If you’ve EVER watched anything online illegally, your location could be published on

[Len]

TORRENT users have been put on alert and warned that they could have fallen victim to a huge data leak.

Torrent downloaders are been warned that sensitive information such as their e-mail addresses and locations could be vulnerable.

Recently, one of the main destinations for torrent fans looking to download TV shows has displayed a stark warning.

EZTV is one of the most popular destinations for torrent users looking to download the latest episode of their favourite TV show.

For more than a decade BitTorrent users have turned to the site for all their TV torrent needs.

But last week a message to the site’s visitors appeared on the release of the latest episode of hit TV series Lucifer.

After around 10 minutes into Lucifer S03E19, a red warning appeared claiming that EZTV poses a huge security risk.

The torrented episode then shows dozens of IP addresses on the screen, making the instalment of Lucifer almost impossible to watch, TorrentFreak reported.

The messages on the screen claim these IP-addresses are “used on EZTV”, which could suggest that the website has had a leak.

Or, alternatively, it could refer to IP addresses of downloaders which are public.

The veracity of these claims are unclear. The IP addresses allegedly of EZTV users could just be fake and the Lucifer security warning is simply bogus.

At the end of the episode, a final warning appears that is claimed to come from encoder DeXoX.

It says: “If you need complete IP database email address of registered users and so on, feel free to contact us.”

The offending torrent has been downloaded thousands of times and is still listed on EZTV days after first appearing.

Soon after the Lucifer torrent emerged, others also appeared on EZTV with the same warning - including one porn video.

The news comes after last month a new study emerged that showed the rate of online piracy continues to increase.

Online streaming and visits to torrent sites continues to increase with new data suggesting global piracy rose by 1.6 per cent last year.

According to digital firm MUSO, there were over 300 billion visits to piracy sites in 2017.

Most of these views came from people trying to stream illegally but MUSO also saw a major increase in torrent usage.

The firm said this could be as a result of users becoming frustrated with their regular web-streaming sites being blocked or shutdown, and therefore choosing to return to trusted and more traditional methods of piracy.

Speaking about the data Andy Chatterley, co-founder and CEO, MUSO, said: “There is a belief that the rise in popularity of on-demand services – such as Netflix and Spotify – have solved piracy, but that theory simply doesn’t stack up.

"Our data suggests that piracy is more popular than ever.

“With the data showing us that 53 per cent of all piracy happens on unlicensed streaming platforms, it has become clear that streaming is the most popular way for consumers to access content, whether it be via legitimate channels, or illegitimate ones.”