With hundreds of millions of annual visits, KickAssAnime (KAA) is one of the larger anime pirate sites.
The streaming portal, which relies on third-party hosted videos, is particularly popular in the United States.
Over the years, rightsholders have attempted to pinpoint the site’s operators, presumably to shut it down. Just last summer, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) obtained a DMCA subpoena, requiring Cloudflare to provide all information the company had on file.
Phishing Concerns
Whether this subpoena yielded any useful information is unknown. However, Cloudflare took action yesterday that significantly impacted KAA’s operations. The company flagged all of the site’s domains for ‘suspected phishing,’ displaying the following warning banner to visitors.
“This website has been reported for potential phishing. Phishing is when a site attempts to steal sensitive information by falsely presenting as a safe source.”
Cloudflare allows external parties to flag websites for phishing and other issues, but who was behind the report in this case remains unknown. KAA states that it has not received any further information from Cloudflare.
Pirate sites have been linked to malware and phishing in the past, often due to malicious ads. A check on the main KickAssAnime domain on Virustotal also lists some concerning reports, but at Google Safe Browsing, there are no alarm bells.
‘Mass Abuse Reports’
According to KAA’s operator, Dion, malicious ads are unlikely, as the site has reportedly been ad-free for some time. They are not aware of any potential phishing activities either.
“The funny thing is, we don’t request or ask for any personal information from our users, except for an email when they sign up. Also, the site has been ad-free for weeks,” Dion says.
KAA suspects that Cloudflare’s action might be the result of a brute-force attack using mass abuse reports. The site has a potential offender in mind but, thus far, it has been unable to obtain additional information from Cloudflare.
At the time of writing, the site’s domains are still flagged for suspected phishing. In response, the operator has redirected them to an alternative domain name, KAA.mx.
It’s difficult for outsiders to determine whether this action was based on false reports or if other factors were involved. Regardless of the reason for the flagging, and in addition to the clear copyright concerns, users should always exercise caution when visiting such sites.
More Cloudflare Action
On the topic of Cloudflare, it is worth noting that the company continues to receive requests to assist in identifying the operators of manga and anime websites for copyright enforcement purposes.
As mentioned earlier, KAA have been in the crosshairs for a while. Earlier this week, Japanese publisher Shueisha requested a subpoena to identify the people behind manganato.com, chapmanganato.to, mkklcdnv6temp.com, chapmanganelo.com, manganelo.com, and mangakakalot.com.
Whether that information ‘fishing’ expedition will yield any results has yet to be seen, but the pressure is on.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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