A Few "golden Guidelines" For Those New To Private Trackers

A Few "Golden Guidelines" For Those New To Private Trackers



I was inspired to write this article after the events by the.communicator in his last blog article, and how some commenters note it isn't obvious what the basic rules are for those new to private trackers, especially if they aren't even members of private trackers as yet. Now most of my blog articles have been aimed at the bulk of our members, who are "Intermediate Torrent Users," but this article is for the beginners. But if you're not a beginner feel free to read and add your own thoughts.

A private tracker is more than a website to go to get your torrenting needs. It is a private organization made up of members, and by necessity it is exclusive and choosy about who becomes and stays a member. A private tracker runs by rules which are different from public trackers, or other online communities such as forums or message boards. Because of their nature, "security" is of utmost importance. When they say "security," they mean they can't let in members who will not be in the interest of the place. Obviously the most dangerous would be any group which would want to harm it (Anti-P2P groups or government agencies), or malicious users (spammers and scammers). Lower down but still undesirable are the traders, cheaters, dupe account makers and collectors. Discussing why trading, cheating, dupe account making and collecting is bad is an entire blog article by itself, but let's just say traders, cheaters, dupers, and collectors don't join trackers in the spirit of "sharing is caring." For the most part, such "bad users" are selfish individuals who are only looking out for themselves and their actions benefit no one by themselves. (Although I fail to see the benefit of "inflating your E-Peen" by being a member of a tracker that is hard to get into.)

So in order to maintain the security and integrity of private trackers, let me first address account sharing. Private trackers don't want you to share your account with anyone. If a friend is interested in what's at the tracker, you can invite him or her, or give your friend what you've downloaded on their behalf. (Don't let them log in using your account name and password, and don't let them download anything, ESPECIALLY if they are using a different computer than yours.) The problem here is that you could end up sharing your account with a "bad user" who would steal your account by changing the password, or trade it away for another tracker account. In addition, if you and the other person end up downloading the same torrent, you would be "uploading to yourself" which constitutes ratio cheating. Note if you share your account with someone who lives far away, the sudden jump in IP addresses when the other person logs in will trigger an alarm and your account will get disabled. Private tracker staff are weary of people using the excuse "I was hacked" so don't use it as an excuse if you are caught. Plus even if your account was hacked because of a weak password tracker staff may not give you your account back. So please use strong passwords and make them all different across your trackers.

The next issue is giving your account away to someone else or taking over someone's account. Again trackers are worried about "bad users" taking over the account of a "good user" when this happens. (Note you cease to become a good user if you give away your account.) Another problem I see is if you have a lot of upload, the person you give it to might be tempted to just hit and run on torrents and burn up your upload, and not want to seed.

The last issue involves invite "giveaways," and requests on forums such as an invite forum. My definition of an invite forum is a forum that is primarily dedicated to getting people invites to private trackers that they desire to get into. Usually such a forum will have the word "Invite" in its name. Someone who is not on any private trackers might go to Google to find out how to get an invite to private trackers and will often find links to these forums. Here's the scoop on these places. Many private trackers absolutely despise these places. They will be suspicious of anyone who is active at these places. Why? Because they provide ample opportunity for "bad users" to get into their trackers. Let me get into why. Invites given to private tracker members are to be given out to people you know and trust, and to be given to people you think will be a good member of the tracker. Under no circumstances should they be given to a stranger. At these invite forums, all too often the invites are given to people that are shady characters because the inviter didn't know them well. I will also add at some of these invite forums, a measure of your "worthiness" there is your "Rep," which is earned by giving out invites. So a member of an invite forum might be tempted to build his "Rep" by haphazardly giving out his invites and not being cautious about it.

So, in response, trackers will often have a rule that you can't give out invites on forums. (including ours) They will say anyone who does this will get banned, and anyone who gets an invite from a forum will get banned. In response, the more unscrupulous invite forums will try to get around these rules by asking their members to use different nicknames from their trackers and do everything they can to hide their activity from trackers. I will note that these forums will ban anyone who "snitches" on them to trackers. Now private trackers will respond by infiltrating these forums to try to root out members doing illegal giveaways on these forums and banning the invite trees. Unfortunately an "innocent bystander" who would get hurt by this is someone who is new to private trackers and accepts an invite from the guy doing the illegal giveaway. The guy who accepted the invite would not know it was against the tracker rules because he is not a member of the tracker and his invite forum doesn't try to discourage these types of "giveaways." So anyone reading this article beware - make sure your inviter is someone reputable in the torrent world and is honest with discussing the tracker's rules with you. Again, if a tracker says "do not giveaway invites to our tracker on a forum" and if your inviter does just that, he stops becoming a "good user."

So what's the "proper" way of getting an invite? One would be official recruitment by tracker staff (assuming the thread at the forum or tracker is truly by a tracker staff member and not an imposter). Tracker staff have tools to find out if a user has been "in trouble" elsewhere, whereas a regular user with an invite doesn't have such "tools," so an official recruitment is safer for the trackers to get good members. The other would be in a Power User section of a tracker (assuming a tracker has an invite section). It is thought that if you make Power User at a tracker you've proven yourself as a "good user." (I'd still make sure you got to know the person who you invite or get an invite from.) The main difference between this type of invite offer and one at an invite forum is that if someone getting an invite at a tracker ends up being a "bad user," his IP address and e-mail address will be known to the tracker and such information can be quickly distributed to other trackers to quickly put the person on a global ban list. Remember an invite forum will make a point to obscure its members' identities from trackers.

I'll end with a little plug for TPS. At TPS our invite section is a small part of what we are, and if any tracker staff contacts us and requests no requests or invite offers at TPS, we will comply and add the tracker to our "No Movement List." In exchange we get respected by most trackers and no one at TPS needs to worry the being a TPS member will hurt their reputation at their trackers. Indeed many tracker staff are members of TPS themselves and we have nothing to hide from them. Similarly, TPS offers ample opportunity for active new members to meet the established members, befriend them and then possibly getting the invites they want after earning the trust of the established members. The invite offers in these situations are done the "right" way - between two people who know each other, and in private. ​