this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Ko-Fi Liberapay
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Hi, I was wondering how they do this and if there is a way to "cheat" the amount of data you are downloading or seeding.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (7 children)

You have a unique "passkey" in the torrent that you download, and the tracker won't let you connect without it. I wouldn't try to cheat it, or you'll likely end up banned. Trackers have scripts to detect tampering.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The passkey is also why you shouldn’t share torrent files.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wait, you mean the *.torrent file, right?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes! Private sites’ .torrent and magnet links know who you are so they can track your ratio.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Alright, for a moment I thought you meant the actual files I download

That wouldn't make sense tho

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

My fault. Sorry for the panic!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Additionally magnet links. The torrent files and magnet links (which are equivalent) need to have your user key in them not only to track your ratio but just to make sure you're a member of the tracker.

In other contexts this kind of user tracking is called a session key and using someone else's torrent file is called a replay attack or a session hijack.

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