Anti-Piracy group goes after a VPN company for tracking The Pirate Bay’s owners and users

The entertainment industry has been trying for more than a decade to prevent sites like The Pirate Bay from functioning, even trying to make its operators considered dangerous criminals, mention computer forensics specialists. This torrent site has faced serious hits recently, although whenever it seems to disappear, it emerges to the best of those who rely on piracy for their entertainment.

A report published on ToorentFreak indicates that Rights Alliance, the anti-piracy group based in Sweden, has launched a campaign against OVPN, a virtual private network (VPN) provider firm, claiming that the operators of ThePirateBay have used this service to hide their actual location, another way of saying that they have acted in complicity with the world’s leading digital piracy platform.  

In this regard, OVPN mentions that it does not store records, so it is impossible to know who uses its services to browse the Internet or, in the case of Pirate Bay operators, use this platform as a kind of anonymous network, hiding its actual location from the authorities.

The company’s claims have mattered little to the Rights Alliance, which has even initiated a legal process against OVPN. As for members of the court, computer forensics specialists claim that the law will be in favor of OVPN, which has no records and cannot provide any information about its customers, although of course Rights Alliance representatives have not said their last word.  

The most recent Rights Alliance strategy began a few days ago, when the organization presented the opinion of a specialist from security firm Cure 53 hired to evaluate the form of operation of OVPN. The specialist believes that OVPN is trying too hard to protect the privacy of its users, storing as little information as possible in its databases.

“Still, there must be data that connects users and identities for the VPN service to work. A user has paid for a VPN account with the ability to connect a static public address to OVPN that the user has then chosen to link to The Pirate Bay, that is, the user has configured their VPN account to point to the given domain”, the researcher mentions.

Although computer forensics experts believe that The Pirate Bay may have disappeared by the time the legal process is complete, they also believe it would be possible to link this data to the identity of operators and users of the hacking site, although many fear that this will become a threat to VPN service users in the name of combating piracy.