Tracker’s Invites Being Offered Through Facebook = Facepalm
February 02, 10 by sharky 7,861 viewsToday, FSF received what could be interpreted as an alarming email; one private tracker in particular is offering the opportunity for Facebook members to request invites through their tracker’s official Facebook page. At first glance this plan seemed innovative & unique - but is all this really a good idea? Our hunch is that it’s probably not in anyone’s best interest to connect a Facebook account to a private tracker. But what do we know? Reader feedback on this is encouraged, but we’ll outline some key points.
A verified admin (the sysop?) from Movie-Torrentz.com contacted FileShareFreak with the message below.
Subject: Private Movie-Torrentz Site Invites Handed out on facebook.
We are handing out invites if they request them on our facebook account:
http://www.facebook.com/MovieTorrentz
Our site as recently grown with a max increase of big release groups such as fxg, noir, release-lounge, bluelady.
We are a quality movie, tv, bluray & mp4 torrent site.
Regards,
With an Alexa Rank of 159,637 - Movie-Torrentz certainly has a decent following; this is no "unknown tracker". Personally I know very little about this site since I don’t have an account there (registration is currently closed), nor could I find a tracker review (either public or private).
But I know a thing or two about Facebook. Adding other/new members as friends can easily expose your own Facebook profile to their friends, and so on. This networking phenomenon for friends-of-friends can become amazingly wide-reaching in no time at all - which is also why it’s so popular. But in reference to torrents, P2P and the sharing of copyrighted content - it’s probably not such a great idea.
Here’s our take on it:
• It’s unknown whether or not potential invitees need to make Movie-Torrentz a ‘friend’ before being able to request an invite - perhaps this transaction can be accomplished just by sending a message to them. Either way you’ll still need to be logged in to your Facebook account, though. Read on…
• If you’re accustomed to logging into your personal Facebook page whereby you’ve used your real name on the profile - and many people do just this (to be available to that long-lost high school buddy or ex-boy/girlfriend) you might want to rethink using Facebook to request an invite to a tracker. Then again…
• Even if you don’t use your real name on the Facebook account, you still may be (and likely are) exposing your Facebook friends & family to the Movie-Torrentz network. Not everyone uses the same levels of security as you do. And Movie-Torrentz has an impressive collection of friends…
• Movie-Torrentz presently has 432 friends, where you can add any/all of them to your own Facebook network. To me this sounds like easy bait for MAFIAA who can now infiltrate a simple Facebook profile without even joining the tracker. But wait, there’s more: they can also amass even more evidence by requesting an invite to the tracker (and thus obtain IPs from the torrents), as well as connect Facebook profiles. Even some of Movie-Torrentz’ torrents are hosted on public trackers…
• Public trackers - the last thing you want to do is make it easily known to the connection between your Facebook profile and public torrents. IP address ‘dragnetting’ is much more popular on public torrents rather than private - but either way it can be followed back to profiles on Facebook where real identities can be matched to the IPs in the torrents. Surely evidence like this would be much more substantial in a court-of-law; whereby the bad guys have your Facebook profile, your friends list, as well as your IP address and probably the resources to find out your real name.
Call me nuts, even call me paranoid - but don’t call me stupid. All this smacks of an easy-peasy honeypot - probably one that Movie-Torrentz didn’t intentionally intend to create, but did nonetheless without some proper hindsight.
Trackers, if you want to do something funky - offer temporary "open signups" posted through Twitter once in a while. Torrentleech twitter did this very recently for just a few hours, but we missed the gig on publishing that (damn you w00t <3 - gone). 
Again, comments are more than welcome. It’d be great to read about what others opine in regards to Facebook & torrents.
©2007-2010 • 
01 • sanjid Says: 02.02.10 at 11:55 pm
Ahahaha, fail.
02 • LMNOP Says: 02.02.10 at 11:58 pm
what a fail, major bait for anti p2p
03 • wowowoow Says: 03.02.10 at 12:45 am
wowowooww, another dumbass tracker doing dumbass shit, really? facebook invites? you fuckin clowns, please go back to limewire.
04 • dsadasdk Says: 03.02.10 at 1:04 am
This is way old…I myself got invited to IPT,BWT,BitGamer,ptp etc from orkut communities.
05 • Tom Says: 03.02.10 at 1:37 am
What kind of fucking MORON would actually sign up? What the FUCK.
06 • oliver Says: 03.02.10 at 1:57 am
dragnetting sounds like a likely option. if facebook allows this to continue, it will probably be only to gather information.
-=personal advice: keep your downloading habits insulated from your real identity, neo.=-
07 • RAWR Says: 03.02.10 at 3:45 am
This:
-=personal advice: keep your downloading habits insulated from your real identity=-
08 • omfg Says: 03.02.10 at 4:01 am
ultra fail ;p just a new way to sort out the idiots
09 • confused Says: 03.02.10 at 4:07 am
One word for this move by movietorrentz : nonsense
010 • ksauron Says: 03.02.10 at 4:53 am
Want RIAA and MPAA suing your arse?
Stay away from such ‘unwanted innovations’.
and you’re welcome.
011 • frylock Says: 03.02.10 at 7:50 am
ha ha ha ha fuck up you ass hole
etiv rocks
012 • cpx Says: 03.02.10 at 8:31 am
luuulz, nice FAIL
Hope they’ll be banned from the net soon.
013 • trza Says: 03.02.10 at 9:52 am
no thanks, bad idea..private = private
facebook != private
014 • Alex0007 Says: 03.02.10 at 9:54 am
xDD
015 • Sudo Says: 03.02.10 at 9:57 am
Great, more ways to expose yourself to scam artists, RIAA, MPAA, and Facebook employees snooping through profiles on the job.
But this is also a great way to purge all the morons in our society for revealing their entire identities on the most popular teenage social networking site on the planet called Facebook.
016 • Yocto Says: 03.02.10 at 10:08 am
This is my Idea.
Global Biatch!
017 • Yocto Says: 03.02.10 at 11:40 am
And if you don’t get the invite, you can buy one from me..
018 • ETIV DUP WANT Says: 03.02.10 at 11:41 am
epic fail
if you have one.. plz email it to be..
019 • sciencelover Says: 03.02.10 at 1:11 pm
what happened to ScL?
020 • kermit cintron Says: 03.02.10 at 2:07 pm
This is without a doubt a honeypot for the idiots who fall for this.
021 • ratioproof Says: 03.02.10 at 8:26 pm
http://www.ratioproof.us/
COME TO NEW INVITE TRADING SITE WE SECURE YOUR IDENTITY
022 • NiNE Says: 03.02.10 at 10:00 pm
I honestly think those guys are retarded, first of all, hence the word “private” tracker, if you’re going to advertise your tracker like that and give out the invites freely, well then why even call yourselves a private tracker? Eventually your going to end up with another Demonoid type crap site, that is if you even last that long…
STAFF EDIT: Stop using “nimp” for your URL in the comment; this will only result in the comment being sent to moderation or blocked entirely.
023 • thepirategay Says: 04.02.10 at 6:35 am
hey moron why are u dragging etiv.in site to this fiasco asshole STFU
024 • Jim Mason Says: 04.02.10 at 5:02 pm
Amazing, right when I thought Facebook couldnt get any better! LOL
025 • Nutman Says: 04.02.10 at 8:46 pm
I personally feel you’re probably being to paranoid. I understand the points you’re making in the article though. MPAA are already members of every private torrent site under the sun. I’m sure they already belong to this site as well.
026 • PirateGuru Says: 06.02.10 at 7:58 am
LOL … Get a Life ..
iam gonna watch out all those signed user’s butt’s coz i might eventually find some shoe prints of MPAA and RIAA
027 • RandomGuy Says: 07.02.10 at 3:10 pm
I really hope the staff read this and realize the obvious security risks before its too late
028 • Zakk Says: 17.02.10 at 10:45 pm
@dsadasdk:
Thats because you are a fucking Brazilian moron. Stupid, think about security.
029 • MR-E Says: 23.03.10 at 12:30 pm
fxg, noir, release-lounge, bluelady. these releasers/encoders release all over the place not just here this is probably one of the last places it gets to plus release-lounge is a site itself why would you download elsewhere? also i know that noir and bluelady release on release-lounge.com also with other well known releasers/encoders and you do not have to be invited lol