Why Do People Believe Weird Things... Confirmation Bias

researchkitty

researchkitty

Well-Known Member
I've used thepiratebay.org for at least FIVE YEARS. Top 100 movies, download all of them. Top 100 ebooks, get every collection! Top 10 tv shows dont like them too much. :)

What are all of you talking about viruses and such on thepiratebay.org? That's what COMMENTS are for, that's what VIRUS SCANNERS are for, and that's why you download .avi/.wmv/.mkv and not a bunch of rar files for a movie. Anyone with filename knowledge can download safely.

I've downloaded 2 or 3 trojans from TPB. Microsoft Security Essentials catches each one. And its free! :) Every time it was for a newer release of an Adobe product (Master Suite, CS5, etc...) and the torrent always had comments and negative ratings each time.

So................. what else did the MPAA scare you into believing with torrents?

1.) utorrent.com (Download & Install)
2.) Download/install Microsoft Security Essentials, set to auto update
3.) thepiratebay.org and download anything you want safely!
 
guy incognito

guy incognito

Well-Known Member
researchkitty said:
I've used thepiratebay.org for at least FIVE YEARS. Top 100 movies, download all of them. Top 100 ebooks, get every collection! Top 10 tv shows dont like them too much. :)

What are all of you talking about viruses and such on thepiratebay.org? That's what COMMENTS are for, that's what VIRUS SCANNERS are for, and that's why you download .avi/.wmv/.mkv and not a bunch of rar files for a movie. Anyone with filename knowledge can download safely.

I've downloaded 2 or 3 trojans from TPB. Microsoft Security Essentials catches each one. And its free! :) Every time it was for a newer release of an Adobe product (Master Suite, CS5, etc...) and the torrent always had comments and negative ratings each time.

So................. what else did the MPAA scare you into believing with torrents?

1.) utorrent.com (Download & Install)
2.) Download/install Microsoft Security Essentials, set to auto update
3.) thepiratebay.org and download anything you want safely!
Click to expand...

The torrents are safe, it's the site itself that is unsafe. I have been infected multiple times simply from visiting the site, even with anti-virus software running and using firefox with noscript installed. It is the only site that has personally infected me that I can ever remember, and it happened on multiple occasions to me, and multiple ocassions to friends and coworkers. Usually I blame people getting viruses on their own ignorance and not understanding how to protect themselves, but not in the cases with thepiratebay. They host hijacking software and even preventative measures did not stop it from infecting me. I am sure others have been infected, and they may not have even known it was tpb. The first 2 times I had a variety of things going on on my computer so I couldn't say with certainty that it was tpb, but the 3rd time it was for sure, even through AVG, spybot, and noscript on firefox.

There are plenty of other places to get your torrents that do not use advertisers with malicious intent. I use demonoid.me and isohunt.com.
 
Heisenberg

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
guy incognito said:
The torrents are safe, it's the site itself that is unsafe. I have been infected multiple times simply from visiting the site, even with anti-virus software running and using firefox with noscript installed. It is the only site that has personally infected me that I can ever remember, and it happened on multiple occasions to me, and multiple ocassions to friends and coworkers. Usually I blame people getting viruses on their own ignorance and not understanding how to protect themselves, but not in the cases with thepiratebay. They host hijacking software and even preventative measures did not stop it from infecting me. I am sure others have been infected, and they may not have even known it was tpb. The first 2 times I had a variety of things going on on my computer so I couldn't say with certainty that it was tpb, but the 3rd time it was for sure, even through AVG, spybot, and noscript on firefox.

There are plenty of other places to get your torrents that do not use advertisers with malicious intent. I use demonoid.me and isohunt.com.
Click to expand...
As usual, Guy and Kitty are both correct, just not on the same page. :) I love the PB as an organization and thier attitude, but the site itself is rather second rate. Too many dead torrents that still show seeds, dead trackers, ect and yea shady advertisers. I don't seem to have this problem with isohunt. I realize neither site controls the seeds or trackers, but isohunt seems to more accurately reflect a torrents true state.
 
researchkitty

researchkitty

Well-Known Member
guy incognito said:
The torrents are safe, it's the site itself that is unsafe. I have been infected multiple times simply from visiting the site, even with anti-virus software running and using firefox with noscript installed. It is the only site that has personally infected me that I can ever remember, and it happened on multiple occasions to me, and multiple ocassions to friends and coworkers. Usually I blame people getting viruses on their own ignorance and not understanding how to protect themselves, but not in the cases with thepiratebay. They host hijacking software and even preventative measures did not stop it from infecting me. I am sure others have been infected, and they may not have even known it was tpb. The first 2 times I had a variety of things going on on my computer so I couldn't say with certainty that it was tpb, but the 3rd time it was for sure, even through AVG, spybot, and noscript on firefox.

There are plenty of other places to get your torrents that do not use advertisers with malicious intent. I use demonoid.me and isohunt.com.
Click to expand...
There is no such thing as a torrent website that you go and "automatically" get infected. Thepiratebay.org is #86 on the Top 100 visited websites globally. It cant be that popular and "automatically infect" people. That's ridiculous.

Demonoid and isohunt are simply torrent sites, just like thepiratebay.org.

You're comparing ice cream to ice cream.

Now your objection isnt the torrents itself, but the website on which to download them from. I cant help you with your logic there man! :)
 
Heisenberg

Heisenberg

Well-Known Member
http://www.searchcowboys.com/google/414 (2009)

TorrentFreak talked to Peter Sunde to find out what was going on. He said at the time they didn't have any idea what was causing the problems. The idea is that it's caused by ads from third parties.

Two pages out of 699 tested resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed with 68 scripts trying to access the computer.

It seems as if the problem has been solved now.
Click to expand...
http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/9/13/pirate-bay-cracked-spread-malware/ (2010)

Visitors to the site who aren't running a background virus scanner or who don't use browsers that check Google's list of 'bad' sites are likely to have been exposed to a variety of nasty malware, none of which was directly hosted on The Pirate Bay but instead held on the cracked advertising server.

While the site is currently still serving infected adverts, a spokesman for The Pirate Bay has confirmed that all issues should be resolved within the next few hours
Click to expand...
Looks like the problem comes and goes. I see similar articles dated for different months starting in 09.
 
researchkitty

researchkitty

Well-Known Member
Heisenberg said:
http://www.searchcowboys.com/google/414 (2009)

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/9/13/pirate-bay-cracked-spread-malware/ (2010)

Looks like the problem comes and goes. I see similar articles dated for different months starting in 09.
Click to expand...
That's called browser exploits. Its not a trojan or a virus, while they could install one. NO WEBSITE is safe from them! You are just SINGLING OUT the #86 website on the Internet. It can happen to Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Facebook if it can happen to thepiratebay.org.
 
guy incognito

guy incognito

Well-Known Member
researchkitty said:
That's called browser exploits. Its not a trojan or a virus, while they could install one. NO WEBSITE is safe from them! You are just SINGLING OUT the #86 website on the Internet. It can happen to Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Facebook if it can happen to thepiratebay.org.
Click to expand...
Browser exploits that hijack your browser and reduce functionality of the entire computer by not allowing you bring up task manager or any other administrative task that would help rid yourself of the problem. It ended up being easier to reformat my OS partition and reinstall xp. As far as I am concerned this is no less intrusive than any trojan or a virus; The only thing that could have been worse would be if it spread the infection to other computers which it did not. I don't use ie. I used firefox with noscript running and avg anti-virus and spybot s&d. It got through those preventative measures several times on a couple of my own computers, and several times on other peoples computers I know.

It wasn't an isolated incident either, it happened many many times, all from tpb. Meanwhile none of the thousands of other websites I visited infected me even a single time. Other websites screen advertisers and keep malicious code out of their ads. I don't think it is worth the risk to use tpb when I can find everything I need on safer sites.
 
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