Using Adsense to Fight Malicious BitTorrent Clients

Written by Ernesto on April 22, 2007 

Torrent101, Torrentq and Bitroll are three malware supported BitTorrent clients which are heavily advertised on BitTorrent sites. They try to lure naive users into downloading these clients wiith catchy phrases like “We use unique technology to increase the download speed of your torrents”. We decided to turn the tables around and advertised with malware warnings on their websites.

How? Well, we started to run Google Adwords campaigns on the Bitroll, Torrent101 and Torrentq websites. In just four days the ads were shown 20,000 times, the clickthrough rate was impressive, and the ads probably prevented more than one thousand people installing these malware-laden BitTorrent clients.

Of course these campaigns were just for “fun”. It was nice to turn their advertising strategy against them, and help some naive BitTorrent users along the way. However, the downside of it all is that they now make money off my ads, which allows them to advertise their crappy BitTorrent clients on other websites, so it’s not really an optimal solution.

Here’s an example of the TorrentFreak ad on the Torrent101 website. If people clicked the link, they were directed to this post about Torrent101.

torrent101 bitroll

Luckily, most BitTorrent site admins don’t allow ads for these shady clients on their sites. Brokep from The Pirate Bay said earlier “We’re getting a lot of email about people downloading torrent clients that are advertised on the site. Do not download them! We have put a ban for the ad companies to sell ads for these clients on our site.”, and the admins of mininova and btjunkie also banned all ads for these BitTorrent clients on their websites.

People need to be aware that these clients can seriously mess-up up your computer, and the Google adwords campaigns were a fun way to do this. I’m happy to see that Google search is giving a helping hand as well, for free.

Previously: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk16)

Next: The Pirate Bay: “It’s Coming!”

17 Responses

1 Apr 22, 2007 at 17:45 by Tubed

not bad, pretty funny seeing as how they probably don’t know about this. Hope they get peeved after seeing this lol

2 Apr 22, 2007 at 20:13 by horo

best for all torrent site owners to do is, and also this we at bitdig.com, that on each torrent info page, we are adding link to uTorrent, which we respect and know. This link say to user about trusted client.

3 Apr 22, 2007 at 20:46 by groovie

awesome

4 Apr 22, 2007 at 23:00 by Jasper van Weerd

great work,

sitenote: Mcafee warns me if I try to enter their sites.

5 Apr 22, 2007 at 23:10 by Ernesto

[quote comment="89035"]great work,

sitenote: Mcafee warns me if I try to enter their sites.[/quote]

That’s good to hear!
What kind of warning?

6 Apr 23, 2007 at 00:49 by Hmmm

link to uTorrent, which we respect and “know”

being uTorrent has been bought now and is proprietary, thinking maybe its trust should be re-earned. just my 2cents.

7 Apr 23, 2007 at 00:52 by jb

glad i found this website. torrentfreak will officially earn a spot on my mozilla rss toolbar.

8 Apr 23, 2007 at 08:48 by Jeremy2

There are so many rogue Torrent programs that sound so similar to each other I’m scared to try ANY of them. I’m sticking with my official emule (www.emule-project.net) thank you. If anyone can confirm that there’s a legit BT client (no malware of any kind on it) I’d give BT a try.

9 Apr 23, 2007 at 09:59 by Oni

Nice one and good work, ;)

10 Apr 23, 2007 at 11:59 by Blah

I checked torrent101 and they switched it from ads to public service announcements. You’ll need to convince google that your thing is a PSA (which might not be so hard)

11 Apr 23, 2007 at 13:14 by Bogaa

They tried to advertise on Meganova, we simply gave them a big fuck you. That’s how it is supposed to be!

12 Apr 23, 2007 at 13:33 by Paul

Some sites are even inviting the user to download these malware clients to get faster download speeds, like NewTorrents.info.

I think those sites are leading users on purpose to install malware in order to earn some money. Just boycott them !

13 Apr 23, 2007 at 22:30 by eBait

Jeremy2, the best BT client around is probably uTorrent. Just download it here: http://www.nsaneproductions.com/?request=2333430 or http://www.utorrent.com
(BTW, http://www.nsaneproductions.com is a great software portal ;))

14 Apr 25, 2007 at 06:29 by bad clients go to hell

That’s really funny!
I was wondering where are the FBI, Swat and all those bunches of saviors of digital rights when this happens?

The people behind those bad clients must be jailed! Oh, I forgot, I think they are RIAA and they are paying for it!

Sorry about the bad english, I hope someone can understand what I’m trying to say!

15 Apr 25, 2007 at 20:37 by joss

wow cool guys , respect you guys ! you have save many life’s

16 Apr 28, 2007 at 22:47 by Motorcycle Guy

Rofl the more sites that do this the more the click price will go up and the more money they’ll make.

17 Jan 11, 2008 at 19:36 by Google

I Think,Ä°t is very nice information…

Hitchhiker Nation

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