Well, first line for this article will be : Illegal, Illegal and Unethical

Some people completely go crazy without a single thought, and don’t care what they are doing to others for making money. Companies spend thousands of dollars for the development of any software, programmers spend hundreds of hours for developing their software and these ****** put those software on torrents in seconds, not even minutes to be redistributed unethically and illegally.

Personally these kind of torrent tools and websites offering torrents make me sick, I think we have come to a point where no company can save us from these kind of people downloading software illegally, and there are no set rules to be implemented, I remember we had very strict rules on our forums back in late 90’s and early 2000, where even person talking about illegal software or cracks was being banned, and now a simple Google query can find your software for free and without even spending 2 minutes. Bullshit !

Every single day companies have new products and on the same day that product is cracked and spread, they still make a lot out of it, but this effects small individuals who try their best to make a decent living by selling their small software but again these people kill their dreams by spreading it.

CPA and PPI Exploitation

Not only distributing software, but spreading viruses, spy-ware, Trojans and more. This is not the end, they also exploit the Affiliate programs and CPA offers (Cost Per Action) where they increase their revenue unethically and illegally. Here is how they do it, there are many Affiliate programs that offer you CPA (cost per action) and PPI (pay per install), in CPA offers, once a potential client completes/takes an action, for example the company wanted to fill a form and they pay you for that, that’s a CPA offer, CPA can be anything in which you ask someone to take action and the company will pay you, and the pay per lead can be between $3-$100 (depends). And PPI is pay per install, they give you a software link, where if someone downloads that software and installs, the company will pay you for that. Now what these blackhat illegal people do, there are hundreds of ways to exploit these affiliates programs, but the most commonly used are below.

Exploiting CPA Offers

First they find which torrent file is being downloaded the most, so simple pick a software, video, songs etc which is hit these days, they put it in the ZIP archive and password protect the file, now they create a readme.txt file which is not password protected, when someone downloads the file, they can only open the readme.txt file, which tells them to go to any specific URL where they will complete a form (a CPA offer) and upon completion the final word will be the password, now when someone has already downloaded a file of say 40MB, he will certainly go to that url and complete the CPA offer, once he competes the offer that blackhat person gets paid, and who cares about the password ? if that does not work, and if that password works, then that software will be infected with viruses, Trojans and spy-ware, PPI etc, thus they take advantage of that again and over again exploiting YOU.

Exploiting PPI Offers

What a blackhat person will do, is join a company that offers PPI (pay per install), they usually pay from something between $0.25 - $5 per install (that’s what I know, it can be more or less), after getting approved, they will again find the most downloaded or the hottest torrent file, they will download it, and then bind (combine) both EXE’s in one single exe, I mean e.g. the original software file was PPI-install.exe and any other hot software file was hot-software.exe they will combine these 2 files within 1 file, (I will not discuss how to do that, but its quite easy and even its already distributed with Windows XP, so that’s already in your computer), and then they rename that file to hot-software.exe and upload to the torrent, people are always looking for free stuff, they will download your file and install, while installation that PPI file will automatically be installed on their computer and hence the blackhat person will be paid for that installation. Most of the times people combine all these tactics into one single file, where you will have the readme.txt that will tell you to complete a CPA offer, then once you complete and unlock the file, you will have an exe file with PPI file embedded in it, and after installation you will be infected with a spy-ware and leak your personal information where these people will use your money and information for all their illegal activities, and search your computer for anything they want.

I would personally appeal to the readers to STOP using illegal software and STOP using torrents, this is not only polluting the internet but your own life and computer, be aware that there are hundreds of ways to search your computer and leak your private documents once you install a software and no Anti-Virus will ever detect it. Trust me, a simple programmer can write code in 10 minutes in which once you install their exe they have full control over your computer.

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