Thread: Spotting a Scammer or Cheater

Also, using TinEye makes it easy to see if the proof is stolen and then photoshopped.

I read this entire post and some of the posts are really eye opening. However one thing I wanted to ask was the presense of seedboxes and RDP's. As I stated in my intro, my home upload speed is pretty crappy so I use seedboxes to maintain great ratios.

It would obviously not be mathematically possible with my insanely slow home upload speed. So how does odd ratios really identify a cheater in that such cases. Would that be a case of false positive?

Please excuse my stirring up a storm in a water glass here,

But to pick out just one of the "tips" for small town detectives: a Photoshop entry in an image header doesn't prove squat. First of all, according to the rules, we are supposed to edit most of the images before uploading them, e.g. decimal digits and the user name on trackers or the like. Consequently, sounding an alarm because images may have been edited are somewhat pointless. Second, most people get used to their favourite software and use it for any and every related task, no matter whether the task is small or big. Nobody in their right mind would choose Paint over Photoshop as a general image editor and many people forget about the existence of those primitive and rudimentary tools in the 'Accessories' subfolder altogether. Therefore, whatever software somebody is accustomed to working with will be opened, sometimes for reasons as simple as the mime type, i.e. the association of the default application that opens all files with a particular extension.

Now I humbly beg the reader's pardon for what will certainly cause an outcry, but somebody has to break it to people sooner or later: the whole hype about that little number called "ratio" has pretty much become obsolete from a technical standpoint. While it may be "morally" unfair not to upload as much as we download, there is actually no shortage of seeding capacity any more, quite the opposite, especially on private trackers. Five years ago, when people were used to server => client transfers, many people did not realize that disconnecting after completing a file would leave others standing in the rain. Not all of them are bad guys, though, and by now, most people have become familiar with P2P concepts and do the right thing. On private trackers that grant some sort of "welcome" support to new members (freeleech, start-up credit, grace period, whatsoever), the percentage of hits & runs, leechers and similar abuses is approximately 10%; Demonoid has long ceased to count and care about ratio and most people still retain a reasonable ratio, and on entirely public trackers, the quota of foul apples is approximately 20% - 30%, depending on the nature of the content -- the more cultivated and civilized the material, the better is, on average, the behaviour of the people who seek it. Nota bene: we are merely talking ratio here, not duplicates, absence/presence of malware or the like. All these quality aspects are something that should rightfully be controlled. Helas, often people are so occupied by and fixated on ratio that those more important aspects of data interchange are neglected.

Reality shows that these days, if software is available on both, more people get more software quicker and more comfortably and hassle-free from public than from private trackers, because the upload capacity of 80% is more than sufficient to feed, pardon, seed to the 20% low-lives that deserve to be tarred and feathered. Not only do those upload during the time they download, too, but what really matters is the fact that there is enough seeding capacity available everywhere so that nobody suffers from leechers any more -- not really. Yes, moral outrage and a feeling à la "if grandpa had to boil horse hooves back in the day, why should the spoiled youth be better off", but nobody misses out on nothing because of leechers any more. Take hits & runs, for instance: sure, somebody with a slow connections might disconnect after having gotten a file when realizing that there must be a couple dozen seedboxes among the several hundred seeds for that torrent and that nobody is downloading from him anyway. In the logs and statistics this would show as a hit & run, but this is a case where absolutely nobody is hurt and no harm is done. On many private trackers that do not offer freeleeches or a time-based component of ratio, however, strictly insisting on ratios et al does definitely hinder the interchange of data, sometimes leading to a near stalemate:
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User [A] sees a new edition of a CAD suite uploaded by [B]. He would like to but cannot download it because his ratio does not permit it or would drop into the cellar if he got it, resulting in warnings, restrictions (even less download) or a ban. This means for user [B] that his software is not downloaded, so he himself is in danger of punishment, because he downloaded that CAD suite and now has the Black Peter on his hands. Since his own ratio is not good enough any longer, he cannot download the add-on pack for his CAD suite that he meant to get from [C] ...

Sound familiar? At the end of the day, all the freeleeches, golden torrents, special weekends, start-up credits, whathaveyou, are nothing else but half-hearted attempts to circumvent the flawed system, instead of admitting that the system is no longer serving its purpose. How would we react to a ratio system on television just because some people hack satellite receivers? If we hung up a painting, why would we care if eight or ten people look at it? If we leave our BitTorrent client running in the background while doing other tasks, does it really matter whether it sits there idly because ratio prevents interested potential 'customers' from downloading, or if some terrible, terrible person leeches the otherwise unused data?

Of course we need to beware of hitters and runners that abuse invitations, but that's only because the places we invite them too keep confusing the tools to enforce the system with the purpose of the system itself: file sharing is not about getting ratio, it's about getting files! If conditions for and the trading of invitations is considered a no, no, shabby sin, why aren't conditions for and trading of download for upload bandwidth, i.e. the trading of files instead of giving them freely? Ratio is a means to an end, not an end in itself, but looking at how many of the discussions on trackers circle around low ratios, "hijacked" ratios, restrictions/bans due to ratios, ratios, ratios, ratios, it is obvious that many people have lost that focus and distinction.

Yes, we must beware of cheaters and leechers, but only because the holy cow of ratio has become l'art pour l'art, the system for the system's sake, and because of another, also very debatable malpractice that would not stand in any court in the world: punishing the entire tree of invites for the wrongdoing of one leaf. A wrongdoing that, given the need to seed, is not really a wrongdoing at all, because it helps us to keep our ratios up. «Lord, please send me the cheaters, the hit & runs and leechers, make them download my software as I have downloaded it from others, and forgive them their low ratio as other sins have been forgiven to me, because my are the data, the files and the upload speed, here on this tracker like on the other one, amen». Unless inviter and invité both commit the same crime, forcing one to be the other's keeper is simply nonsense in a virtual world where the only evaluation can be a couple screenshots. In fact, it is counterproductive, because instead of pointing out an [@!###*!] to the moderators when realizing we fell for a cheater, the inviter now has an interest in offenders not being discovered. Speaking in terms of system theory, punishing the many who have neither influence nor power over the actions of the few is neither a fair nor a clever setup, especially when banning is so easy and no real harm is done by anyone to anybody.

Which brings us back to the impossibility of being our brother's keeper by merely basing our judgement on superficial indicators. For as long as trackers punish and ban not only offenders, but up to the seventh generation of predecessors and offspring, it might be necessary to do so, but if we really think about it, aren't those petty thieves worthy of our compassion? Just think about some poor parody of a pant-pissing punk, sitting there in the dark, wasting enrgy, work and time on editing scripts and pictures, just so he can close his BT client a couple hours earlier and jump onto the next file? How desperately addict must these compulsive-obsessive idiots be if they cannot think of anything better to do with their talents and time than waste it on circumventing a mechanism that runs by itself, without any interaction, peacefully shoveling the data upwards to others without any work or attention on our part? Those who have no real problems create them for themselves, don't they?

So let us light a candle for those petty and pathetic peabrains who, in their attempt to cheat others out of a few bytes or hours, do not realize that they only cheat themselves out of a friendly community as well as the chance to spend their resources on something far more redeeming than stealing scripts and painting pixels. And if one day we woke up and realized that we have so much bandwidth in excess that ratios are irrelevant and nowadays hinder the interchange of data rather than fostering it, they could not even hurt us any more -- and then we could spend our time on more interesting things than spotting cheaters.