Many people use torrents nowadays for sharing and downloading movies,software,ebooks etc.There are many clients like BitComet,BitTorrent,Utorrent available. There are many sites like pirate bay.org,btmon.com available.But there are many fake torrents right on net right now.Half the torrents are malware scams, like the WinZix. The ones that are more annoying, though are the ones where you have 700 MB of garbage data.
How do you spot a fake torrent?
Check the Comments first
Always check the Comments for whether the file is fake. The BitTorrent community consists of good guys and fake torrents are immediately pointed out in the comments section. And that’s why you should not download from sites that do not support comments.
If you encounter a fake torrent, notify that in the comments ASAP.. Also comment back on the legit torrent’s page assuring its quality.
Many sites also support reporting of fake torrents now (at least most major sites), using that option is a good idea, as that’ll get the torrent off the site faster. Using private or semi-private sites like Demonoid is also a good idea as they have better moderation. I’ve yet to see a fake torrent on Demonoid, but moderation’s pretty good on sites like The Pirate Bay, isoHunt or Mininova.
RAR/ZIP files
Reputed rippers never put their video files in RAR archives. It will always be a straight and clean AVI. If you see a movie torrent with the main file being a RAR, abort it immediately.This does not mean that RAR/ZIPs are not used at all in the community, they are used fairly often for software and games, usually if their sizes go beyond a gigabyte. Compressed archives are fairly safe for software and games, but definitely not for movies.
WMV files
Generally, the rippers dont keep their file in this format.If a file in this format is found then it may be suspicious torrent.It is preferable to download movie files with extension .avi,.mkv.
Suspicious Instructions
Many fake torrents will have files (especially HTML files) named “IMPORTANT – READ ME FIRST” or “READ THIS” or “UNRAR INSTRUCTIONS” etc. Firstly, most rippers put their info in an NFO file, with a minority doing TXT files. The HTML file is first indication something is wrong.
Secondly, rippers generally put information about the movie (running time, cast, synopsis etc.) in the NFO/TXT file first, in a systematic manner before their personal comments. This may be ignored by some rippers (especially casual rips of rare/obscure movies), but is something to check out all the same.
If the Readme file tells you that the file had to be compressed to RAR because of MPAA threats – that’s utter bull shit. Same goes if it tells you that you need special codecs, because these codecs are nothing but malware.
Password Protected
BitTorrent is all about freedom, and unless a torrent is private and meant to shared in a small, closed community, no torrent should be password protected. If you see anything about a password in the Readme, Title or Description, abort. Even if the Readme says “You may be asked for a password”, it means “You will be asked for a password.” This is a fake, a sham and needs to be discarded. Even if it is legit, do not seed Password Protected Torrents, just because they need to get the hell out of the Internet.
Screencaps
Most legit torrents have screenshots or links to screenshots in their descriptions these days. Checking is out is usually a good idea. While theoretically even fake torrents can have these (steal shots from trailers, promos), I’ve yet to see a fake torrent with screencaps.
Remember the general quality guide: CAM and TS releases will have poor video quality while DVDRips, Screeners and other releases will have high video quality.
Preview your Download
Many bittorent clients like bitcomet allows you to preview your downloads(if u are downloading audio or video file).So you can click on preview to see that half downloaded media file
Check the Release Date
Generally torrents for the application dont come up until it is released,unless it is leaked.The application is only uploaded into the torrent after it has been officially released.The release date can be checked on the sites like www.imdb.com
Avoid Certain Torrent Clients
Clients like BitLord,BitThief,Get-Torrent,TorrentQ,Torrent101,Bitroll should be avoided as they have earned a bad reputation for themselves for seeding malware ridden torrents.
Download from reputed torrent site
Try to download from reputed sites like piratebay.se,demoniod etc. To verify the veracity of the good quality torrent site, check its traffic ranking at www.alexa.com. Below are the alexa rank of few of the torrent websites.
Isohunt-,189-,torrentz-167,demoniod -608.
Alexa ranks the site based on the traffic received by the website.A site with better rank means that more people visit that site.It also implies that the site is popular and people trust that site.
"Full Downloads”, "Fulldls”
Stay away from any torrent result that has "Full Downloads”, "Fulldls”, etc. in the title as they are probably a Scam or Fake.
Use of Certain Blocking Software
Peerblock allows you to block certain IPs.So, you can block untrusted torrent sites.You can try peerblock at http://www.peerblock.com/
Check the fie size
Always check the file size when downloading the torrent files.I mean a movie file size cannot be 4 MB.
Stay away from these Bad Torrent sites
AskMu.com,cryptoguardian.com,downloads.torrentsu.com,DownloadTo.com,hdmi2.com,media-codec.com,mediaprovider.info,megazcodec.com,missing-codecs.com,PlayMP3z.biz,playon.domplayer.com,playon.play3w.com,seonomad.com,torrentm8.com,Spam site-help.com,torrentq.com,tvcodec.com,uploadvid.net,vidscentral.net,enjoyyourself.info,DirectGameKeys.com,spynova.org etc.
Check Infohash
Check info hash of every torrent at google.com,If infohash is not found then its a fake torrent.Infohash ensures that the torrent that we are downloading from is uncorrupted.The torrent is broken down and is downloaded from peers.Each piece of file has a hash associated with it, which can be compared to the hash which is re-calculated when we download the file.The torrent file , if not corrupt means that hash must match.
So Serve the community well and report bad torrents.Always download from reputed sites like isohunt,torrentz,demoniod etc.
