It's really not a good idea to use the Pirate Bay anymore. When the piracy website, which launched in 2003 and became known for its ability to evade law enforcement, went down, the outage almost always came as part of a regularly scheduled security update, and the site was back on after a few hours.

That's no longer the case. The Pirate Bay went down without explanation Thursday and had yet to return after nearly 24 hours. Such a long downtime would have previously sent social media into fits, though the problems have been happening so frequently lately that the site's disappearance was barely a blip on Twitter.

Is The Pirate Bay down? ......asking for a friend — JΛY BUCKS (@TheMasterBucks) October 1, 2015

“The TPB team informed us that they're aware of the problem and hope to have the site back [online soon],” TorrentFreak reported Thursday. “It's nothing major, and people should just wait it out.”

But “waiting it out” assumes the Pirate Bay can still be trusted as a place to download illicit copies of movies, TV shows, music, video games and other entertainment in the first place. It's been a rough 11 months or so for the Pirate Bay since the site was taken offline as part of a Swedish police operation. Relaunched versions have been infused with ads containing malware, and the proxy sites that direct users to the notorious torrent when it's offline are even less safe.

As an open torrent tracker that doesn't require an invite, the Pirate Bay was always more dangerous to use than many of its competitors. Suspicious users have suggested the current version of the site is a law enforcement ploy to track user information, and -- while it's nearly impossible to verify whether that's true -- it wouldn't be the first time the FBI or another agency posed as a trusted criminal resource.