US Government seizes mobile piracy domains

[RazorNF]

Feds Expand Domain Seizures to Mobile-App Pirate Sites‎

The U.S. government for the first time has seized internet domains of online sites accused of selling pirated mobile applications, in this instance, Android apps.

Seizing domains is nothing new under the President Barack Obama administration. Usually, however, sites are shuttered for offering gambling, hawking counterfeit goods, or providing links to or streaming unauthorized movies and sporting events, or selling unauthorized copies of software. The government has seized more than 750 domains in the past two years under a program called “Operation in Our Sites.”

The domains seized, announced late Tuesday, include applanet.net, appbucket.net and snappzmarket.com. The servers of the targeted were largely hosted overseas, the authorities said. No arrests were announced.

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[HostMantis]

This comes as no surprise really. There is a lot of money to be made in mobile apps and like other digital media, they are easy to pirate. What was surpising, was that it took them this long to even start doing something about it.

I was reading an article recently regarding the high amount of Android phones that are compromised due to malware in apps and most owners are unaware. I would assume most of these pirated apps are the cause, which is why I would never use an illegitimate app on my phone to begin with.