The rebirth of The Pirate Bay could be a setup to catch illegal fire-sharing, according to some activists. And while file-sharing groups have rubbished the claims, concerns remain.

The site is continuing to use US tools and so could be tracked by authorities, whether or not it was set up explicitly as a trap.

The site came back online at the weekend — though without much of its staff.

The accusation seems to have first been made by a Twitter account associated with the Anonymous movement, which claimed that the FBI were using the site to catch those engaged in illegal file-sharing.

The Anon Message account tends to tweet out unsourced news, much of which is rumour or speculation.

But many of the concerns were raised by the fact that the site was using tools made by CloudFlare, a US internet services company. Even those who didn’t suspect the FBI of being involved in the relaunch were concerned that using a US provider could mean that security service were more easily able to spy on users.

But the group has said that it was forced to use the tools because of the huge traffic to the site.

The new Pirate Bay logo

“We have seen that there has been some question to why we are using Cloudflare,” the site said in a statement. “This is only initially to handle the massive load upon the servers. It will be removed shortly.”

While that will not stop many users’ concerns — The Pirate Bay’s information is still being passed through US tools, making it easier for authorities to see it — the site has denied that it has been set up for the purpose of spying. Torrentfreak, a news site close to many people in the file sharing world, called the accusation “complete nonsense” but said that “general security concerns of using a US-based service are legitimate”.

CloudFlare provides content distribution network services. Such tools put servers in various places across the world, allowing for web content to be quickly served to users.

The site may also be insecure because none of the moderators are able to look after the site. The Pirate Bay has removed the rights of many admins, meaning that it is becoming “polluted” with bad links and torrents already. Such decisions are thought to have been part of the revolt that meant that many of the site’s old staff did not join the newly-launched site.

“Due to severe security issues regarding the old moderator team all moderation has temporarily been disabled,” The Pirate Bay said.