Stop Downloading Fakes and Junk From BitTorrent
Written by enigmax on December 04, 2007Many experienced file-sharers can’t understand why relative novices manage to download so much junk from BitTorrent. Fake downloads that never finish, video files which refuse to play, movies that require special players and unwatchable video are easily avoided by those in the know. But how do they do it?
Although it’s quite a small problem, BitTorrent is sadly being used by a minority to generate money for scammers through trickery and deception. We’ve reported before how people download movies only to learn that they require a special media player to play it, or others which come with a payload of malware to infect their PC when they install it.
Other people get other problems such as torrents never finishing or when they watch a downloaded video it turns out to be completely the wrong thing - i.e the file was deliberately mislabeled. Sometimes the video download is of such poor quality it’s simply unwatchable and of course all this adds up to a lot of frustration and wasted time.
There are many techniques employed by experienced file-sharers to ensure that the torrent is what it says it is and of a good enough quality to even bother with. We’ll look at just a few of them here.
Remember that sharing certain types of media via BitTorrent may not be legal in your country.
1. Always read the comments
Before downloading any torrent, it’s always prudent to read the comments on the site. It only takes a few seconds but it’s time well spent. Very often there are requests from previous downloaders for a password to access the file or some might be asking where to download a special video player to view it. Movies should never come as .zip or an .exe file, if they do there is every chance the file comes with some sort of catch. If the movie won’t play with VLC Media Player there’s every chance it’s a fake. Any files needing 3WPlayer, DomPlayer or any that direct to other sites and ask you to fill in forms or install stuff, are also fake.
2. Can the source be trusted?
A good way to find out if a .torrent is real or not is to find out who uploaded the file. There are several well known users that always release new torrents on the same account, aXXo and EZTV are some good examples of such users. If the user is anonymous, you could look at the tracker, and see if it’s widely used. There is no guarantee that files on a well known trackers are safe, but you can almost be certain that files tracked by trackers such as bittorrent.isthebe.st are fake.
3. Is the file actually released already?
Many people use sites such as VCDQuality and Nforce.nl (sites that rates the quality of media releases on the internet) to not only ensure that the video is of a good quality, but also to weed out malfunctioning releases and identify real ones. Recently a movie producer was grateful to the BitTorrent community for spreading his movie ‘The Man From Earth‘, so we can use this movie as an example:
The VCDQ page shows a lot of information but let’s look at the box marked ‘folder’. Here you can see the release name. By copying and pasting this exact filename into Google, a list of almost guaranteed non-fake torrents appear.
4. TorrentSpam?
Another place to check is TorrentSpam. If you already have a torrent file in your possession, you can either paste the full name (or hash value, obtainable from the ‘general’ tab in uTorrent) into their search engine and if someone has reported this as a bad torrent, the results will be shown. Equally, if despite all the measures you still end up downloading a bad torrent, its possible to report this fact for the benefit of other TorrentSpam users in the future.
Do you have any tips or tricks not mentioned here that you would like to share? Feel free to leave a comment!
4. Other suggestions
We asked Matthijs from Mininova for some good tips on how to avoid downloading fake or scammy torrents and he came up with the following suggestions in addition to what we already posted.
In the end it’s experience alone that helps identify the fakes. Most people who have been file-sharing for a little while can easily spot these bad torrents but it’s clearly not so easy for the novice, judging by the number of emails we get at TorrentFreak each week. Let’s hope that number reduces soon.
Previously: MPA to Christmas Movie Pirates:”You’d Better Watch Out, You’d Better Not Try!”
Next: Donald Duck Is a Music Pirate, and His Nephews Too
127 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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indeed, I agree.
Very informative article. Although I didn’t know all of them, I knew some. Appreciate the heads up :)
a tip: join a serious private tracker, and you will have no fakes
Join a scene tracker etc..
Movies and music shouldn’t come as .RAR either in an ideal world. Yet many do.
Unfortunately .rar or a series of .rar files doesn’t allow you to download small parts of a movie first to check it out, or to download the first part of a movie to watch it (such as VTS_01_1.VOB) then download the second. The same applies to music, you cannot just download one track to check the band out.
The other problem with .rar is that often you cannot afford the disk space for the .rar version to seed and the extracted version to watch.
Yet many scene releases are in .rar format. :-(
“The other problem with .rar is that often you cannot afford the disk space for the .rar version to seed and the extracted version to watch.”
1. HDDs are cheap.
2. Once you’ve downloaded a movie/TV-series you watch it every day? No? Then why have it unpacked all the time?
Why do they even put single files in gazillion rar’s - there has to be some insane reason ?
#7 - scene rules to pack stuff in small rar files with a sfv.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_(warez) and scroll down to packaging
oh and also, TF themselves has addressed this
http://torrentfreak.com/unpack-rar-archives-before-you-release-a-torrent/
The best way to avoid being suckered is to download from trusted websites, public or private. As for the rar part, while i agree that rar files are annoying many people prefer them because you can download them to different partitions in case you do not have sufficient space on a single partition but enough with all partitions combined.
ooops that was a TPB essay
all i want 2 know why thes people make this fake what thy earn from it plz some one tell me
I don’t download movies at all unless the ARE in rar format. If it comes just as it does from the scene its much less likely to be a fake. Also if you want to ftp the movie to your friend it helps - ever try to ftp a 700mb file? Doesn’t work so well. Also on the new hddvd/bluray rips you can split movies across dvd5s instead of buying dvd9s which cost more.
.rar ftw
In regards to the .sfv, some programs such as dc++ will check the files against the .sfv to see if the files are corrupted and alert you if they are.
Bottom line leave the shit alone, you are not the scene, so don’t rename, unpack, or otherwise fiddle with the releases. Watch your video, then delete the unpacked version, problem solved.
Mookey,
I am not the scene, therefore I don’t give a crap about scene rules. Rars in torrents waste disk space. Rars in torrents break selective downloading. EOS
Sincerely,
b
With a lot of scene releases, there is an un-RARed “sample” file that you can download first from the torrent and look at to get an idea of the quality of the video. That would be a good way to know if the release is good.
@Mookey:
You’re absolutely right. RAR is the way to go, it has a ton of benefits, and the uploaders on the torrent sites need to stop messing with the file structure. If you leave the release with the scene naming and file structure, you don’t have any of the problems you would otherwise. You can check NForce or ORLYDB to see if the release is valid, and you can use the .sfv file to make sure the release hasn’t been tampered with. There’s no way I would download a non-scene release.
it won´t get any different before all the rookies are gone….
alot of them don´t get it, regardles how many times you write about it.
i think that the trackers are also responsible for this, hey should remove the torrent when it gets recognized as a fake.
many people report fakes to the admins and nothing is done!
i try not to download files that have been rarred.
[quote]
You’re absolutely right. RAR is the way to go, it has a ton of benefits,[/quote]
Packing it in a bunch of RAR files has little to no benefit for bittorrent users.
[quote]
2. Once you’ve downloaded a movie/TV-series you watch it every day? No? Then why have it unpacked all the time?[/quote]
But why waste the time?
“Hmmm, I want to watch this DVDR now. Time to unrar it… Oh, I’ve gotta wait 10-20 minutes. Great.”
Looking at all the responses to my initial post concerning the .RAR format, I can see that there is no advantage to it. Hard disk drives may be cheap, but I don’t want two copies of the damn thing. Just one unpacked copy is fine thanks. If I do download RAR’d torrents, I never seed them after they’re finished and I’m sure many other people think this way.
“Unknown/new trackers (that can’t be found on google anywhere) with large amounts of seeds/leechers”
A good way is just to look at the seeders, I always does that. If a torrent have 10′000+ seeds and the next in the list only have 700+ seeds then it is 100% a fraud. Even so if the 10′000+ have zero comments and the 700+ have 100+ comments. (Typical Heroes episode) :P
The idea behind using WinRar for P2P is added privacy and security. So when I .Rar a file of say, a movie, such as Star Trek, the ‘unpacked’ .Rar files will have the name of the actual movie, the .Rar files I am uploading or DL will not. Get it? WinRar has many other uses to numerous to mention here..suffice to say it is an essential tool when used with common sense. The features should be intuitive to the ordinary filesharer. If you are a disturbed poptart probably not….
Many DC++ hubs also have a requirement to have all the files packed. (Sometimes even in 47+ files…)
I hate getting calls from people, “Why won’t my torrent work?” “Errr, did you read the comments before you downloaded it?” “Ummm, no. Ok. ummm… oh. Looks like its a fake.” Grrr.
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