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…
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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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Everyone I tell about downloading via torrent network I tell about torrentfreak.com! because especially noobs need to know what’s going on…
I have made a comment on Mcafee’s Siteadvisor and mentioned this article. Check Siteadvisor here:
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/highspeedtorrent.com
utorrent no #1
i don’t really care about n00bs
they don’t even know the first thing about d.loading,all they know is click and open the client,whats really going on,nahh they don’t care about it
ive came across people that don’t even know what a tracker is !
they can get bent or set on fire for all i care
[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.
well said dave. Would bet my life on WTF being a leacher too
Yes, noobs make the world go round, if only they knew how to google…
bittorent users are already naive, they are too stupid to find movies and warez without the web. faggots. naive bit torrent user is an oxymoron.
It also doesn’t help when sites like PC World also advertise for them.
http://downloads.pcworld.about.com/downloads/file/fid,45534-order,2-page,1-c,htmlauthoring/description.html
Seriously anyone that believes that a bit of software can improve your hardware deserves it anyway.
Download this file to turn your mouse and keyboard to solid gold! Break apart your keyboards and sell them to jewelers!
Link: SpYbOtZ.exe
At 9:
Anyone that shops in PC World deserves it too.
@9, Can’t believe they put it under HTML Authoring!
@11, Very true
What about fuckin SUMotorrent? Would you like a torrent site with your ads sir?
@11 Yeah, I just searched google to find out how popular these things were. Just thought PC World, idiot editors who don’t know jack about computers.
advert on your site whilst i was reading this article….
Download speed slow?
accelerate for torrents download Speed up 100% and protect HD.
http://www.soft4kids.com
how ironic…
Gallus
Adblock Plus
sharing is caring, not only in p2p world. speed is irrelevant, but education is very relevant.as some1 said, we all started as newbies, and every newbie needs help. don’t patronize, help. 1 newbie less = 1 educated sharer more, 1 win more for all
AdBlock Plus
That’s correct #17. Whenever I see people having trouble with the simplest things like unraring and mounting I always try to help them as best as I can. When they know what to do and see someone who needs help they’ll be able to help even more people, and the chain goes on.. I feel pretty good about it too, first time I downloaded something that was in rar’s I asked for step-by-step help. Everybody need help the first couple of times and then they’ll be able to help others.
@ 16 I agree whether someone is using IE or FF the site admin could put up a warning disclosure to ignore offensive ads, with instructions possibly on using ‘Adblock Plus’ a free firefox addon, or ‘SelectView’ for IE from free IE addons at microsoft.com.
@ 13 LOL WE77 PUT MAN :)
[quote comment="300596"]advert on your site whilst i was reading this article….
Download speed slow?
accelerate for torrents download Speed up 100% and protect HD.
http://www.soft4kids.com
how ironic…
Gallus[/quote]
you need to sort out your adblocker then
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…
LOL they should show kazaa ads and that stupid usenext stuff… So users will try, be cheated and think “oh man torrent is much better…” lol
“i don’t really care about n00bs
they don’t even know the first thing about d.loading,all they know is click and open the client,whats really going on,nahh they don’t care about it
ive came across people that don’t even know what a tracker is !
they can get bent or set on fire for all i care”
Yes, because you were never a noob, and were born with this information already implanted into your brain.
Come on, everyone started somewheres, some of us in the good old BBS days, others last week, sites like this are great and also bad. Great, as they help get the noobs up to speed, bad because they make it too easy and accessable, which is why there’s a huge crackdown on torrents now, how many IRC busts have you heard of lately? EXACTLY…
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