Ever had that feeling that you’re being watched? Well, if you’re one of those people who likes to save on money by downloading torrent files, then your suspicions might just be correct.

This is especially true if you happen to download your torrents from the popular file-sharing service BitTorrent, where researchers from Birmingham University have revealed that anyone who joins up with a swarm to download multimedia files is likely to show up on the radar of numerous copyright enforcement agencies that are closely monitoring the site.

Presenting their findings at this week’s SecureComm conference in Padua, Italy, this week, the researchers explained:

“Copyright holders are known to routinely monitor file-sharers, collect evidence of infringement, issue cease-and-desist letters and, in some cases, demand financial compensation from the users they deem to have infringed their copyright. The task of policing BitTorrent is often outsourced to specialist copyright enforcement agencies,”

The researchers used custom-made software to monitor torrent traffic data on 1,033 swarms for 36 days over a two-year period, looking out for tell-tale signs that peers were there to monitor the activity of others, rather than engage with them. These tell-tale signs included suspicious behavior like hanging around in swarms for an abnormally long period of time, or failing to report download progress.

Once a ‘suspect’ peer was spotted, the researchers would then track it down in an attempt to discover who was behind it.  There investigations took them to ten organizations, including California-based Peer Media Technologies, that were either known copyright enforcement agencies, or shady companies that provide ‘computer consultancy services’, without admitting that they monitor BitTorrents.

Besides from sending out cease-and-desist letters and using the data to measure the popularity of such pirated content, it’s not clear what, or even if, the monitors can take any action as a result of their findings.