Thread: Spotting a Scammer or Cheater

Thanks for all the help. I just am concerned about one thing. In your post you said as for their profile links but I am not member of a lot of trackers. Can I ask moderators on this website to help me look in their tracker profile for me?

Trouble with Scammers and Cheaters is they will also read this and use it to cover their tracks - but profile links will weed out 99% of them but there's always that sneeky one

Originally Posted by JustJenna

Spotting a scammer isn't always easy but it can often be done if you're careful.

• First of all, before you open a giveaway spend some time getting to know the community. After a while, it becomes easy to see who is trusted and who is not. Do not automatically assume that because a person has the VIP gold bar that they are worthy of your trust. Remember anyone can donate on their first day here to buy access to the VIP forums. Make friends and ask for references.

• Second, don't give invites away easily or to the first person who asks. Carefully scrutinize each applicant's post history, site reputation, and manner of conducting themselves. Check out their iGiver - do they have a history of trading? In my experience, traders and cheaters go hand in hand. iGiver can also tell you if they have received an invite to the same tracker in the past. If they have, this is a MAJOR sign of scamming and you should not give them the invite. Most trackers insist on one account per lifetime. Abide by this.
  

• Third, examine their application thoroughly. Look for signs of shady Photoshop editing. Ask for profile links as well as ratio proofs. Look for any discrepancies or unusual numbers. Examine speed tests and compare them to upload numbers. Do the math. Cheaters often forget to crunch the numbers and that's how they get caught.

• Fourth, check out their profiles to see how long they've been a member at their current trackers. Are they claiming to have torrented for years but they've only been a member at their current trackers for under a month? This can indicate (but doesn't always) that they've been banned in the past and sneaked back in.

• Also, look at the taskbar of the proof they are offering. Are there shady icons? One of our members diligently looked up the icons associated with ratio cheating programs. See below for a handy image, showing you what to be on the lookout for. If any of these icons appear in a ratio proof, do NOT give the invite and contact a staff member immediately.
  

• And finally, go with your gut. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it
  

there are many ways to detect scamer if you know very good C/C++ and Perl language.You could create a script which detect a change about ratio status and download too.

by the way, may I know what is the type of the script that you are talking about?
It's easy to say but very hard to implement.

Just another tip. The trend I see with all ratio cheaters are their poor upload speeds as seen in their speedtest. People with a decent connection have no use for this software, really.

This probably will be a very naive question but why are they cheating and what are they scamming?. I get that they are cheating on their share ratio but, why bother? I've got a crappy upload speed and have to leave torrents open forever to get a decent ratio. I'm guessing that they are scamming an invite but why? Seems easy to me to share back.

this is great advice, I was actually considering myself harsh for refusing revtt invites in my GA because ratios weren't good enough and members had only been on the tracker a matter of weeks. After reading this, I see I was right to be selective :)

Originally Posted by bigdaddy56

This probably will be a very naive question but why are they cheating and what are they scamming?. I get that they are cheating on their share ratio but, why bother? I've got a crappy upload speed and have to leave torrents open forever to get a decent ratio. I'm guessing that they are scamming an invite but why? Seems easy to me to share back.

Scamming - because they want to get an invite to the tracker and most likely sell it
Cheating - they don't subscribe to the philosophy that you give back what you take..... it's called leeching :)
These people just want to hit and run as much as they possibly can

*another good point if you want to check if someone is a ratio cheater (and one that they sometimes forget):-
Have a look on their browser tab. Look for "sb-innovation" in their tabs. That is a cheating site, which tries to cheat and scams private trackers.

These idiots always get caught at one time or another.
Like the advice given here, you just have to be vigilant, and check everything.

Originally Posted by Gibbedy

this is great advice, I was actually considering myself harsh for refusing revtt invites in my GA because ratios weren't good enough and members had only been on the tracker a matter of weeks. After reading this, I see I was right to be selective :)

Thats the beauty of your GA. That it's YOUR GA and you can give YOUR invites to anyone YOU want. In the beginning I couldn't figure it out why some inviters were more strict than others for the same tracker. It's entirely up to the inviter. It's his GA so it's his rules period.