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We hope you enjoy your time here... feel free to browse the site and forums and even add your own thing to them. Lots of things you can do, from offering invites to adding comments.

PLEASE, DO NOT POST EXTERNAL LINKS, NO TORRENT INVITES REQUESTS IN SHOUT THOUGH

...there is a place in requests for that.
Read the rules and please, observe them.

You see....we ARE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY HERE!

And if you need help, or have questions, feel free to contact us in shout and/or one of the staff.

Also your help would be appreciated!

And last but not least, if you like our site, why not consider a small donation..
it helps to pay the site's server bills every month to keep us alive! If you donate, you do become a VIP, with VIP benefits. Your donation is also secure via PayPal!

Again, glad you are here!

our site!

We hope you enjoy your time here... feel free to browse the site and forums and even add your own thing to them. Lots of things you can do, from offering invites to adding comments.

PLEASE, DO NOT POST EXTERNAL LINKS, NO TORRENT INVITES REQUESTS IN SHOUT THOUGH

...there is a place in requests for that.
Read the rules and please, observe them.

You see....we ARE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY HERE!

And if you need help, or have questions, feel free to contact us in shout and/or one of the staff.

Also your help would be appreciated!

And last but not least, if you like our site, why not consider a small donation..
it helps to pay the site's server bills every month to keep us alive! If you donate, you do become a VIP, with VIP benefits. Your donation is also secure via PayPal!

Again, glad you are here!

our site!

We hope you enjoy your time here... feel free to browse the site and forums and even add your own thing to them. Lots of things you can do, from offering invites to adding comments.

PLEASE, DO NOT POST EXTERNAL LINKS, NO TORRENT INVITES REQUESTS IN SHOUT THOUGH

...there is a place in requests for that.
Read the rules and please, observe them.

You see....we ARE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY HERE!

And if you need help, or have questions, feel free to contact us in shout and/or one of the staff.

Also your help would be appreciated!

And last but not least, if you like our site, why not consider a small donation..
it helps to pay the site's server bills every month to keep us alive! If you donate, you do become a VIP, with VIP benefits. Your donation is also secure via PayPal!

Again, glad you are here!

our site!

We hope you enjoy your time here... feel free to browse the site and forums and even add your own thing to them. Lots of things you can do, from offering invites to adding comments.

PLEASE, DO NOT POST EXTERNAL LINKS, NO TORRENT INVITES REQUESTS IN SHOUT THOUGH

...there is a place in requests for that.
Read the rules and please, observe them.

You see....we ARE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY HERE!

And if you need help, or have questions, feel free to contact us in shout and/or one of the staff.

Also your help would be appreciated!

And last but not least, if you like our site, why not consider a small donation..
it helps to pay the site's server bills every month to keep us alive! If you donate, you do become a VIP, with VIP benefits. Your donation is also secure via PayPal!

Again, glad you are here!

our site!

We hope you enjoy your time here... feel free to browse the site and forums and even add your own thing to them. Lots of things you can do, from offering invites to adding comments.

PLEASE, DO NOT POST EXTERNAL LINKS, NO TORRENT INVITES REQUESTS IN SHOUT THOUGH

...there is a place in requests for that.
Read the rules and please, observe them.

You see....we ARE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY HERE!

And if you need help, or have questions, feel free to contact us in shout and/or one of the staff.

Also your help would be appreciated!

And last but not least, if you like our site, why not consider a small donation..
it helps to pay the site's server bills every month to keep us alive! If you donate, you do become a VIP, with VIP benefits. Your donation is also secure via PayPal!

Again, glad you are here!

our site!

We hope you enjoy your time here... feel free to browse the site and forums and even add your own thing to them. Lots of things you can do, from offering invites to adding comments.

PLEASE, DO NOT POST EXTERNAL LINKS, NO TORRENT INVITES REQUESTS IN SHOUT THOUGH

...there is a place in requests for that.
Read the rules and please, observe them.

You see....we ARE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY HERE!

And if you need help, or have questions, feel free to contact us in shout and/or one of the staff.

Also your help would be appreciated!

And last but not least, if you like our site, why not consider a small donation..
it helps to pay the site's server bills every month to keep us alive! If you donate, you do become a VIP, with VIP benefits. Your donation is also secure via PayPal!

Again, glad you are here!

our site!

We hope you enjoy your time here... feel free to browse the site and forums and even add your own thing to them. Lots of things you can do, from offering invites to adding comments.

PLEASE, DO NOT POST EXTERNAL LINKS, NO TORRENT INVITES REQUESTS IN SHOUT THOUGH

...there is a place in requests for that.
Read the rules and please, observe them.

You see....we ARE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY HERE!

And if you need help, or have questions, feel free to contact us in shout and/or one of the staff.

Also your help would be appreciated!

And last but not least, if you like our site, why not consider a small donation..
it helps to pay the site's server bills every month to keep us alive! If you donate, you do become a VIP, with VIP benefits. Your donation is also secure via PayPal!

Again, glad you are here!

Uk police shutdown file-host search engine filecrop

Continuing its attacks on file-sharing-related domains, the UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has shut down its very first search engine. Following an earlier BPI request for it to be blocked by the country's ISPs, in the past few hours file-host search site FileCrop was shuttered as part of a PIPCU investigation.

cityoflondonpoliceFollowing its launch in the last quarter of 2013, City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has been working hard to disrupt the activities of sites in the file-sharing arena.

The Unit works on the recommendations of international music, movie and TV companies but is financed by the UK taxpayer, funding set to continue if Prime Minister David Cameron’s IP advisor has his way.

PIPCU’s activities began with the sending of warning emails to many domains around the world, warning them that non-compliance with police requests would result in further action. That action has taken several forms, including the attempted seizure of domains, reported disruption of advertising revenue, through to physical raids such as the one carried out on Boxing Guru earlier this year.

Today there are clear signs of further action by PIPCU. During the past few hours, file-sharing site FileCrop disappeared from the Internet, to be replaced by the PIPCU notice shown below.

While it’s not particularly unusual for PIPCU to target file-sharing related sites, what is special in this case is the nature of the FileCrop operation. FileCrop wasn’t a non-responsive Pirate Bay style torrent site, nor was it a file-hosting site operating on the boundaries of the law.

As illustrated by the image below, FileCrop was a search engine that allowed its users to seek content hosted on various file-lockers around the world including RapidShare, Mediafire and Mega, sites that all have strict notice-and-takedown procedures.

While the police making a search engine a priority target seems somewhat unusual (FileCrop also responded to takedowns), the targeting of FileCrop doesn’t come as a complete surprise. In mid 2013 the BPI began preparations to have another batch of domains blocked by local ISPs.

FileCrop.com was included in that list and before the year it was mostly inaccessible in the UK. The Alexa chart below suggests that the blockade had quite an effect on FileCrop’s popularity.

While there has been no announcement from City of London Police, previous actions resulting in the displaying of the “under investigation” banner shown above have always followed boots-on-the-ground efforts by the authorities. This suggests a UK presence for FileCrop’s owners or operators, although examination of the site’s WHOIS entries suggests that the domain owner is located in Ukraine.

Another unusual aspect to the case is why police would prioritize a site that apparently causes relatively few problems for rightsholders. While Google received more than 659,000 complaints last month against Fileshut.biz, a functionally similar site, the search engine has been receiving an average of just 37 complaints a week against FileCrop.

TorrentFreak’s requests for information from the police have gone unanswered this morning, suggesting that it will be next week before more is known about this case.

Magid: Internet security is a global issue that requires global cooperation

The National Cyber Security Alliance, or NCSA, is a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes online security and safety. Its board consists of representatives from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Comcast and other U.S. companies, and it works closely with the Department of Homeland Security to provide security advice for American businesses and consumers. I've attended meetings in Washington, Pittsburg and Silicon Valley with NCSA staff, and the agenda has always focused on U.S. security issues.

NCSA is the main force behind the "Stop. Think. Connect." campaign, at StopThinkConnect.org, that seeks to raise awareness by encouraging people to pause and think about what they do before they "connect." It's kind of the cyber equivalent of the "buckle up for safety" campaign that promotes safety for motorists and passengers.

So I was a bit surprised when NSCA invited me to participate in an international online safety awareness meeting in Paris, attended by representatives of nonprofits, governments, universities and companies from several countries. The event was hosted by Microsoft and took place at its Paris office.

But I was reminded of the global nature of cyberthreats on the day we convened our meeting last Tuesday as news broke that the Justice Department, with the help of law enforcement agencies from other countries, issued indictments in connection with the Blackshades Remote Access Tool (RAT) "that enabled users around the world to secretly and remotely control victims' computers," according to the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office, which said the bust involved more than 90 arrests in 19 countries.

The Blackshades RAT is malicious software, or malware, that has been used by criminals in more than 100 countries to "infect computers throughout the world to spy on victims through their Web cameras, steal files and account information, and log victims' key strokes," according to the Justice Department. The alleged co-creator of Blackshades, Alex Yucel, who is from Sweden, was arrested in Moldova and is awaiting extradition to the United States. Brendan Johnson, who is charged with helping to market and sell malware, including the RAT, and provide technical assistance to its users, was arrested in Thousand Oaks, California.

Blackshades provides a good example of how you could be sitting in your home in Palo Alto and be victimized by a criminal on another continent or vice versa. Thanks to botnets, where malicious software spreads itself from computer to computer without the knowledge of the machine's owners, it's possible for a computer from Estonia to infect your home PC and for your home PC to then infect someone else's PC in Germany.

There are plenty of other examples of international cybercrime. I'm on the board of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which regularly cooperates with counterparts in other countries to try to stem the tide of illegal child pornography across borders. John Carr, a child safety adviser to the United Kingdom government, told me that a "substantial proportion of the illegal images that make their way to the UK come from the United States.

Privacy is also a global issue, as we were reminded last week when the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that search engines (the biggest two being U. S.-based Google and Microsoft's Bing) can be required to delete search listings of posts, including stories in newspapers, that may be dated or irrelevant, even if they happen to be true. This ruling could not only affect U.S. companies that offer search, but also those of us in the United States and other countries who use these services, even though the delete order was issued by a court on another continent.

At the Paris meeting, the discussion turned to international cooperation, and it was generally agreed that it's a good idea for organizations in countries around the world to coordinate at least some of their messaging because of the similarities of the issues that we all face. That doesn't mean that a campaign that works in Istanbul will necessarily resonate in Indianapolis. But in our increasingly globally connected world, there are plenty of common themes and practices that we can share.

In an interview, NCSA Executive Director Michael Kaiser summed up the purpose of the meeting. "We are trying to reach everyone on the globe because we're all connected to the same Internet and, unless we're all safe and secure, we won't have a safe and secure Internet."