Users surfing the Internet on Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari browsers are seeing popular torrent website The Pirate Bay blocked, similar to what visitors to rival Kickass Torrents saw just last month.

Security issues are said to be the reason behind the sudden blocking of the website, as visitors to The Pirate Bay are instead greeted with red warning banners instead of the iconic pirate ship logo.

Chrome users who visit the website are shown with a banner that tags The Pirate Bay as a "deceptive site," with Google claiming that attackers could trick users into dangerous acts such as installing software into their computers or revealing sensitive information such as contact details, log-in credentials and credit card numbers.

Firefox users, on the other hand, see a message that tags the website as a "Reported Web Forgery!" warning visitors that any information entered into The Pirate Bay could result in fraudulent activities such as identity theft.

Safari has also started blocking access to The Pirate Bay, presumably for the same reasons as Chrome and Firefox.

Google's Safe Browsing feature flagged the website as having bad content, which usually happens when an advertising network starts to release malicious content due to the network being compromised.

The blocks on The Pirate Bay could be in connection to the reported malvertising attack near the end of April. Some users were subjected to ransomware that attacked through pop-under advertisements, which rerouted visitors to the Magnitude exploit kit to install the Cerber ransomware.

The Pirate Bay is likely at work right now to remove all instances of such bad content on its website. Afterwards though, it could take days until the blocks are removed.

Until then, users can still access The Pirate Bay by clicking on options shown in the warning messages, such as the "visit this unsafe site" option shown on Chrome. Doing this could subject computers to potential ransomware infection though, so users bypassing the block should do so at their own risk.

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