Recognize Torrent Scams and Beat Them Down

The public torrent sites are filled with scams to install a virus onto your computer or to make money with fake password archives. These scams are around because malicious companies offer anywhere from ten cents to 1,35$ per infection. You can also be infected when you download music.





Music, video and picture torrents, often contain a link or a readme file. Sometimes the file looks real, but it can infect you too. If this is the case, you are dealing with an shortcut virus. A shortcut virus ends at '.lnk' and can execute dos-code. Shortcuts can have custom icons that looks like real folder,text files or MP3's. The only way to spot them is to see an arrow in the lower left corner.





Software is often bundled with this kind of spyware. When you encounter torrent virus,software there are way to check these software. Most of them are bundled with a free Microsoft tool called 'Iexpress'. If you have winrar installed then there is an option to debundle those files. This will leave you with clean executeable. Another alternative is to run this torrent virus inside a sandbox. This way, your real hard disk will not be affected.





The best way to prevent contraction a torrent virus, is to become a member of private torrent sites like demonoid dot com. The members have high quality standards. The tradeoff is that you will have to let torrent seed for some while before you close it. If you ratio drops to much, you will be seen as a leacher and get banned.





Even if you have done everything above, you will not be a one-hundred-percent-safe. That is why you will have to install good antispyware. Review on good products that have proven itself to remove infections in recent worm breakouts can be found at

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