In a digital world where surveillance and privacy invasions are becoming more commonplace, increasing numbers of Internet users are improving their online security.

As a result, in recent years there has been an explosion in people deploying privacy-enhancing tools such as VPNs, which enable anyone to add an extra layer of protection against online snoops.

One of the most successful companies in this field is London Trust Media, the makers of the popular Private Internet Access (PIA) service. The company prides itself on its dedication to security and is possibly the only operator to have its strict no-logging claims tested in public.

But while a no-logging policy is an essential requirement for thousands of VPN customers, authorities in some regions see them as a threat. This morning, PIA is reporting a development in Russia which has left it with no other option than to leave the country.

In an email sent out to its users, PIA explains that due to the passing of a new law last year which requires Internet providers to hold logs of Internet traffic for up to a year, it has become a target for Russian authorities.

“We believe that due to the enforcement regime surrounding this new law, some of our Russian Servers (RU) were recently seized by Russian Authorities, without notice or any type of due process. We think it’s because we are the most outspoken and only verified no-log VPN provider,” PIA announced.

The law to which PIA refers was passed by Russia’s State Duma in July 2014 and enacted September 2015. It requires that all web services store the user data of Russians within the country. This means that international companies could be forced to have a physical local presence, to which Russian authorities potentially have access.

While the deadline for compliance is technically September 2016, Private Internet Access says that given the server seizure and future privacy implications, it will no longer be doing business in the region.

“Upon learning of the [seizures], we immediately discontinued our Russian gateways and will no longer be doing business in the region,” the company says.

“Luckily, since we do not log any traffic or session data, period, no data has been compromised. Our users are, and will always be, private and secure.”

Even though PIA has assured its users that there is nothing to fear, some remain concerned over the seizures. To those individuals, PIA is offering additional assurances that it’s going the extra mile to ensure total security.

“To make it clear, the privacy and security of our users is our number one priority,” the company says.

“For preventative reasons, we are rotating all of our certificates. Furthermore, we’re updating our client applications with improved security measures to mitigate circumstances like this in the future, on top of what is already in place.”

If they haven’t already done so, users should update their PIA desktop clients and Android apps to get the new upgrades.

In response to the Russian incident, PIA says it will take the opportunity to evaluate other countries and their policies.

“In any event, we are aware that there may be times that notice and due process are forgone. However, we do not log and are default secure against seizure,” the company concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Over the past several years, many countries in mainly Western Europe have responded to pressure from US-based companies to act against Internet piracy.

In some cases, this has involved passing new legislation to make life harder for pirates but largely it has been left to national courts and informal industry-led stakeholders groups to decide how to deal with unauthorized distribution.

In Eastern Europe, anti-piracy activity is much more limited but now it appears that tough measures can be taken when the authorities see fit. According to reports coming out of Romania, the government has seized the domain of one of the country’s most popular streaming portals.

990.ro was among Romania’s top 100 most popular sites overall and looked like this before being shut down by the state.

A TorrentFreak reader familiar with the site confirmed that 990.ro was one of the most popular locations for streaming video, TV shows in particular.

“Game of Thrones episodes were live within just a few hours after airing, complete with new (local) translations. This site was huge, you could almost watch any TV show on the planet and about 90% of the latest movies,” he explained.

For now, however, the show(s) won’t go on. Following action by the government, 990.ro’s domain is now under the control of the Ministry of Justice and displays the following message.

While no notice was given of this seizure, the action didn’t entirely come out of the blue. In 2012, Romania’s Audiovisual Council (CNA) reported more than 40 ‘pirate’ movie and TV show websites to the police, demanding action to shut them down.

990.ro was among those reported. The list also included Vplay.ro, the largest site of its type at the time. That domain is also under the control of the Ministry of Justice. Many of the others mentioned have since shut down, moved to new domains and/or had old ones seized.

The action against 990.ro follows a similar crackdown carried out in June 2015 which received assistance from the FBI. Three sites were shut down then and several people were arrested.

Thus far there has been no reports of arrests following the latest domain seizure. However, more serious breaches of Romanian copyright law can be punishable by fines and jail sentences of up to four years.

Since 990.ro carried a lot of advertising, it wouldn’t be a surprise to hear that tax evasion and money laundering offenses are being investigated, just as they were following last year’s raids.

Local media initially reported that 990.ro is owned by Romanian news and entertainment portal Romania Online but the company is now denying the allegations.

“The 990.ro site does not belong and has never belonged to the company ROL ONLINE NETWORK SA or any other companies in the group ROL.ro,” the company said in a statement.

“990.ro site was one of the 145,232 customers of the FASTUPLOAD.ro free service that lets you store, transfer and viewing files. FASTUPLOAD.ro site is the largest Romanian storage services and file transfer and operates under Romanian law.”

According to ROL.ro’s Linkedin page, ROL.ro is indeed affiliated with FASTUPLOAD but says that any liability lies with that company, not them.

A direct IP address for 990.ro has since ceased to function and there is no news of any return for the site.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Five years ago a new kind of torrent indexing site appeared online.

Where most other sites rely on user uploads or pull their torrents from other sites, BTDigg took a different approach by using DHT to find new content.

Since then the site has become a regular destination for many people. With millions of pageviews per month, BTDigg listed itself among the larger torrent sites on the web.

Despite being blocked by court order in the UK, the site hasn’t faced any significant setbacks. However, a few weeks ago this suddenly changed as the site became unreachable for unknown reasons.

With a lack of updates on social media, the prolonged downtime was a mystery. TorrentFreak contacted the site’s operators on several occasions but didn’t hear back, until a few hours ago.

In a brief statement the BTDigg team says that the site will remain shut down for the time being. However, the downtime might not last forever.

“We closed the site temporarily, but it’s not hard to return,” BTDigg’s operators informs us.

A continued flood of spam torrents is the main reason for the sudden disappearance according to the team. They hope to resolve this with an ‘artificial intelligence’ that effectively filters out the problematic content, after which they plan to return.

“The main problem is ‘spam’ torrents. When we finish creating an AI that filters spam, we’ll reopen the site,” BTDigg says.

This pending return is positive news for BTDigg users. However, with no concrete ETA for the comeback they will have to find their daily torrent fix elsewhere for the time being.

Also, while a full return is an option, there’s also a chance that the site will move on under new management.

BTDigg’s team informed TorrentFreak that they are considering selling the site’s source code and a year of support to a third party. What that means for the site’s future has yet to be seen.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Warcraft, which came out as a subbed HDrip this week, is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(4)	Warcraft (subbed HDRip)	7.7 / trailer
2	(1)	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice	7.0 / trailer
3	(6)	Me Before You (Subbed Webrip)	7.7 / trailer
4	(2)	Independence Day: Resurgence (HDTS)	5.6 / trailer
5	(…)	The Legend of Tarzan (HDTS)	6.9 / trailer
6	(…)	The Nice Guys (Subbed HDRip)	7.8 / trailer
7	(3)	Finding Dory (HDTS)	8.1 / trailer
8	(5)	Central Intelligence	6.9 / trailer
9	(7)	X-Men: Apocalypse (HDCam/TC)	7.7 / trailer
10	(…)	Barbershop: The Next Cut	6.0 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Despite the growing availability of legal services, unauthorized file-sharing remains one of the core threats for entertainment industry companies.

Over the past several years various anti-piracy tools have been deployed. Nonetheless, piracy is still very much alive today with hundreds of millions of people sharing infringing files every month.

While there’s no silver bullet to stop all piracy indefinitely, NBC Universal scored a new patent this month which it believes may help.

Titled “Early Detection of High Volume Peer-To-Peer swarms,” one of the patent’s main goals is to detect and target instances of online piracy before the problem spreads.

The patent (pdf) describes P2P in general as something that can be positive, but is often abused.

“While the P2P infrastructure has many advantages, it also has led to abuses. Piracy of digital assets on peer-to-peer networks incurs losses by content owners estimated in billions of dollars annually.”

The high volume traffic generated by BitTorrent pirates also poses a problem for ISPs. Pirates tend to strain the network, the patent explains, which can become costly in terms of resources.

To address these issues NBC Universal proposes to monitor file-sharing swarms. Once a swarm exceeds a threshold of a certain number of users, alarm bells will ring so appropriate action can be taken.

The patent summarizes the invention as “a system that provides for early identification of high risk swarms to enable a more proactive stance towards anti-piracy efforts.”

“The early detection provides for enhanced anti-piracy efforts, improved allocation of network resources, and better business decision-making,” it adds.

For example, the swarm data can be used to provide real-time business intelligence, to be utilized for business advantages. In addition, the anti-piracy efforts can include takedown messages to ISPs, which are already quite common today.

Most controversial is the suggestion to use swarm data to limit or block file-sharing traffic. According to the patent, this may be useful for ISPs to save costs.

“Alternatively, the network provider may proceed to diminish or cap network resources once some limit of data activity is met. In certain aspects the processing for the high risk swarms also indicate the high volume swarms and allows for traffic shaping for the ISPs.”

While Net Neutrality advocates are not going to be pleased with such an implementation, technically the current FCC rules allow ISPs to block file-sharing traffic as long as it’s “unlawful”.

Still, it’s doubtful that NBC Universal’s parent company Comcast will tread down this path anytime soon. The company previously faced significant pushback when it actively throttled BitTorrent traffic.

While there are some interesting suggestions and ideas in the patent, we have to admit that it feels a bit dated.

Perhaps that’s not a surprise since the application was submitted eight years ago. At the time, piracy monitoring technologies were relatively rare. Nowadays, however, it’s a multi-million dollar industry with dozens of companies.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.