Illegally streaming the new Game of Thrones Season 8 series may expose you to malware and phishing.
Many fans of the Game of Thrones Season 8 series might turn to pirating the episodes and be exposed to malware and phishing attempts common on BitTorrent and pirate sites.
HBO released its most recent trailer during the 2019 Super Bowl LIII game, with the trailer ending with Bud Light in dragon flames.
It no surprise that HBO’s Game of Thrones series is heavily pirated by fans. In fact, Game of Thrones was the most torrented TV show for the past 6 years according to TorrentFreak. If you measure how a show's popularity by how often it's pirated, Game of Thrones is the world's favorite show of all time.
Kaspersky Lab revealed that cybercriminals often inject malware to torrent users. Typically, the first and last episodes of seasons usually carried malware.
Based on past statistics, HBO's GOT will no doubt be #1 again among pirates in 2019. Despite the options for legal streaming, some fans will still prefer to download the episodes via torrents. Pirates will usually navigate through piracy websites full of malware and fake files just to get a working stream.
Video files, such as MPEG-4, WMV, and AVI could be poisoned with malicious code where criminals can do a simple “bait and switch” by disguising fake programs as video, .rar, WinRAR, and zip files.
BitTorrents, some legal, don't protect users from fake malicious files.
Even Linux and MacOS users have a chance of getting infected, despite the lower levels of malware for those platforms, they are not immune to fake installers.
Not all pirates are intentionally breaking the law on purpose. Some simply do it because the shows are unavailable in their country. Some simply can't afford the memberships by the streaming provider. Most pirates are between the ages of 18-34.
Legal ways to stream Game of Thrones Season 8:
HBO Now - $14.99 per month and offers a 7-day free trial for the service.
Streaming Internet TV services that carry HBO as an add-on channel
- Sling TV
- Hulu with Live TV
- AT&T WatchTV
- PlayStation Vue
- DirecTV Now (included in base package)
- Amazon Prime Video Channels