Pirate app sites have become a target in recent months

Oct 3, 2012 15:15 GMT  ·  By
Appbucket.net was seized by US authorities, but it was already dead, same goes for Appbucket.com
   Appbucket.net was seized by US authorities, but it was already dead, same goes for Appbucket.com

Just as The Pirate Bay went underwater due to a power unit failure, several other file-sharing sites suffered the same fate. Conspiracy theorists were quick to draw connections, but the two events were unrelated, the latter having to do with PRQ suffering some technical issues of its own while also getting raided by the police.

PRQ, a Swedish web host with a long list of controversial clients, is used for raids, but this latest one targeted just one site. The company was now able to reveal which one.

It wasn't all that hard to figure out since, as all the other sites it's hosting came back online, one stayed down, Tankafetast a Swedish BitTorrent site which was past its heyday.

The site was rated as the second biggest in the country, after The Pirate Bay of course, but this is no longer the case. In fact, the site announced that it was shutting down early this year.

Despite the announcement, it was still online up until a few days ago, when the police came knocking on PRQ's door. Two domains linked to the site were targeted Tankafetast.com and Tankafett.com, PRQ's owner said.

However, those were not the only sites the police wanted, it also seized the server used by Appbucket.com. What's ironic was that this site was actually down since April since it stopped paying its bills.

But PRQ hadn't rented out the server to anyone else yet, so the data was still there.

Pirate app sites are a new target for law enforcement, several domains linked to pirate Android apps sites and marketplaces were seized by US authorities last month.

One of those domains was appbucket.net, which may or may not be related to appbucket.com, the site targeted now. What is clear is that both sites were dead for several months by the time the police got to them.