Certificate Transparency (CT) is a public system maintained by Google, Apple, and other certificate authorities that logs every SSL certificate issued for every domain. This creates a public record of all domain registrations and their certificates, preventing certificate authorities from issuing certificates secretly.
For content creators and enforcement professionals, Certificate Transparency is valuable for tracking when leak sites re-emerge under new domains after takedowns. When a leaked-content site receives takedowns, operators often abandon the domain and register a new one, relaunching under a different name. CT logs reveal these new registrations, allowing enforcement to continue against the relaunched site.
Privly monitors Certificate Transparency logs and tracks domain registration patterns associated with known leak site operators. When a previously-enforced leak site re-launches under a new domain, Privly identifies it and automatically escalates enforcement. This prevents operators from simply abandoning domain names and relaunching indefinitely—each relaunch adds additional legal records supporting claims of intentional infringement.