Third of Content On Popular BT Portals Are Fake

siliconbits writes "A study published by a group of researchers, most of them based in Europe, analysed the publishers of content on two major BitTorrent portals, Pirate Bay and MiniNova, and found out that almost a third of all files on the two sites were fake."

I sincerly hope

[Haedrian]

That this research didn't involve taking a random sample, and working out that 1/3rd is fake.

The strength of Bittorrent is that if there are:

1. Low seeds
2. Bad comments

Then its fake.

If you have a file with a few thousand seeders, then you can be sure that its real. Nobody is going to continue to seed a fake/virus ridden file unless its on purpose - but that requires a ton of resources.

And most admins will take down any files reported in that manner.

Re:Same ratio as /.

[Firkragg14]

Ive seen this news story a few times today on different sites and im as baffled as you. If im downling from somewhere like piratebay i tend to just sort by seeds and see which is popular then read the comments. Just because theres no automated way to weed out the fakes doesnt mean its impossible to find what your after since the crowd sourcing approach means that the best options tend to float to the top.

Re:I suggest

[localman57]

They don't have to be there long... only as long as it takes to type in a password or credit card number. My advice is to use multiple VMs, running linux. One for your naughty activities, and one for your trusted activities. Only use the trusted VM to do banking or personal information related stuff, only accessing trusted sites. And, as you say, wipe it periodically, potentially as often as every use.

Re:I suggest

[Anonymous Coward]

At some point isn't it easier to just buy the software?

Ever try to recover a lost product key from a vendor like Adobe? What if you don't like the way the program calls home for registration while you own it legitimately?