Aussies Warned About Illegally Downloading Game Of Thrones Final Season

We've been waiting for this moment for two years and fever pitch has never been higher for a TV show.

Aussies will get to feast on the final season of Game of Thrones from today and people couldn't be more excited.

While there are a couple of ways of legally watching the show, it's no secret that many people will download it illegally because, well, it's 2019 and some people don't have access to Foxtel.

But Aussies are being warned there could be some serious risks to doing this and we're not talking about the cops banging on your door asking why you downloaded an HBO show.

Season seven was the most pirated show ever, with more than a billion downloads and streams taking place between the first and last episode.

These downloads are laced with potentially damaging viruses that are very nasty, according to Kaspersky Labs. While downloading something this way always carries a risk of infecting your computer, viruses embedded in Game of Thrones episodes were found to be really, really bad.

via GIPHY

Kaspersky Labs said in a statement: "Game of Thrones accounted for 17 per cent of all the infected pirated content in 2018, with 20,934 users attacked, despite being the only TV show in the list that didn't have new episodes released in 2018.

"The first and the last episodes of each Game of Thrones season we analysed turned out the most dangerous, accounting for the greatest number of malicious files in Kaspersky Lab's collection and affecting the most users.

"The common theme we were able to spot was that the first and last episodes were used as a disguise for malware each season.

"Also, the titles of the opening and closing episodes of each season were used the most actively to hide malware compared to other episodes."

A whopping 33 different types of malware were found during the analysis, with the Trojan being the most damaging.

So it's no surprise that Kaspersky is warning people to just watch it legally and not suffer the consequences. It's very tempting, especially if you don't have Foxtel or iTunes/Google accounts to purchase the episodes, but it'll make the world a safer place.

Don't say we didn't warn you.

Featured Image Credit: HBO

Topics: Entertainment, TV and Film, Technology, Game of Thrones

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie