Online piracy and illegal streaming sites have often been the targets of major crackdowns and the 2026 FIFA World Cup probably ranks as the most illegally-streamed piece of media on record. So it should be no surprise that a large number of those streaming sites are getting forcefully shut down.

According to Awful Announcing, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), an organization that fights ad-related crime, has announced that it has pushed for the removal of nearly 1,400 sites that have been illegally streaming the World Cup. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice announced just this week that it has shut down 400 sites that were illegally streaming the World Cup.

“Global sporting events like the World Cup are prime targets for criminals who try to intercept legitimate ad dollars by stealing popular streaming content,” TAG COO Rachel Nyswander Thomas said in a statement, via The Athletic. “The TAG AdSec Threat Exchange has created as an early-warning system to identify and block ad revenue to websites that are profiting from stolen content, and this first-of-its-kind initiative allows us to fight those criminals in near-real time by cutting off the flow of ad dollars to the content thieves targeting the World Cup.”

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Topics: News