Google Chrome Blocks Major Torrent Websites from July 10, 2015

From today Google Chrome is blocking direct access to many torrent websites including KickassTorrents, Torrentz, ExtraTorent and RARBG. According to Google, these websites contain "harmful programs" but the website owners are clueless as to what they have done wrong.

There is a slight panic breaking out among Google Chrome users. Over the past few hours the browser has started to block access to several of the most popular torrent websites including KickassTorrents, Torrentz, ExtraTorrent and RARBG.

Instead of a page filled with the latest torrents, visitors are presented with an ominous red warning banner.

“The site ahead contains harmful programs,” Google Chrome informs its users.

Google Chrome Bloks Torrent Websites

Google doesn’t specify what the issue is with the websites in question. The “Safe Browsing” diagnostics pages only list the sites as “suspicious” and note that “third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites.” in some cases.

The owners of the websites in question are clueless about the source of the problem.

Interestingly, several proxy sites, such as torrentz-proxy.com, still work fine and don’t show the warning screen in Google Chrome.

Since Google doesn’t mention “malicious software” as the reason for the warning, it was most likely triggered by the “unsafe” ads many torrent sites run. These are typically linked to toolbar software or other unwanted programs.

Chrome users who want to bypass the warning can do so by clicking the details link, or disable Chrome’s malware warnings altogether.


Update:

The issue is resolved. The alert was false positive. Google removed Chrome alert.