IF YOU have plans to download the third episode of Game of Thrones after work, you might run into some trouble.

Despite record breaking numbers for subscription television viewership, Game of Thrones has been the most pirated show for the past four years and season six is no different.

Within 12 hours of airing, the premiere was downloaded more than one million times — with Aussies responsible for one eighth of the piracy numbers.With millions of pirates expected to follow suit with the most recent episode, HBO is implementing extreme measures to try and stop pirates in their tracks.

Coinciding with the new season, HBO teamed up with anti-piracy partner IP Echelon to take a proactive approach to combating piracy by sending thousands of letters to ISPs.

Including the IP-addresses of BitTorrent users caught sharing recent of Game of Thrones episodes, the letters ask ISPs to warn customers they have been flagged for piracy infringements.

“As the owner of the IP address, HBO requests that [ISP] immediately contact the subscriber who was assigned the IP address at the date and time below with the details of this notice, and take the proper steps to prevent further downloading or sharing of unauthorised content and additional infringement notices,” the letter reads, reportsTorrentFreak.

As HBO doesn’t know the identity of these pirates and because ISPs have no obligation to pass on these letters, it is likely this method of attack will do very little to cease piracy numbers.Knowing this, the cable television company has devised a secondary plan for combating illegal downloaders — delivering an unprecedented of take-down notices to torrent websites.

While smaller sites simply ignore these requests, leading torrent websites such as KickassTorrents and Torrentz have complied and removed hundreds of downland links.The efforts have been so successful on those websites, most popular torrent releases for the first two episodes have been removed — with the third to be similar.

Despite not completely ridding the internet of illegal content, HBO and its anti-piracy partner have had some success, with the most popular torrents being taken down a few minutes after they appear online.Having its content removed from popular torrent websites is a great start, but with other avenues frequently appearing, the fight against piracy is far from won.