Torrent Site Proxies are Slandered with Suspicious Ads and Malware

Torrentfreak.com reported on 6th August, 2015 quoting a warning of security experts as saying "new research reveals that torrent site proxies, which are often used to access blocked sites, are widespread with malware and suspicious ads. More than 99% were found to insert their own code from a sample of over 6,000 sites."

Ibtimes.com published news on 7th August, 2015 quoting Gabor Szathmari, a British security researcher, as saying "proxy sites will help users access their favorite torrent site but not without first subjecting them to advertisements loaded with viruses. Operators of proxy site and torrent sites, which they leech off, are often paid to broadcast these ads. If genuine websites can not host these vague ads, then logically sites which operate in a legal gray area will perhaps agree to take a paycheck instead."

Szathmari added that the Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrent, Kick Torrents and other major piracy players have become aware of the issue and began blocking infamous proxy and mirror sites.

Torrentfreak.com published a report on 6th August, 2015 quoting Szathmari as saying "99.7 of the tested torrent mirrors are inserting additional JavaScript into the web browsing traffic and most of these scripts serve content with malicious intent like malware and click-fraud."

The researcher says that several researched proxies are suspicious because they use code which is either complicated or has a lot of random redirects. These scripts pretty much use the proxyads.net domain name.

The team of ExtraTorrent said that it is a serious thing about malware and they have been fighting against it for a long time.

In the meantime, the Kicka**Torrents team inform their users not to provide their details to proxy websites because they can be misused and hacked.

The clear solution for troubled downloaders is to simply avoid all proxy and mirror sites because sometimes they might be tempting. However, actual torrent sites are not much better: The Pirate Bay has tolerated years of criticism for ads which redirect users to infamous phishing sites that is visible as online sex dens. Even Popcorn Time, the crowned successor to conventionally shady pirate sites, has been forced to consider security errors.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/20/2015