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
137 Responses
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[quote comment="230863"]NTFS support is still sketchy at best in linux distros.[/quote]
Um what? NTFS support is rock solid these days. NTFS-3G has been stable for what - a year?
there is an open-source application, which can decode all domplayer-encoded AVIs into original AVIs:
http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=113052&start=15#309656
Negroes,composer creation budget beam:strangulation acquaintances,bloat:
I have already downloaded more then 100 movie kind of these.. are really loosing my mind.
Do anyone know some way.. so that we can watch the movie while its downloading?
just got my first and last u need a domplayer for a movie i will try and find a good torrent site any one know one
gurgle dunce extinct,shapeless.midstream irreverent?impropriety .
I dont see a problem with passworded torrents, which leads you to page where you enter any e-mail or zip. So this method is legit and not a scam for me. The really scam is filesharing itself.
The only problem i have are faked files or torrents with password but without a chance to get it.
I downloaded a so called movie file ( 700mb ) only to find that it had no audio and played a clip for about 3 mins.the rest was junk.
The clip told you that your media player was not good enough and to visit a web site called divxmovienow.com.
what I didn’t understand was why the hell was MediaSentry trying to slow down the connection for a torrent that was fake…
[quote comment="230557"]Why do they even put single files in gazillion rar’s - there has to be some insane reason ?[/quote]
A very high compression rate. Also common for games as well.
[quote comment="230632"]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![/quote]Mininova.org renames the fake file as either ‘Obviously a virus’ or they delete the .torrent and remove it from their database
[quote comment="248659"]heres just one thought if u didnt have the divx player or codec would u still be soooo retarded and give that same advice because people who come accross shitty people who are sooo blinded and cant take 30 minutes ,and find the solution is downright un nerving, no wonder novices are having problems with torrent STICK TO LIMEWIRE AND USE COMMON SENSE!!! Worried about spyware which u get with EVERY page u go to , then get a SPYWARE REMOVER, ANTI-VIRUS, FIREWALL, avg free, McAfee, Norton , free limewire just do a little research and b willing to try, to learn for u , get spyware no biggie if u get it remove it when the computer slows theres no harm in scanning, mislabeling and movies that dont work come with trying to download everything free , coming from a computer programer / computer maintance person for 11 years my own business yes yes thank you thank you so the internet is knowledge at ur fingert tips , get google toolbar for all ur question and just take ur time knownlegde come to those who seek the truth not wait for someone else to find it . Goodluck[/quote]Limewire is full of shit. Haven’t you realised by now? Try http://www.thepiratebay.org or http://www.mininova.org
[quote comment="295535"]I have already downloaded more then 100 movie kind of these.. are really loosing my mind.
Do anyone know some way.. so that we can watch the movie while its downloading?[/quote]
informative , indeed
someone should destroy divxmovienow.com
Don’t forget that before Bit Torrents and private torrent tracker sites, we used something called Emule and Edonkey back in the old fashion days.
Guess what? You can still download Emule free from emule-project.net to download on these networks.
The longest running, and most trusty Emule private tracker site is the iwannadownload project at :
http://links.verotel.com/cgi-bin/showsite.verotel?vercode=23268:9804000000707116“
[quote comment="357700"]Don’t forget that before Bit Torrents and private torrent tracker sites, we used something called Emule and Edonkey back in the old fashion days.
Guess what? You can still download Emule free from emule-project.net to download on these networks.
The longest running, and most trusty Emule private tracker site is the iwannadownload project at :
http://links.verotel.com/cgi-bin/showsite.verotel?vercode=23268:9804000000707116
divxmovienow.com I got a bunch of players to make porn movies work!! What the hell is that about ?
@badrat1430 Can u plsease provide the link for software to decode divxmovienow.xom encoded file and also some others.
Thanks
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