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Game of Thrones has been named the most pirated TV show on the internet for the fourth year in a row , after the fantasy drama's season 5 finale was downloaded an estimated 14.4 million times worldwide.

The staggering number, which was revealed as part of an annual study by tech news website TorrentFreak , represents almost double the number of people who watched the show legitimately in the US, through an HBO subscription.

The download numbers are estimated by TorrentFreak based on several sources, including statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers.

(Image: HBO)

The fifth season of Game of Thrones has been the most-viewed so far - both through official channels and among pirates - with more than half of the illegal downloads occurring in the first week after the show aired.

The HBO series, based on George R. R. Martin's series of fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, was significantly more pirated than other popular TV shows, according to TorrentFreak.

Second-placed series The Walking Dead received 6.9 million illegal downloads via BitTorrent, and Big Bang Theory , which came in third, received 4.4 million downloads.

(Image: Channel 4)

HBO has attempted to tackle the piracy problem by airing episodes of Game of Thrones on the same date worldwide - eliminating complaints from international fans of the show, who previously had to wait weeks or even months for episodes to air on local TV.

The company also rolled out a new service in the US called HBO Now, which allowed people to watch the show without a cable subscription.

However, these efforts were thwarted when the first four episodes leaked online ahead of the season premiere , after someone uploaded the contents of the DVDs sent out to critics for review.

In the UK, the only way to watch Game of Thrones legally is through a Sky subscription, or through one of its on-demand services like Now TV or Sky Go.

The figures appear to show that the illegal download numbers for the most popular shows continues to rise.

The latest figures from the communications watchdog Ofcom, published in September 2013, reveal that pirated content accounts for over a fifth of all content consumed online in the UK.

However, TorrentFreak admits that its figures don't take into account other torrent services or views through illegal streaming sites, nor do they include other methods of watching episodes legally.