The complaint of the US government, which closed KickassTorrents and led to the arrest of Artem Vaulin, shows us how a tracking system can work.
Here it would be good before we start blaming Facebook and Apple to also examine the responsibilities of the owner of the KickasssTorrents website. Using a personal email address on Facebook may sound completely innocent but in Vaulin's case it was truly foolish.
How personal? It was an address «@me.com” a domain that belongs to Apple (prefix @icloud.com).
The address was discovered when authorities sent a subpoena to Facebook for information that relates to the site’s page. From there, the US government turned towards Apple.
The Vaulin used the same @me.com email to make a purchase from iTunes, and thus his IP address had been logged by Apple which collects information from every transaction. IP addresses can also be linked to bitcoin accounts.
Apple and Facebook didn't do anything different and appear to have acted within legal bounds by providing information, after government orders. For large companies this is truly routine, really.
The fact, however, that Vaulin used a single, personal email address across so many services and functions is incredible. If someone tries to hide and uses an address that is linked to something as personal as their Apple ID, they live in a different world.
We should note that at the time of his arrest, it was not known whether Vaulin was the owner of KickassTorrents – or the «alleged» mastermind. However, there is ample incriminating evidence that shows he may be the only person responsible for KicKassTorrents.
