TorrentSpam: Report Fake and Malware Ridden Torrents
Written by Ernesto on August 04, 2007The popularity of BitTorrent also has its downsides. Over the past months we reported about fake torrents, torrents that force you to download malware, and torrents that spy on your download behavior. TorrentSpam is a new service that allows you to report such scams, and clean up BitTorrent sites, bit by bit.
Unfortunately there still is a lot of torrent spam on most BitTorrent sites. Some torrents are uploaded by anti-piracy outfits that try to trace your IP. Others are from people that force you to download some shady video player to play the file you just downloaded. This video player (e.g. 3wPlayer) is of course filled with malware that infects your computer.
A good way to check whether a torrent is legit or not is by looking at the comments. If people found the torrent to be fake, it will probably reported there. But up until now there was no central database for checking fake and spam torrents - TorrentSpam is trying to fill this gap. A search for the torrent name on TorrentSpam will return a list of torrents, and the score each torrent has indicates how likely it is that this torrent is actually SPAM.
Some administrators of BitTorrent sites (not all of them) already spend hours every day removing and blocking these fake or malware ridden torrents, but it is nearly impossible to have a 100% clean site at all times.
TorrentSpam will be really useful if admins of BitTorrent sites have access to their database, something that will happen in the near future. The site is currently working on an API section so all torrent sites can utilize TorrentSpam. In the meantime they obviously need you to fill (and check) the database.
Or as the admin of TorrentSpam puts it: “The more reported torrents the better the P2P experience! By letting people know of invalid torrents, the less data will be jamming the networks.”
Previously: Xtorrent Gets New UI, Selective Downloading
Next: MPAA: Damage Caused By Uploader Can’t Be Measured in Money. Now Give Us Money
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The problem with relying on the comments alone is you do not know that some of the comments are plants to make you think that the torrent is good. I think torrentspam may be on to something.
If you can’t trust comments left by the public, then you can’t trust this site that allows anyone to report fake stuff.
Unlike the reports left on torrentspam though, comments on the actual site can be pulled if they are wrong.
They also have a better chance of having bad torrents removed.
what a load of BS:
that very site you link to torrentspam.com is full of the zlob trojan downloader/wareout/dns changer. forums>porn> click on a pix.
you will need to download a “codec” package to view the video. either its all BS (making p2p safe) or the admin’s are fast asleep.
I did not get a spyware torrent but I did download a torrent today that when I tried to open it it said that it was locked and I have to go to torrentpassword.org. After everything I read, this was a rouge torrent also. Sad too because it took me all day to download the torrent. Hell, there were a lot of people fooled by this one, there were over a 100 ppl downloading the torrent when I decided to dl it.
Just downloaded from mininova.org tvshow Prison.Break.S03E14.avi. VLC played it requesting for DivoCodec to continue!
Wikipedia says it’s a trojan virus!
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