The future is starting to look bleak for Kickass Torrents. Less than two weeks after it managed to remove a Google Harmful Programs warning, visitors trying to log on to the most popular piracy site in the world are again at risk of being infected by malicious software. Worse yet -- for pirates, at least -- the situation is starting to look a lot like the demise of the Pirate Bay.

Kickass Torrents users complained on Reddit and social media Wednesday that, upon visiting the site, they were greeted not with the usual list of TV shows and movies but rather a giant red warning from Google. The Harmful Programs advisory informs users that “attackers on kat.cr might attempt to trick you into installing programs that harm your browsing experience (for example, by changing your homepage or showing extra ads on sites you visit).” (The .cr domain indicates Costa Rica.) While Google commonly flags piracy sites, this is the second warning in as many weeks for Kickass Torrents, and an indication that the site is infected with more malware than initially suspected.

Photo: Google

“We are working on the malware detection system and soon hope to get rid of the problem permanently,” one Kickass administrator told TorrentFreak.

Websites of varying legitimacy have recommended that visitors disable their Internet browser and use the site as if nothing is wrong. That approach, maybe more than any other, seems to be the most effective way to infect a computer. Others have recommended visiting “Kickass Unblocked,” an alternative version of the site that exists at a different Web address.

“I wouldn’t be so eager to unblock these,” one user wrote on Reddit. “There really was a malicious ad on the site, and after ignoring Firefox’s warning, and getting a goofy popup followed by a page immediately closing and opening, I ended up with some weird connections … [which] led me to finding some program called Mouse Controller in my startup folder.”

You can bet “Mouse Controller” isn’t a pirated movie.

The situation is reminiscent of what’s happened at the Pirate Bay, which was the most popular piracy site in the world before Kickass. The site was shut down (temporarily) in November 2014, triggering a wave of imitation sites that replaced bootleg music and movie files with dangerous advertisements and fake downloads.