Cashing In on Naive BitTorrent Users
Written by Ernesto on February 29, 2008BitTorrent sites are overloaded with ads for malware ridden BitTorrent clients and paid tutorials that promise to quadruple your download speed. They try to lure naive users into downloading their products with catchy phrases such as “Breakthrough Information Will Have You Downloading Torrents Up To 475% Faster”. It’s time to take them down.
Last year we reported several times on the family of malware supported BitTorrent clients such as Torrent101, BitRoll, TorrentQ and GetTorrent. These clients promised ‘high speed downloads’ but actually installed a payload of malware onto the victim’s PC. It seems that our articles resulted in the desired response, with most torrent sites effectively banned their ads.
Recently, however, we have noticed an increase in ads for paid tutorials. A couple of months ago we posted about highspeedtorrent.com, a site that promised to boost download speeds up to 500% faster. Unfortunately they are still around, the only thing they have changed since then is their initial claim, they now promise a 475% increase in download speed.
The only thing these people are after is money from naive BitTorrent users, and they do this by advertising their ‘revolutionary’ tutorials on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, Mininova and Isohunt, making thousands of dollars a month. Technically there is nothing illegal about selling something like this, but the absurd claims they make will only disappoint people who get tricked into paying up.
Luckily, most BitTorrent admins agree with this. The administrator of BTjunkie is the most active opponent perhaps, as he told us: “I don’t allow it on our site because it’s a scam. It’s like a bad infomercial for torrents.” He even went as far as complaining to Paypal and Adbrite to stop these people, so far without result. “I’ve had lots of backs and forths about this with Adbrite,” he said “They just keep telling me it’s not possible to permanently ban them unless you want to approve every ad that goes on your site.”
TorrentFreak contacted a few other admins, and they assured us that they will do everything they can to stop these ads from appearing on their sites. Pirate Bay’s Brokep told us: “We’re making sure they never comes back now, or I’ll tell Adbrite we need to kick them out.” We honestly hope that the others will follow this example, for now, this seems to be the only way to get rid of them.
The funny thing is, scammers are not only ripping off innocent BitTorrent users, they also rip each other off. Here is an email that the owners of fastspeedtorrents sent to a torrent site admin, pouring his heart out he wrote:
I own the site fastspeedtorrents.com. I’ve been trying to buy a flat rate ad on your site but it would always get declined. What happened was I bought the site highspeedtorrent.com and the person that sold me the site said that you were a main advertiser and to purchase flat rate ads. Well, something changed and I haven’t been able to buy an ad since I purchased the site. Then this person went and started a site called rocketspeedtorrent.com which is basically just a copy of a site that he sold me which he legally shouldn’t have done and now I see his ads on your site somehow.”
Poor guy…
Do you want those superfast downloads for free? Help yourself to some of our guides, hints and tips. There’s 20 more of the best right here.
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Previously: RIAA Keeps Settlement Money, Artists May Sue
Next: BitTorrent Rip Off Sites, and How to Avoid Them
133 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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[quote comment="300808"]This is what i use on both pc’s
http://everythingisnt.com/NoAdHOSTS.exe/quote
This Fuckin Works NOOBS AND ELITIST ALIKE…$
darwin called he said “i’m balling bitches”
learn to forward ports and you will download faster… those people that buy those guides deserved to get screwed over… fucking stupid noobs.
1st of all, y do u need to increase ur speed of bittorrent. it is fast enough w/out optimization. 2nd, the noob who falls for it probably cant download 2 much faster cause they r runnin dsl. 3rd, y would u pay for faster when we r downloading illegaly. 4th, i bet the feds r in on this one. — by no means do i say that the noobs deserve it but thats just dumb
Dey be steelin ur moneyz wit there scams
All da homeez be eeting clams
wow wow wow someone is stealing my name and stealing my job, this is nonsense!
and the raps are terrible, misspelled, and all out terrible, clearly from a white person, registered names FTW
Break a leg!
[quote comment="300570"][quote comment="300567"]i don’t really care about n00bs[/quote]
Elitist bastard. Everyone starts out somewhere - you would do well to remember that. Nobody deserves to be scammed, although it takes only a modicum of effort to avoid it.[/quote]
Downloaders deny artists of billions of dollars in revenue and then wail and gnash teeth when someone takes advantage of THEM. What a bunch of hypocritical opportunists.
[quote comment="300656"][quote comment="300651"]People who fall for this shit are not noobs, they’re stupid. Two very different things.
If they loose a few bucks, they’ll learn their lesson and it won’t kill them. I think about ANY other issue related to P2P is more important than this one. And I read this freaking article about 20 million times on here already. If you have nothing to talk about, it’s ok to shut up. Especially if you’re going to wrap yourself in your preacher cloth and bitch about monetizing from torrents when half of the posts here are just padding BS (like this very post) to keep the revenue stream coming in.
Hypocrites…[/quote]
Wow get the fuck off the site then idiot, if you dont like it then leave, nobody is holding a gun to your head.[/quote]
Wow, “love it or leave it”. Great rebuttal, Rycon, did you construct that counter-arguement all by yourself?
[quote comment="300937"][quote comment="300925"]“…scammers are not only ripping off innocent BitTorrent users…”
Innocent BitTorrent users. yeah.[/quote]
Not everything you download using bittorrent protocol is copyrighted, idiot.[/quote]
YEAH!!! About 1% of 1% of the traffic is made up of actual legal downloads!
[quote comment="301177"]Downloaders deny artists of billions of dollars in revenue and then wail and gnash teeth when someone takes advantage of THEM. What a bunch of hypocritical opportunists.[/quote]
Tap water drinkers deny water bottle manufacturers of billions of dollars and the wail and gansh teeth when someones takes advantage of THEM. What a bunch of hypocritical opportunists.
Really, the denying someone of income argument is getting really old.
[quote comment="300912"]Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the Torrent community that largely supports the illegal/immoral downloading activities are complaining about a different illegal/immoral usage of their software?
So illegal/immoral activities are fine with BitTorrent so long as they aren’t annoying to the users? That’s the line we don’t cross? Everything else is fair game?
Either way, if someone wants to go illegally download the latest Coldplay album and is too much of a moron to figure out that they downloaded a trojan instead, I do not have much sympathy. Learn to use a computer.[/quote]
It makes perfect sense that the other posters should disagree with your post, Daniel.
Number 1, they are in total denial that sharing copyrighted files is illegal. Number 2, these scammers are actually affecting THEIR pockets, not the RIAA (generic term for whoever they are stealing copyrighted material from). Number 3, based on the ‘arguments’ that are used in here, it’s not a computer they need to learn how to use, it’s common sense.
[quote comment="301196"][quote comment="301177"]Downloaders deny artists of billions of dollars in revenue and then wail and gnash teeth when someone takes advantage of THEM. What a bunch of hypocritical opportunists.[/quote]
Tap water drinkers deny water bottle manufacturers of billions of dollars and the wail and gansh teeth when someones takes advantage of THEM. What a bunch of hypocritical opportunists.
Really, the denying someone of income argument is getting really old.[/quote]
Lol, tap water costs money. Bottled water costs money. Either way, you are paying for a product. You’ll find that in an Economics 1A book, page one.
Really, the arguement that “I’m not stealing nothing” is REALLY getting old, especially when it cannot be defended with even the barest shred of validity.
Wow the RIAA shills are really out tonight.
@Rintaro: I hope you’re getting paid for this, cz otherwise you’re a fucking idiot.
[quote comment="300567"]Lol, tap water costs money. Bottled water costs money. Either way, you are paying for a product. You’ll find that in an Economics 1A book, page one.
Really, the arguement that “I’m not stealing nothing” is REALLY getting old, especially when it cannot be defended with even the barest shred of validity.[/quote]
[quote comment="301199"]
Internet connections cost money. Hard disks cost money. burners and removable media cost money. Either way, you’re paying for a product - you’re just not paying the people who made it.
And if piracy is stealing, point out a *single* person who has been convicted of theft because of it. You can’t, can you? because it’s not stealing - you’re not denying someone anything, it’s copyright infringement. The only reason people pull out words like stealing and theft is because they’re emotive and help fight the propaganda war.
props to TFreak. i enjoy reading postings here. funny thing is, once the technologies advance we are all n00bz and it takes a community to support each other with a *free* knowledgebase. with teh EU kicking millions into the research of the nextGen btorrent concept for file and information exchange, it is really a revolutionary wave that is changing how we do things on the intarwebs. there are many analogies that can be drawn from the comparison to a gun. its who uses it and how. i dont get into the right or wrong, rich or poor in the equation… just that i see new ways to do things and connect information (whatever the content) with others.
Noobs are great. We all learn by teaching them. They ask us questions we hadn’t thought of and we have the ability to find the answer.
Plus, they can entertain. My personal fave urban myth is of the lady whos display was Dodgy. She phoned her pc helpline and they asked her to “right click on the desktop”
So she took out a pen and wrote “click” on her desktop.
Amazing.
let the noobs be noobs. they gotta learn their lesson some day. let them be scammed
All you tech nerds that use the words Noob, nubs newbie…all those dumb-ass bullshit words to describe all the people that don’t know as much about torrents, technology or what ever stupid subject you feel the need to comment on REALLY need to get a life. There is nothing worse or more PLAYED OUT than grown men using playground terminology to show their prowess about computer knowledge!!! YOU ALL were new to the technology at one point. Get over yourselves. No one gives a shit about you, your two cents or your technical proficiencies! See forums are for people who like to exchange ideas and help each other out. If you want to complain, do it on you’re myspace page or your own personal blog and let the people who want to USE forums USE them!
[quote comment="301199"]
Lol, tap water costs money. Bottled water costs money. Either way, you are paying for a product. You’ll find that in an Economics 1A book, page one.
Really, the arguement that “I’m not stealing nothing” is REALLY getting old, especially when it cannot be defended with even the barest shred of validity.[/quote]
Copying = Ctrl+C
Stealing = Ctrl+X
As for your first argument. Transferring data over my internet cable does costs money, as does storing it on my harddrive.
This is however irrelevant, as economics has nothing to do with being able to charge money for things. Neither does economics have nothing about getting payed or paying for anything you do.
Economics is simply about the matching up the demands of the seller and buyer resulting in a possible trade if both parties agree, and no trade if the parties don’t agree. In many caes, such trade is done without money ever getting involved.
In the case of file sharing, the buyer thinks that the seller is charging too much for the distribution and instead chooses to trade with someone who is willing to distribute for free, although often with a hidden agreement that he should distribute it to someone else in exchange.
More advanced protocols such as bittorrent splits the information into pieces making it easier for both parties to ensure that the other party forfills his hidden agreement by conducting a more or less fair exchange of information.
As information is cheap to replicate, this works out great for both parties in the transaction. Of course, the original distributor that wanted to charge a lot of money for doing the same thing isn’t too happy about it.
The biggest misunderstanding that people have about economics is that Market Value is the same as the Real Value. This is a complete misunderstanding. It is actually the opposite.
The further apart the market value and the real value is, the better. Just look at air. You would spend a large part of your salary on air if you had to, but fortunally the market value is low (as in free) because of the great supply. This is a huge economic boon for society as a whole.
When market value and real value is close, it is usually because of either high production costs, low supply or both. In either case, society will profit if production costs goes down or supply increases.
Yes, it is more expensive to create a piece of information in the first place. This is why a goverment instituted distribution monopoly exists, which is pretty much the opposite of a market. However, a large percentage of the population disagree with it as they see the huge efficency losses it causes and are willing to illegally bypass it. Of course they are saving money on it also (which is how they recognize the inefficencies). Filesharing is a far better trade.
And no, stealing isn’t a trade since there aren’t two parties that are in agreement.
[quote comment="301375"]let the noobs be noobs. they gotta learn their lesson some day. let them be scammed[/quote]
I very much prefer the word beginner which is much more neutral.
Anyway. There are several things to be considered here. First of all, malware such as these should be illegal. Of course, that doesn’t help when criminals in hard to reach places do it, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t atleast put the foot down in civilized countries.
Now on to issue at hand. There are several levels of stupidty and non-stupidty involved here. Take for example shareaza.com. A well known site for a well known program that was highjacked. You can’t really except every single person that goes to that site to know that it is has been highjacked. As such, I feel pretty sorry for those who fell for it, trusting information that used to be correct.
However, this article is about people who click on random banner and download/buy completly random products without even doing the most basic fact checking.
I simply can’t feel as sorry for people who fall for such scams. I will tell beginners to be careful and not trust things, but that is about as much I can do. After that it is up to each user to use their brains.
I still want to see the scammer punished though. Just because I don’t have as much empathy for the victim doesn’t make the act itself any better. It is simply a crime where I don’t feel much empathy towards either side.
And more than anything else, I blame bad eductation systems (not targetted at the US, but pretty much every country) for not being able to teach kids to be critical of unknown sources.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LswZV5Djik
There are people who click every thing flashing or popping up all the time, kinda makes me sad..
[quote comment="301193"][quote comment="300656"][quote comment="300651"]People who fall for this shit are not noobs, they’re stupid. Two very different things.
If they loose a few bucks, they’ll learn their lesson and it won’t kill them. I think about ANY other issue related to P2P is more important than this one. And I read this freaking article about 20 million times on here already. If you have nothing to talk about, it’s ok to shut up. Especially if you’re going to wrap yourself in your preacher cloth and bitch about monetizing from torrents when half of the posts here are just padding BS (like this very post) to keep the revenue stream coming in.
Hypocrites…[/quote]
Wow get the fuck off the site then idiot, if you dont like it then leave, nobody is holding a gun to your head.[/quote]
Wow, “love it or leave it”. Great rebuttal, Rycon, did you construct that counter-arguement all by yourself?[/quote]
I guess I have to clarify this again to another person who hasn’t really turned on there brain. That wasn’t a ‘Love it or leave it’ counter-argument, he was complaining about the site, and at that point when your calling the site owners ‘hypocrites’ you need the get off the site.. because you obviously don’t agree on the sites content. He could of proved his point without attacking the owners for simply posting news. So please.. read the entire post and think about it before barking off another pointless response.
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