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The popular anime piracy streaming site KickAssAnime has been hit by a recent phishing site designation that warns users not to use it.
As shared on Reddit and reported by Torrent Freak, visitors to KickAssAnime were greeted with phishing warnings a few days ago. The warning read, “Warning: Suspected Phishing Site Ahead! This link has been flagged as phishing. We suggest you avoid it.” Phishing refers to pretending to be a trustworthy source to entice visitors to give up details like passwords and banking information. Users have since been redirected to new domains, with one of those affected, “kickassanime.mx,” bringing in over 20 million visits in December 2024.
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KickAssAnime Operators Blame Mass Cloudflare Reports for Phishing Warning
The operators of KickAssAnime suspect this stemmed from pressure on Cloudflare from anonymous mass reporters, and one member, Dion, addressed this. “The funny thing is, we don’t request or ask for any personal information from our users,” he said, “except for an email when they sign up. Also, the site has been ad-free for weeks.” He apologized to users, saying, “Cloudflare has messed up your watching pace, and they have no support at all.” Phishing worries are already complicated because KickAssAnime uses and has previously used several domains, with other unrelated entities using that opportunity to trick users by borrowing its name.
Phishing reports aren’t the only problems affecting Cloudflare currently. Weekly Shonen Jump publisher Shueisha asked a court to issue a subpoena against the company last month, followed by another just this week, all related to infringements of the One Piece manga. The 25 sites targeted in the subpoena requests had a combined monthly access total of 680 million visitors in December. Cloudflare is also a likely target of a recently introduced U.S. bill, aiming to force ISPs and certain DNS resolution providers like it and Google to deny American access to piracy sites flagged by copyright holders and licensees.
Source: Torrent Freak, Reddit