Backbone provider Cogent blocks Pirate Bay and other torrent sites

The American backbone provider Cogent blocks access to The Pirate Bay and other similar sites, including Torrentproject. As a result, customers of several ISPs have been unable to access these sites for more than a week.

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orrentFreak writes that affected users attempting to connect to the sites through Cogent’s networks. They all use CloudFlare. Because it is a backbone provider, it would concern users in different countries. The Cogent test tool itself shows that no trace is possible for traffic to, for example, The Pirate Bay.

A spokesperson for the provider told TorrentFreak that the company is aware of the phenomenon, but that it “does not discuss these kinds of decisions with third parties.” From this, the site infers that it is probably a conscious decision rather than an error. For the time being, there is no information available that provides insight into the reasons for such a decision.

Several users report that they can still connect via VPN or Tor, and that the use of a proxy is also possible. Exactly how many visitors to the sites, including Putlocker, Torrentz.cd and Torrentproject, were affected is currently unclear.