I’ll translate: “I find actions of the 1337x admins disappointing. Deleting my torrents causes confusion for the user base, and these actions reflect poorly on your character, suggesting pusillanimity and insufficient discretion when selecting a sexual partner.”
I wouldn't trust anything from a P2P site that purports to be:
A cracked game / application for desktop and mobile platforms. Maybe it's legit but assume it is malware.
A serial number generator. If you absolutely must run one of these do it from a throwaway VM, or via WINE emulation to mitigate what it might do.
An encrypted archive with a README. It's a scam designed to make people sign up to other scams to release a non-existent password.
A movie / audio with an extension such as .scr, .wma, .com, .exe etc. It's malware.
Movies, audio & books are generally safe providing they use a recognized extension - mp3, mp4, pdf, mkv, aac, flac, epub etc. Stuff that runs under emulation like console games is generally safe. I say "generally" because an exploit could still be crafted to escape a popular media player or emulator and cause actual harm to your computer.
All the ads and 3rd party scripts should be considered malicious too and should be erased with an adblocker, or even better use Tor.
So basically use some common sense and if you really want some game or app, just buy the damned thing or wait for it to go on sale.
/r/trackers (on the bad site I know) has a lot of info
For those who may be interested in getting into private trackers, you should start with Myanonamouse.net in my opinion. They do an interview on the irc which is easy and you can join that way https://www.myanonamouse.net/inviteapp.php
It is a tracker for ebooks/audiobooks/comics that is easy to maintain a ratio on (via their generous bonus point system) as long as you are a decent seeder.
Once you’re on the site for a few months you can access the invite forum which can get you access to other private trackers. Think of it like a ladder.
Torrentleech (a general private tracker) occasionally has open signups throughout the year.
At the risk of asking an incredibly stupid question, but if I only ever torrent video/audio, scan everything I download with defender, and only ever use a recently updated version of vlc, what's the risk?
I remember getting viruses in ye olden days, but afaik the main problem is malware now.
I know this is probably obvious to many people, but if a charitable soul could explain to me what a miner is and why the admins are involved in it, it would be very much appreciated. Also, explain like I am 5 if possible
I have seen multiple posts about the situation by now with various claims but no one seems to have actually looked into it so I have questions! Is it true that moderators defended the upload and silenced criticism, is it true that the crypto address in question can be linked to the sites admins and is it true that the same malware is all over the internet in countless releases? Not all of those are from this particular pist but if someone here knows the answers I would be happy to read them!
Before even worrying about the content of individual torrents people should worry about the sites themselves being full of ads, spyware and other garbage that generates revenue for shady people. There's a reason beyond just privacy that people use rss and magnet links. In an ideal scenario you never go to an actual torrent website.
I didn't grab it but I did notice 2 different uploads of baldurs gate were significantly different sizes. I don't know how much that matters but this miner thing wouldn't surprise me I guess.