Thepiratebay spreads malware/trojans and no one is warning people
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So, occasionally I get a warning that a link is unsafe, and to "take me out of here", because a site has been flagged.
But for whatever reason, it doesn't warn against a semi-new scam that's going around: Spreading a virus that takes over computers, and then they use those computers to seed bittorrents with popular programs like Photoshop that "everyone" pirates. This makes them go to the top of the list at Thepiratebay sites (there are many), which snares more people into the scam.
TPB doesn't care of course. They're probably just happy making money off ads.
So obviously Vivaldi (and other browsers) should warn against this specifically when people visit the site.
"Warning, some malicious type people are spreading viruses and malware in torrents on this site, and are faking the seeder numbers in order to make the torrent seem legit."
That would stop a great many people from even downloading anything. Hope you'll do it.
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@Ree81 Vivaldi already warns me not to visit the site.
This site can’t provide a secure connection www.thepìratebay.com sent an invalid response. Try running Windows Network Diagnostics. ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR
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@Pesala I've never seen that interface or text. I'm a Windows 10 user, and the malware in question is:
https://malwarefixes.com/threats/trojanwin32-wacatac-dml/
So, a windows specific malware. It's also not the type of warning that'll discourage people from using TPB.
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You must be new to the internet or incredibly naive. Legally speaking, you should steer clear from pirated software of any type and sites spreading them or even just linking to them, because you're actually committing a crime by doing so. I know "everyone does it", it doesn't make it legal anyway.
If you do, it's at your own risk, and you should be using antivirus/antimalware protections because it's guaranteed you'll encounter some.
And frankly speaking, you should not even say publically you pirate software, if the wrong people knows you do, you could be risking legal actions. -
@iAN-CooG said in Thepiratebay spreads malware/trojans and no one is warning people:
You must be new to the internet or incredibly naive. Legally speaking, you should steer clear from pirated software of any type and sites spreading them or even just linking to them, because you're actually committing a crime by doing so. I know "everyone does it", it doesn't make it legal anyway.
If you do, it's at your own risk, and you should be using antivirus/antimalware protections because it's guaranteed you'll encounter some.
And frankly speaking, you should not even say publically you pirate software, if the wrong people knows you do, you could be risking legal actions.Ian,
My favourite computer of all time the amiga500 was killed by this very action of copying etc and as a result software prices were high but pirated software was the main reason so the pirates shot themselves in the foot that way..I absolutely agree with you 100%.
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@iAN-CooG You word this extreme. Linking to pirated content may or may not be an infringement, depending on the jurisdiction, but it’s hardly a crime. You will get into far more trouble for a simple parking violation, just to put this in context. Downloading pirated content is a gray area, while clearly illegal, perpetrators will seldom run into legal issues. Although there technically isn’t much difference, streaming pirated content should be less of an issue than having it stored on a medium. What can really get you in trouble is making pirated content available yourself, including P2P filesharing.
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@luetage It may or may not be illegal depending on jurisdiction, but from a moral standpoint, it is theft.
Someone makes money by selling a product, and if you bypass that, they don't make that money.
Some people argue that piracy doesn't result in lost sales because pirates would never have bought it in the first place, but that's not a justification for not paying, it's just an economic argument against fighting piracy.
Ironically, people running piracy sites will in many cases try and squeeze as much money out of the enterprise as possible, and this very often results in websites riddled with malware they are paid to promote. From my experience this often comes more from the adverts than the actual torrent files on offer, as these are usually pilfered from other sources.
What I'm basically trying to say is that the whole issue of piracy is riddled with nastiness no matter how you try to spin it, and people should be aware of this and avoid when at all possible.
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@LonM It goes both ways, copyright trolling is a thing. Discussing the morals of it all won’t help much I’m afraid.
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I am shocked and scandalized, to say nothing of saddened, that a site that promotes and thrives on criminal activity would have malware on it. Is there no honor among thieves? What has the world come to?
This reminds me of the women who cannot believe that the man who will cheat with them, will cheat on them.
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@luetage This is very true. but copyright trolls take you down in the courtroom and you can have a legal argument. They won't send you malware.
Copyright trolls are also perfectly legal. Morally wrong, but still much more legal than piracy will ever be. And so they have to act with some decorum to maintain their status.
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@LonM Well, yeah, unless you don’t have the funds to fight it in court. Interesting read concerning this topic: https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/lessons-from-the-gnome-patent-troll-incident/
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@LonM , piracy software is ALWAYS a risk, apart from piracy in the vast majority of cases is based on user ignorance.
I have never had the need to use pirate soft or a game, even though I have always had all these without paying a penny, given the huge amount of FOSS alternatives (which are sometimes even better) to commercial programs, giveaways and promotional offers. -
Guys, this isn't a discussion about piracy. It's about being pragmatic and warning people that they can get infected, which all browsers should do regardless of if they pirate or are into a particularly disgusting fetish or whatever opinions you might have.
Most of you seem to argue that "No, Vivaldi shouldn't warn because people who pirate deserve to lose control of their PC and get scammed for all their money (yes, possible) because they downloaded a cracked software for their DRM infected game they own".
Keep your empathy-less opinions to yourselves. I'm sure Vivaldi doesn't agree with you.
Vivaldi, please implement a warning on all TPB trackers (and possibly other open trackers that spread this known trojan).
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@Ree81 Vivaldi already uses a safe site warning system. You can turn it on in Settings > Privacy > Third Party Services > Google Phishing and Malware Protection
If you know a site is distributing malware, report it to google so it can be added to this list.
Asking for this or that site to be given special warnings is unlikely to happen as the amount of sites out there that merit warnings is too high.
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@luetage said in Thepiratebay spreads malware/trojans and no one is warning people:
@LonM Well, yeah, unless you don’t have the funds to fight it in court.
You shouldn't need expensive lawyers to win in a court of law. But that's the world we live in
╰(‵□′)╯
The world's copyright system is broken and in dire need of an overhaul, but I'm afraid that if anyone pushed for that it could end up worse than it currently is.
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@LonM https://i.imgur.com/0EVUMhn.png
It didn't work for me. I got infected and lost $45 to scammers, in a fairly intricate scam that has already fooled probably 10.000+.
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@Ree81 If a site is missing I would advise you to contact google, The instructions can be found here: https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4/reporting
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@LonM I've submitted two reports. Hoping for a change. The scam is several months old by now, but it's possible nobody really reports this sort of thing and just "deals" with the malware and continues on with their life.
I don't think it's too much to ask to have Vivaldi warn against a new and fairly rampant form of malware. It's particularly insidious too, because of the new sort of method they use. It's not at all like the "don't open exe files you get in your e-mail inbox" type stuff.
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@Ree81 There is no malware on TPB:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/517fbcaa033952f98e173e27e58ed4832c4aa72b8f270d018b8818965f76e0cc/detection
Hence, no need to report a malware site.Obviously, the potential to get infected is always there, if the user is stupid enough to download pirated software and execute it. But this is not specific to TPB in particular, there's a lot of torrent sites, many much more shady.
It's particularly insidious too, because of the new sort of method they use.
Please, do give some more details on this, as I'm really interested in what this "new sort" of method might be.
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Just moments ago a russian who had gotten a hold of my passwords logged into eBay, changed the language and tried to buy an iPhone 11.
He didn't succeed, probably because my card was already canceled (new one in the mail rn). Still, I think it's good evidence that this particular scam is affecting people. No way everyone was as prepared as I was just now. The scammer was basically just slow and tried this 2 days after getting my info. They'll learn from this mistake.