Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

I wonder how many anti-torrent groups are doing this covertly.

Definitely a few. Media companies often send out infringement notices to ISPs to be forwarded to the user and I would guess this is how they get those IPs

My understanding is that mere swarm membership is sufficient, no need to host anything

That's my understanding of why private trackers ban folks who upload private .torrent files to public trackers because the infohash is a rendezvous point of private and public consumers via DHT

No tracker necessary, you can just use DHT: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/

It's kind of like walking into a room of people with full or partial copies of a copyrighted pie, but there's one person in the corner (the copyright holder or someone on their behalf) taking notes of everyone who comes and asks for a slice.

huh, weirdly it has stuff I did download and stuff I didn't download within minutes of each other ... should I be worried?

Stop using DHT and/or public trackers and you will be safe. They scan public trackers and the DHT network.

Use a VPN? Like a public one. Mullvad recommended.

>Stop using DHT and/or public trackers a

Public trackers are the only trackers most of us can reasonably use. He should get a VPN.

private trackers and warez groups are the plentiful (IPTorrents, Speed, etc) if you are a good seeder and can maintain good ratios. anyone using a public tracker in 2025 deserves anything their ISP catches them doing imo.

public trackers and torrent sites are also just 90% malware and RATs.

Sorry, should have been more specific - I don't care if people know what I downloaded - I just wonder how stuff I definitely didn't download is attributed to my IP address. Can't be that my dynamic IP address changed, because of the small time between stuff I did download and stuff I didn't. So then, is the scanner wrong, or do I have rouge device(s) on my network?

> anyone using a public tracker in 2025 deserves anything their ISP catches them doing imo.

Or you could just use a VPN, which you probably should for private trackers too anyway.

>private trackers and warez groups are the plentiful (

Sure. It combines all the fun of pledge week with a fraternity with the wrong-headed attitudes that became part of the culture when ftp servers were the height of technology. And you just have to schedule an interview and learn the secret knock/handshake. Don't ever invite anyone, because if they're the wrong type, you get banned for their behavior too.

>public trackers and torrent sites are also just 90% malware and RATs.

It's an mkv file. Don't double click exes.

Many trackers will add dummy data to prevent profiling. There is no validation to claims. It’s nice to look at, but not reliable.

When I moved out of my apartment I needed to transfer the Comcast account to my roommate. In the process of logging into their web dashboard for the first time since I'd started the service, I found out I had an @comcast.com type email address, apparently registered for me. The webmail UI indicated I had thousands of unread emails. I was curious what kind of spam gets sent to an email address that's so far as I'm aware never out on the internet anywhere, so popped it open.

Thousands of DMCA requests. Full filenames. Over the course of a year they had apparently notified Comcast of thousands of alleged violations, and nothing more than an email ever came of it.

Impossible to know which roommate was allegedly torrenting files of course. Or perhaps people visiting using our wifi. Who knows!

it is my understanding that some private trackers dont allow you to use VPNs or risk a ban

Interestingly they put the infohash of the show in the URL. So one can use that website to pick which show to download just by using the hash + DHT

Edit: Nope I'm wrong, different type of hash it seems...