The 10 Best Ways to Get Banned From a Private Tracker

http://filesharefreak.com/2009/07/10/the-10-best-ways-to-get-banned-from-a-private-tracker

We’ve all been here before: attempted tologin to a private tracker account, only to get that dreadful ”LoginFailed! This account has been disabled” message. Drats, what wentwrong this time? It’s highly unlikely that tracker staff will have sentyou a PM explaining the situation - after all, you can’t log in tocheck. No email will be coming, either. Here’s a compilation of the topten most common reasons why you got banned from a private tracker, andhow to avoid it from happening to you.

**Inactivity (not loggingin).

** The number one reason for being banned on a private tracker is fornot using the account. The majority of trackers have an automatedpruning system in place to clear out unused accounts to make room fornew ones, or for general housecleaning. You’ll need to loginto youraccount once in a while - as a rule this is usually every 6 weeks (42days) but this is often lower and varies from tracker to tracker. Besure to read each tracker’s individual FAQ/Rules to clarify. Sometrackers may notify you via email if you haven’t logged in for awhile(RevTT is one of the good guys and sends anemail notification warning that the account will be deleted in a fewdays unless you login). It’s also important to note that havingtorrents that are seeding is not the same thing as logging in. Activityon the tracker and activity on the website are entirely two separateentities.

**Solutions:

**

• • Remember to login. Keep your private tracker accounts organized,either through web bookmarks or even a .txt file should do the trick.
• • Park your account. If you’re going away for an extended amount oftime, try to park your account - this will keep it marked as activeeven if you don’t login.
• • Donate, or transcend in user class. When pruning inactive accounts,many trackers will offer immunity to VIPs or those who’ve donated, oreven those whom are of high user class. Low (regular) user classes aremore susceptible to purging and are the first to be dropped.

**Duplicate Accounts.

** Just like on TorrentForums, creating morethan one account is a surefire method to get banned on any privatetracker. Multiple accounts created under the same IP address aredead-simple to spot, assuming that their database goes back far enough.The age-old excuse, “My brother lives with me, and wanted his ownaccount” just doesn’t hold water. While the vast majority of dupeaccounts are created because of being previously banned for inactivity(which doesn’t necessarily make you a bad member), it shows to trackerstaff that you’re too lazy to try to get the account re-enabled.However, this can extend into a far worse scenario for inviters orentire invite trees in the event you’re a good member who’s invitedsomeone trying to sign up more than once.

**Solutions:

**

• • Before taking a chance on creating a second account, try to get theold account reinstated through the site’s [IRCsupport](/2008/04/27/private-tracker-irc-channel-index/ “PrivateTracker IRC Channel Index”) or help channel. Tracker staff onIRC can be very forgiving, assuming that you’re honest with them.
• • Take caution about who you invite; they may have had an accountpreviously and were banned. Your invite privileges can be revoked, orworse.

**Tracker Inactivity.

** It’s not always enough just to remember to login to your account oncein a while. Actual torrent activity is often a must, and some trackersimpose a weekly or monthly minimum GB transfer allowance that must befulfilled. Others may require a certain amount of torrents to bedownloaded each month. Akin to remembering to login to your tracker, besure to download torrents. Again, the FAQ/Rules is your best friend.

**Solutions:

**

• • Keep at least one torrent active from each tracker, no matter howsmall. Personally, I don’t do a lot of torrenting from my home PC -but I use µTorrent solely for this purpose. Use thelabels feature toorganize torrents according to which tracker they belong to.
• • Get a seedbox (preferably one with unlimited torrents). This wayyou’ll be able to leave your computer off for long periods of time(i.e. on vacation) without worrying about seeding.

**Bad Sharing Ratio.

** This one should be a no-brainer: Failure to comply with bothglobal and per-torrent minimum ratio requirements will inevitablyresult in the banhammer. Right as rain, eventually you’ll be banned ifyou don’t bring up your ratio to tracker specs. But as long as theproblem can be resolved within the given timeframe, members will likelynot be banned for repeatedly having a bad ratio. Some trackers aresomewhat relaxed on this; others are quite strict. Stick to a 1:1sharing ratio and you’ll be fine - the FAQ/Rules will tell you all youneed to know.

**Solutions:

**

• • Seed your damn torrents, already! After all, BitTorrent is a sharingP2P protocol. You already get to secretly laugh at those poor suckerscoming out of BlockBuster & HMV (hey, wasn’t that you once?) -so why not invest in a modest seedbox at the very least. Lack of moneyisn’t a reasonable excuse.
• • Useratio-free trackers.Just remember to seed for the minimum time requirement.
• • Fix your ratio: Donate to a tracker to purchase upload GBs, ortrade bonus points for them.

**Hit and Runs.

** A hit & run (H&R) is the practice of downloading a torrentand removing/stopping it in the BT client before it has reached aspecific sharing ratio or required seed time (or both criteria), asstipulated in the rules for the tracker. As is often the case, memberswon’t be banned for a single H&R but when accumulated, they can bedevastating. Some trackers may only allow members to have 5 H&Rs (orless) for the life of the account; others may have no limits as long asyou remedy the torrent’s individual ratio.

**Solutions:

**

• • See solutions above.
• • Use public trackers, where H&Rs are not counted (or Demonoid).

**Too Many Warnings.

** Most private trackers will give you the opportunity to clean up youract, and issue warnings for most minor infractions (hit and runs, lowratio). Individual warnings come in many flavors of severity; forexample, a warning on a H&R can easily be fixed or removed bycomplying to the seeding standards. More serious warnings may last up to2, 4 or even 8 weeks in some instances, and can include rule breakage inregards to improper etiquette in the forums & torrent comments,offensive avatars, or uploading their content to other trackers. Obeythe rules, and you won’t get any warnings. It goes without saying:Multiple consecutive (or especially concurrent) warnings will oftenresult a ban.

Warnings can also come back to haunt you across other private trackers.For instance, when providing a profile link of a tracker to a communityrepresentative in a recruitment thread, he/she will check if you haveany warnings. If so, your likelihood of acquiring the invitation will begreatly diminished or not possible.

**Solutions:

**

• • Be on your best behavior while on warning watch, and do not get morethan one at a time. You’ve been warned.
• • While on warning watch, try to avoid commenting in torrents ormaking forum posts. This is not the time to attract undue attention toyourself. Be a lurker until the warning disappears.
• • Just because the warning has been lifted, it doesn’t give you thegreen light to go back to your old asshole self. Learn from theexperience.

**Ratio Cheating / Using a Banned BTClient.

** Banned Client: This is somewhat less common than expected. Oftena banned client (BitComet, BitLord) just won’t connect to the peers andis rejected by the tracker, and usually warnings are not even issued -but it can happen. Cheating Client: The usage of a cheating BTclient will result in far more dire consequences, if discovered. Therewill be no warning here, and the punishment is prompt. Tracker staffincorporate scripts that seek out sudden ratio (GB) changes, or checkfor blacklisted clients in the peerlists. Worse yet, in can affect youraccounts at other private trackers (yes, they share IP addresses of themost notorious offenders).

**Solutions:

**

• • Use a proper BitTorrent client that has been whitelisted by thetracker.
• • Don’t use clients that are in beta, and upgrade your client to thelatest stable version.
• • Never use a cheating client, and avoid any public torrent services(ImageShackseedbox, TorrentRelay, etc).
• • Don’t use a ratio faker program, or anything else designed to fakeratio statistics on private trackers.
• • Never add more than one private tracker to the announce URL in atorrent.

**Account Sharing (too manyIPs).

** Under normal circumstances you’ll be able to safely login to yourprivate tracker account from an unlimited number of locations. But (andthis is big) the moment you decide to actually download a torrent filefrom a second location, it raises a red flag. Trackers generally don’tcare where you login from, but they care where you downloadto - since this immediately looks like you’re sharing the account.TorrentLeech is even fussier about this: You can get banned fordownloading the same torrent file twice, even if it’s from the samecomputer through the same account.

By and large, most trackers will allow members to download torrents frommultiple locations (usually this is between 3 and 5 unique IP addresses)to compensate for those who have a seedbox, or more than one.What.cd admonishes this quite clearly:

“Be careful when sharing an IP or a computer with a friend if theyhave (or have had) an account. From then on your accounts will beinherently linked and if one of you violates the rules, both accountswill be disabled along with any other accounts linked by IP. This ruleapplies to logging into the site.”

**Solutions:

**

• • Don’t share your .torrent files with anyone, or allow anyone elselogin to your account.
• • Avoid logging in from other locations whenever possible.
• • If you have multiple seedboxes (or switch providers frequently),leave a message in your profile Info area (“I have more than oneseedbox”) or something similar. You can also contact staff directlyin regards to this.

**Using a Proxy.

** Logging into your tracker under the cloak of a proxy (or worse,actually downloading torrents while logged in and proxied) can only showone thing: You’ve been previously banned for any of these aforementionedreasons. This also includes adding a SOCKS proxy to your BitTorrentclient or web browser, or using an “anonymous” CGI web proxy to browsethe site, and also includes using TOR or other anonymizing services.**

**Trackers have varying rule standards for proxies; the safest practiceis to avoid them altogether.

**Solutions:

**

• • Use a VPNservice instead of aproxy. Most trackers are OK with VPNs, but ask first.
• • In the event for trying to evade the efforts of a throttling ISP,use a seedbox instead.

**Torrent Forum Involvement.

** Account/invite trading is frowned upon by just about everytracker; and if you’re caught (yes, they have spies) you and the traderare out the door. Even something as simple as offering invitegiveaways can get you busted. Some trackers could care less; othersare not so forgiving. But to make one thing clear: It’s absolutelyimperative that you use different usernames on torrent forums than youdo on private trackers. I know one guy who uses a different name/pass oneach & every private tracker he’s a member of, and even goes to thetrouble of using a different gmail address for each.

Trickle-down effect: If you get banned for being involved in trading orgiveaways, there’s the distinct possibility that your entire invitetree will also get banned, as well. It can even carry over to othertrackers.

Be careful who you invite: You’re completely responsible for the peopleyou invite. If your invitees are caught cheating or trading/sellinginvites, not only will they be banned, so will you.

**Solutions:

**

• • Use approved tracker recruitment, found in both torrent forums andin other private trackers’ forums. Get in the legitimate way.
• • Don’t offer invite giveaways. It’s better to receive than give - notmany tracker staff would go to the trouble to offer invite giveawaysfor the sake of catching members trying to sign up in this method.However, they will (and do) ask you for an invite, since you’rethe one breaking the rules by offering the invites in the first place.Once you invite them, they know exactly who you are.

**Bonus #11 - Delete Your OwnAccount.

** Not all trackers have this, but some do. Members often have theability to delete their own accounts themselves through the delacctlink. Just add this to the URL of your private tracker:/delacct.php. If not, just wait 42 days without logging in - we’refairly certain most trackers will automatically delete you anyways.