More than three days have passed since The Pirate Bay went down after a raid on a Swedish datacenter. While there is still no sign that TPB is preparing a comeback, several copies of the popular torrent site are drawing in hundreds of thousands of visitors.

The torrent community is still shaken up by the abrupt raid on the Pirate Bay this week.

With millions of visitors a day TPB was one of the largest websites on the Internet and despite the police action its users remain hungry for fresh content.

We previously reported that other large torrent sites have noticed a significant uptick in traffic in recent days. However, many of TPB’s users are eagerly waiting for the original site to return.

Thus far it’s still unclear whether the site will return in the near future, if at all. Our queries to find out more remain unanswered for now.

Meanwhile there’s a ‘worrying’ development that Pirate Bay “copies” are gaining a lot of momentum. While none of these sites are associated with The Pirate Bay they are happy to welcome the extra visitors.

First a word of caution. None of the sites below are related to the “official” site and visitors should beware of scams and malware.

In recent days we have received more than a hundred tips from readers who announced that TPB has returned on the thepiratebay.cr. While this site does look familiar, it’s by no means an official incarnation.

In fact, as we highlighted earlier, the .cr domain used to be one of the many Pirate Bay proxy/mirror sites. It has no upload functionality nor can visitors sign up to add torrents. Interestingly enough (and adding to the confusion) the site’s operators started to populate the site with new content themselves a few hours ago.

The .cr domain, which was incorrectly promoted by several news media sites as an official comeback, previously redirected to thepiratebay.ee, a site that used to charge people for access to torrents.

The .ee domain is another mirror site that’s getting a lot of new visitors. While the site removed its paygate shortly after the Pirate Bay raid, potential visitors should keep this history in mind.

As is true for most mirrors and copies, the .ee site mimics Pirate Bay’s appearance but doesn’t allow people to upload new files. Other mirror sites, some of which have added fresh content and convenient chat boxes, include thepiratebay.hk and thepiratebay.org.es.

These sites, like the ones above, are not connected to the original site. In fact, The Pirate Bay still has access to its .se domain name so there would be no reason to change that for a potential comeback.

Finally, there are also “copies” that make it clear that they’re not the new Pirate Bay. OldPirateBay.org, for example, was launched by the people behind Isohunt.to. The operators told TF that their main motivation is to keep the torrents accessible, not to cause confusion.

“We saw a lot of topics where people are looking for something like this. For sure it has some bugs and glitches but we are going to improve it. The tool is for the users’ convenience till TPB comes alive again,” we were told.

OldPirateBay.org doesn’t have much to do with TPB though. It appears to be little more than a copy of Isohunt.to with a Pirate Bay Theme, which is missing many original Pirate Bay torrents.

If The Pirate Bay does indeed come back we will be the first to report it here. Until then, caution is warranted.