Blocked torrent sites which could be connected through proxies are now inaccessible, with thousands of these reverse proxies having unexpectedly vanished.
Reverse proxies for Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents, ExtraTorrent and other similar file-sharing sites have mysteriously vanished without warning, reports Torrent Freak.
Several countries around the world, including the UK, Italy, Denmark and France, deny free access to torrent websites.
Proxies duplicate or ‘mirror’ the torrent websites under another domain name, thereby allowing web users to access the sites even if those are blocked by court orders for copyright infringement.
A number of such proxies were recently noticed to have disappeared, with some offering the associated domain names for sale on generic landing pages.
Reasons behind this sudden disappearance remain unknown.
ProxyHouse had earlier said: "At the moment, we are running over 17,000 proxy sites for Kickass Torrents, ThePirateBay, YTS, ExtraTorrent and 1337x.
"By providing a lot of different domains, we are giving people the option to still access torrent sites."
However, several more proxy sites are still available online, which can allow users to bypass the ‘blocks’.