows a cached version of the website. This is strange coming on the back of the news of KickassTorrents meeting a very sad fate with the authorities.

Reports indicate that the arrested KickassTorrents admin was caught due to his own mistake by not using a VPN for transacting on iTunes. The authorities were able to track his IP address through the iTune stores purchase done by Artem Vaulin, the alleged admin of Kat.cr.

With the torrents community yet to emerge from the sad demise of YIFY/YTS earlier, the news of possible closure of KickassTorrents is just bad news. And to aggravate the matters, ThePirateBay also seems to be playing truant since this morning.

We are reaching out to TPB admin and will update the report as and when we receive their comments.

Update: The Pirate Bay is up and running now

Also read> Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites Of 2016

SOURCES: TECHWORM

Apple and Facebook behind the shutting down of KickassTorrents

How Apple and Facebook helped to bust the world’s biggest torrent site, KickassTorrents

KickassTorrents (KAT), one of the most popular websites for illegal file sharing was shut down after the alleged 30-year-old Ukranian owner and operator, Artem “Tirm” Vaulin was arrested in Poland on Wednesday at the behest of the U.S. government. The U.S. authorities also seized seven of the site’s domains, all of which are now offline.

Vaulin has been charged for criminal copyright infringement and money laundering. He has also been accused of illegally reproducing and distributing hundreds of millions of copies of movies, video games, TV shows and music albums totalling more than $1 billion. The U.S. is now waiting to extradite him.

So, what led to the downfall of KickassTorrents? Apparently, it turns out that a couple of purchases on iTunes and email helped to bring down the mastermind behind KickassTorrents. It is also said Apple and Facebook were among the companies that handed over data to the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security initially exposed information about Vaulin by tracing the IP addresses used to host the KickassTorrents domains, according to a 48-page criminal complaint (PDF) filed with the U.S. District Court in Chicago.

That led investigators to a Canadian ISP (Internet service provider), which turned over server data that disclosed numerous files, including emails and user information about KickassTorrents’ operators.

Not only was he operating a KickasssTorrents Facebook page, but was doing so with a personal email address.

How personal? It was a ‘@me.com’ address, which is owned by Apple (and is the forerunner to @icloud.com). The account was used to make iTunes purchases from two IP addresses — both of which also accessed a Facebook account promoting KickassTorrents.

His email was discovered when authorities sent Facebook a warrant for information having to do with the site’s page. For example, Facebook handed over IP-address logs from the KAT fanpage to the U.S. authorities. From there, the U.S. Government turned to Apple. They were then able to cross-reference this with an IP-address Vaulin used for an iTunes transaction.

“Records provided by Apple showed that tirm@me.com conducted an iTunes transaction using IP Address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The same IP Address was used on the same day to login into the KAT Facebook Account,” Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan said. His IP addresses linked to KAT’s Facebook page was also used to access Vaulin’s Coinbase account, suggesting that the Bitcoin wallet also assisted in the investigation.

By handing over user data to the government, Apple and Facebook were acting within the legal limits, and probably there was nothing about the government’s requests that raised any red flags. It is just a normal routine.

The fact that Vaulin was using a single, personal email address for so many features and services is absurd. To just have one single email linked to something as personal as your Apple ID, which is directly applicable to you is just unbelievably unwise. This is likely going to seal his fate.

While KickassTorrents itself is dead, a clone of the file-sharing site has already appeared online, which may shut down shortly. Whether KickassTorrents or Vaulin will make a Pirate Bay-style comeback, only time will tell.

SOURCES: FOSSBYTES