Anonfiles shuts down, citing user abuse

The file sharing website Anonfiles, launched to allow anonymous data exchanges, said it can no longer deal with the “extreme volume” of users abusing the website.

Anonfiles greets users with a message lamenting users’ abuse of the anonymity that the file sharing service aimed to provide. The website was one of the more popular anonymous file sharing websites, with over 18 million monthly users, according to Similarweb.

“After trying endlessly for two years to run a file sharing site with user anonymity we have been tired of handling the extreme volumes of people abusing it and the headaches it has created for us,” reads Anonfiles’ message.

The admins said they’ve been handling petabytes, thousands of terabytes, of data and were forced to automate the handling of potentially harmful content. The decision led to removing hundreds of thousands of files, Anonfiles operators said.

According to admins, banned file names and usage patterns meant that thousands of files which didn’t violate any policies were also deleted in the process.

“Even after all this, the high volume of abuse will not stop. This is not the kind of work we imagined when acquiring it and recently our proxy provider shut us down. This can not continue,” reads the message.

Many on x.com (formerly Twitter) flooded the feed with messages of support and disappointment over the website’s shutdown. However, Anonfiles had a reputation for being abused by attackers to serve malware via ads.

In 2021, researchers noted that downloading files from the website could infect a device with seven different types of malware, pointing to Anonfiles being severely compromised by malicious actors.