Say goodbye to The Pirate Bay

Game of Thrones fans might not take the news very well.

Those "vile criminals" among us who illegally download television shows and movies are about to find it much harder, with leading torrent sites on Google's radar.

The Pirate Bay and other leading torrent sites are now risking being banned for 30 days under Google's new "repeat offender" policy.

Ironically, the torrent websites will not be shut down over copyright infringements.

Instead, Google is going after sites that are home to malicious and harmful content - like the dubious advertisements found on torrent websites like The Pirate Bay.

The new policy comes as Google updated its safe browsing service used by Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Previously the safe browsing service would show a warning for those about to visit risky sites, but this new policy will ban those frequently causing issues.

Google said piracy websites are already circumventing the security measures by removing the ads.

"Over time, we've observed that a small number of websites will cease harming users for long enough to have the warnings removed, and will then revert to harmful activity," Google's Safe Browsing Team writes.

"Safe Browsing will begin to classify these types of sites as 'Repeat Offenders'."

While it might sound troublesome, Pirate Bay spokesman Spud17 said the site had little worry about the new policy

"Tell Google to get an ad blocker," he told TorrentFreak.

Spud17 said the issue was with piracy websites only attracting lower-tier advertising agencies.

"Seriously though, there aren't a lot of ad agencies willing to work with sharing sites," he said.

"The ones we have access to aren't very concerned with what they put up, and don't exactly give us a preview of what their clients send them before they air it."

The spokesman said if bans were to come into place, advertises might change approach.

"I don't believe TPB will be flagged as a Repeat Offender. Ultimately, that will cost the ad agencies dearly if all their clients were permanently denied visitors," he said.

"So maybe in the long run those agencies with a tendency to serve malicious ads will better screen their clients."

And of course, there is always the option for people to disable the malware checking option in their browser - although that does come with added risks.