Private trackers

Private Tracker Flowchart

What is a private tracker?

A private tracker is a torrent website that provides the same functionality as a public tracker, but is generally invite-only. This means you need to be a member to view the contents of the site and download its torrents, but you cannot register to be a member without having been invited by an already existing member (who in turn must be authorized to give out invitations). Within a tracker, there is usually an extensive set of rules covering how much one can download, what kind of content one can upload, what precautions one must take when logging into the site, etc. Such rules and content vary from tracker to tracker, and go from rather liberal with little enforcement to ultra-paranoid and autistic. Advantages of private trackers include:

• Speed: If you're familiar with torrents you probably know that the bigger the swarm, the faster you download. Private trackers encourage their members to seed torrents for as long as possible, thus guaranteeing bigger swarms for every torrent. Not only that, but many members use remote seedboxes with huge upload speeds, thus dramatically increasing the speed for many torrents, often making them available almost instantly.
• Retention: Similarly, private trackers usually enforce rules that encourage long-term seeding. Many torrents for obscure content that you wouldn't normally find any peers for on ThePirateBay or KAT will be still seeded by a few peers on private trackers.
• Selection: Some content simply isn't available on any public site and will only be found on private trackers. Sometimes you can't even legally buy it at all, ironically. Some trackers even specialize in obscure or rare content, ensuring that it doesn't get lost from the Internet.
• Quality control: A major asset of private trackers, albeit one that can vary a lot across trackers. Good private trackers have very strict rules on content format, quality and organization. Music trackers will ensure you don't get horrible 92kbps transcodes, movie trackers will ensure you only get good encodes, ebook trackers will ensure you get retail quality, etc. Members and staff review and approve each torrent. Trumping rules and the removal of duplicates ensure you only get one, community-approved source for the specific content and format. This, coupled with a decent site layout, makes private trackers much more orderly than public ones.
• Security: There are two reasons private trackers are more secure, albeit they may not apply in the future. The first one is that most of them are obscure enough that no one really knows or cares about them (security by obscurity). The second one is that copyright trolls would rather focus on huge public sites that are easy to fish for peers rather than small communities that are hard to join. From a monetary point of view, it's more worthwhile to stop 10,000 casuals from downloading 2 torrents than to stop 2 neckbeards from downloading 10,000 torrents.

How secure are private trackers?

This depends entirely on the precautions of the operator. Some are shady and will use your information for profit, some are not. Two important precautions to take:

• Never use the same password across multiple trackers. Operators of shady sites often use that common vulnerability among people to steal accounts to other trackers which they can then use to cause further harm (such as leaking peer lists to the public or selling the accounts and its invites on invite forums).
• Don't tie any personal information to your tracker accounts. This includes a non-throwaway email address or personally identifiable information of any kind. Information like that could be used to harm or track you down should it fall into the wrong hands. The tracker staff may be legitimate, but the site itself can be busted or defaced by hackers. Don't post about yourself in the forums and for fuck's sake, don't post in those "post a pic of you" threads. Torrent trackers aren't social networks.

What are the best private trackers?

There are two kinds of trackers, content-wise: specialized and general. /ptg/ frowns upon the regular use of general trackers as they tend to be a jack of all trades, lacking in all areas while only being good for mainstream shit. They can however be a good supplemental source of content as trackers often go down or get busted for various reasons. The following is a global consensus on what is considered the best tracker in their fields, namely: Music, Movies (both mainstream and obscure), TV, HD (yeah this gets a separate category), Games, Books, E-learning, Porn, Anime, Scene and General. If you are a /ptg/ regular and disagree with this (especially the lower-tier ones), edit what you think is wrong.

• Blue trackers are the cabal - essentially the holy trinity of PTP/BTN/WCD + HDB: the top, most reputed trackers in the torrent community who are objectively the best in their respective categories and rule the torrent world. Don't fuck with cabal staff as they will gang up against your ass to permaban you from all cabal trackers along with any trackers willing to cooperate with the cabal (and they often do).
• Light blue trackers are subject to the cabal; if you're banned from the cabal, you will get banned from these as well. On the other hand, a good ratio-proof on one of these will be well considered if you apply to another cabal-subjected tracker. Due to their niche or subpar content however, they don't get as much exposure as the cabal.
• Red trackers are essentially shady - either the IPT mafia empire or other trackers run by staff known for shitty practices such as trading accounts, DDoSing other sites, encouraging pay2leech or storing passwords in plaintext. Worst enemies to the cabal, so don't expect ratio-proof on one of these sites to be taken into consideration on cabal sites. Since they may still have good content, they can be worth joining: just don't use the same password as that of a cabal site and avoid giving them money.
• White trackers are either open or not known to cooperate much with the cabal, but they aren't known for shitty practices either.

Music

Movies (mainstream)

TV

HD

Movies (obscure)

Games

Books

E-learning

Porn

Anime

Scene

General

Tier 1 - Essentials

WCD

PTP

BTN

HDB

KG

BCG

Bib

BitMe

Emp

AB

DH

IPT

Tier 2 - Alternatives

Waffles

TehConnection

MTV

AHD

Cinematik

GGn

MAM

BitSpyder

Pornolab

BakaBT

SCC

bB

Tier 3 - Backups

Speed.cd

PTN

Freshon

HD-T

SecretCinema

BitGamer

WCD

TheGeeks

PussyTorrents

AnimeTorrents

PreToMe

AR

• Audiobooks: MyAnonamouse (note that the best GENERAL source of audiobooks is audiobookbay and occasionally rutracker/kat)
• Documentaries: ScienceHD
• Piano sheets: MyAnonamouse
• Comics: 32pag.es
• Recipes: Deli.sh
• E-learning: TheOccult (fringe), ThePlace and BitSeduce (seduction), TheVault (business)
• B-movies: Cinemageddon
• 90's stuff out of print: MySpleen
• Weird shit: SocietyGlitch
• 3D software, graphic design, vfx, /ic/'s favourite permanently freeleech tracker: CGpeers (note that a lot of the content on CGpersia is not on CGpeers)
• x264 media: x264.me
• JAV: yourexotic
• Hentai: oppaitime
• Magic: ArtOfMisdirection, MagicTorrents
• Korean porn: Sinderella
• J-Pop: Jpopsuki
• CP: h4h

How to get into private trackers (and survive)

The first thing you need to ask yourself is whether your needs are satisfied by what you currently have at your disposal (DHT/public trackers (TPB and KAT), DDL, newsgroups, streaming, Soulseek, Tribler, DC++, Kad/eDonkey, sneakernet...among other things), because private trackers may not be actually worth your time, depending on what you want. Joining private trackers isn't hard, but it takes time. Do you just want that one specific file you've been searching in vain for weeks? If so, you'd be better off asking someone on /ptg/ (or /r/trackers) to snatch it for you and call it a day. Do you want to build a comprehensive library with consistent and superior quality such as good encodes, proper music tagging, retail ebooks? Then you should try to join one of the specialized trackers. Do you live in a copyright-cucked shithole and are afraid to get raped by the MPAA/RIAA and associates, but care little about music or HD? Then a general tracker should suit you. Depending on your goals, whether they are long-term and short-term and whether they are currently satisfied, the amount of time you will have to invest will vary.

• Open-signup trackers: This is the easiest step. All trackers have to start small and build up a decent userbase before they can afford to limit entry, and thus a number of trackers are open to signup for a time. There are numerous websites that keep track of these (opentrackers.org, opentrackers.net, btracs.com, /r/OpenSignups), unless you're looking for something specific, just go to rutracker (rutracker.org). Yes, it's entirely in Russian, but who cares? All registration forms look the same and you weren't going to post in the forums anyway, right? (More on that later). Rutracker is really nice because it's comprehensive, well-seeded and has high standards despite having very few ratio restrictions. In fact, 99% of the needs of most users are met there. If you are looking for porn, it is recommmended to open pornolab (pornolab.net). Yes, it's in Russian too. Here's a guide from a Russian speaker to rutracker.

From now on, it is assumed that you are familiar with most top trackers in their respective niche; if you aren't, please consult the flowchart everyone's been passing around these days. Past this point, all trackers restrict random user registration to a limited number of cases, mostly invites from existing members and a few other special cases for some trackers:

• Pay2Pirate: Some trackers will invite you for a fee (most notably, IPTorrents). The idea is to prevent potential cheaters to abuse the system (in ways defined at the discretion of the staff) since any fuck-up would cost them their account, and thus their money. For reasons that would take too long to explain here, IPTorrents is generally despised by other reputed trackers and a proof of good ratio there won't open the way anywhere else. It is still a very large source of general content though.

• Application: Some trackers have a special page with an application form in one way or another (most notably, AnimeBytes, ScienceHD, PixelHD, PTFiles and even Pedro's lately - find it here: privatepaste.com/download/da91bbcb5c 404'd). Their goal is to keep a moderate influx of new members they can control by assessing your willingness to join and what you have to offer. Different trackers have different requirements: some will require proof of good ratio on other trackers, some will only require that you show genuine interest and good will in your application form even if you are new to the tracker scene. Some mostly care about what you have to offer to the site (for instance, being an actual scientist with access to loads of books and articles will surely land you an invite at ScienceHD). Try to be sincere, honest, lengthy and don't forget to provide an email address so they can notify you of their response.

• Interview: A few trackers have an interview system; it means that you are going to join an IRC channel and answer questions to their staff. It's mostly a way to control members' origin as almost all of them will ask that you join from your home connection. The most reputed tracker known to maintain an interview system is What.CD, and the interview, while not hard, may catch you unaware if you are not prepared. Be sure to read all of the material on the What interview preparation site (www.whatinterviewprep.com) as the site does log each and everyone of your connections, even if they are years apart, and they will know if you did an sometime in 2009 with a similar IP range or username. MyAnonamouse also requires you to join their IRC but it's more of a friendly chat and questions are mostly about the rules. The hardest part in an interview system is getting enough free time to wait for an interviewer, then taking the interview itself. What.CD queues are known to last for hours, and the interview can take from 1 to 2 hours. MAM is much faster but only interviews twice a week. Also note that if you are fond of le Reddit upvotes, you may apply for an interview at Baconbits, Reddit's private tracker.

• Invite forums: Once you've established a good standing on one of the aforementioned trackers you've hopefully managed to get in, you will be able to move on to more restrictive ones. Most top trackers require new users to have a past of good standing (i.e. Power User or Elite userclass) such as one that can be shown on a tracker whose staff they trust - the tracker scene is a small world, and tracker staff often cooperate (or fight) with each other. As such, there are recruitment threads on various trackers so they can exchange good-standing users for the benefit of all. What.CD is known for having the most comprehensive range of recruitment threads and will land you a place in all but the most restricted sites (HDBits et al). BaconBits is also known for being a good gateway to reputed trackers. For this reason, they are often cited as a "first step" for new users to the tracker scene. Surprisingly, even mutracker has a couple of good recruitment threads. RIP

• Super Exclusive Sekrit Klub: Once you've made it to the big ones, the rest is up to you - you may try to join some of the ultra-closed trackers such as Exigo or HDBits (don't even try Art of Misdirection though) but at this point your needs should be pretty much covered unless you are looking for something really specific or just doing it for epeen.

On Ratio Proofs and Seedboxes

Ratio proofs tend to be demanded by regular users who are offering invites NOT OFFICIAL RECRUITERS so you should not worry yourself over not having 'sufficient ratio proof'. Official recruiters will often only require user class on the particular site that they are recruiting from (often PU+ or the equivalent).

Seedboxes are often unnecessary for most members. It is possible to do quite well even on hard sites like what.cd even on a 100 kb/s upload speed provided you upload. However, people who wish to use additional seedbox features (such as a VPN, Plex etc) or download extraordinary amounts (or are obsessed with HD/FLAC quality) or want to jump user classes will most likely want one.

On being /pure/

/pure/fags argue the following

• getting your invites only from official recruiters will eliminate the chance of a treeban (because of your inviter) and therefore protect the sanctity of your account
• often it is quite easy and possible to get invites from official threads

anti /pure/fags argue the following

• often invites are unavailable from official recruiters
• getting invites from your friends can be much more easy than waiting for official threads to reopen

What NOT to do

• Cheating: The cardinal rule of thumb is that most cheaters end up with their account and their entire invite tree banned. Beware any anon which recommends cheating, much like 'delete system 32' it's fun and we all get some laughs at your expense.

• Beg for invites: Autists on /ptg/ have taken upon themselves to report every single email they see on this general to various tracker staff and spam crawlers (they went as far as going though the archives and reporting emails they saw in past threads). There used to be a time where /g/entoomen helped each other out and many a /ptg/ resident got their HDBits invite from some Anon on 4chan in 2010 but those times are long gone. Tracker staff are known to lurk the threads and will ban anyone they catch sending an invite to an email posted there. If you accept an invite you begged for, you will be found out and lose any chance of acquiring a legitimate account. Especially watch out for What.cd and PTP staff as they will revoke invite privileges and ban you for the smallest of transgressions (such as, but not limited to, accidentally posting IP lists in screenshots, posting the email you use for trackers). They have been known to autistically read /mu/, /g/ and /ptg/ (archived and live) for the express purposes of finding and banning inviters/ees.

• Trade for invites: Tracker staff really, really hate this. If you are caught trading (and you eventually will be) they will go out of their way to ban you, your entire invite tree and cooperate with other staff so as to disable as many of your accounts on other trackers as they can. Don't go to tracker trading forums such as torrent-invites and the like, even having an account there (especially with the same username) may count as a red flag to some staff. It is reported that sites such as what.cd formerly abused bugs in the browser's web history to determine whether or not users were visiting sites such as torrent-invites and to ban people based on this activity. Site staff are also known to pose as invite sellers to trap and ban naive users.

• Buy invites: You'll lose money along with the chances of getting in legitimately. Some staff will be lenient if you ditch your seller though, probably because they want to get at the source first. Invites are usually free (and easy enough) to get from gateway trackers like what.cd so it is not worth buying invites.

Generally speaking, you should avoid invites from random dudes on the internet if you can; the reason is you most likely have no idea of their standing and they could very well fuck up later, resulting in an entire treeban and you getting banned through no fault of your own. It's unfair, it sucks. Stick to official invites (interview, application, recruitment threads) and no one will bother you.

• Posting on the forums: Every post you make on the forum is an occasion of getting someone riled up, and that someone may very well be staff. You're here for downloading and uploading stuff, not chitchat. Don't use the forums.

• Talking to staff more than necessary: Same reason as above. Don't give them any reason to ban you. If you rustle a staff member in any way, causing them to ban you, the entire staff will rally behind them even though they wouldn't have personally banned you themselves. It's the mod's word against yours, you can never win.

• Being confrontational with staff: Simply assume they are always right, even (and especially) when you point out that they are wrong.

In short, either keep a low profile or suck staff's dick, as with all sites.

Getting acquainted with rules and maintaining your ratio

Okay, now we're going to assume you made it to a couple of private trackers - if you haven't yet, please read above part (TL;DR: interview at What.CD, baconBits, MyAnonamouse or (hah) mutracker; apply to ScienceHD or AnimeBytes; work you way up from there on either tracker's PU forums, What.CD's being the most varied; if that's too much bother for you, use rutracker/pornolab and stop reading this). This is a guide intended to help those who already made their first steps in the elitist, restricted and highly autismal private tracker world. As you can see, things are quite different here. Rules, ratio, buffer, seeding, userclasses... what the fuck's all this? Things were much simpler on ThePirateBay where you could just search, click and have your stuff right there, right?

And you know what? You're right. Most folks on /ptg/ and elsewhere will tell you stories about how they did a kind gesture and invited a friend of theirs (or even a fellow Anon) only to see them log on twice into the site before never using it again, no matter how hard they begged and how convincing they sounded. In all likelihood, these people first logged on, their excitement faded when they saw that they couldn't just start downloading everything before signing off, found the rules too complicated, lost interest in the whole thing and settled for more accessible alternatives (which are, again, not necessarily bad, depending on what one wants). Since you're reading this, It is assumed that you're not one of these people and that you actually want to use the trackers you're on. Are they worth it? Well, that's for you to find out. Before you decide, here's a few tips that'll show you it's not that hard, if you can read that is.

First things first

Read the rules. Seriously, do it. Tracker staff are autistic, you get one account per lifetime and you don't want to start playing cat-and-mouse games with the admins that early. Most tracker rules are similar, and go on the lines of "Suck our dicks at all occasions; don't leak invites or torrent files to public places; don't trade or sell invites; don't be inactive" followed by specifics on content rules (what you may upload) and ratio rules (more on that later). Read all the details as there may be some specifics on each tracker. Some have exclusive content that you can't upload elsewhere; some prohibit the use of Tor or VPNs, or even expressively forbid that you log on from anywhere else than your home connection; and so on. Read it all so you don't get caught unawares on some autistic peculiarity.

Ratio issues and tracker economy

Now let's assume you're familiar with the rules, how about you download some shit? The only problem is that ratio thingy: surprise, when you're done downloading something, no one ever downloads it back from you, ever. That's because, unless you joined a low-tier tracker, the seeder-to-leecher ratio is extremely high, with everyone permaseeding everything while only leeching occasionally. This brings us to our main point: tracker economy. Trackers can be roughly sorted into three categories: those with no economy, those with a soft economy, and those with a hard economy.

No economy

Trackers with no economy are essentially ratioless. Torrent retention is achieved by imposing seeding requirements or individual ratio requirements ("you must seed with a 1:1 ratio OR for 72 hours"), and people get an incentive for seeding by acquiring bonus points that can be used for transcending userclasses. Example of ratioless trackers include BTN or /mu/tracker. You won't have any problem there as long as you seed.

Soft economy

Tracker with a soft economy use a ratio-based system complemented by bonus points. These points are typically earned by doing specific actions, the most common of which seeding for an X amount of GBs, regardless of whether someone is actually downloading it from you. Some trackers will reward you for uploading torrents, idling on IRC or doing any kind of activity that contributes to the tracker and the site as a whole. Most trackers have a soft economy, from AHD to PTP, from MAM to bB or AB. Another kind of soft economy is a ratio-based system with a large amount of freeleech torrents, i.e. torrents whose download stats aren't counted but still earn you upload credits. Such trackers include SHD, SCC or bB, AB and MAM (again). You won't have many problems if you don't download everything like a retard: just grab some freeleech or small torrents, wait for your amount of bonus points to passively increase, get upload credit when you can, use that upload credit to download more, etc. The more you snatch, the more you seed, the more points you earn, and eventually you'll have enough buffer to freely download what you want.

Hard economy

Trackers with a hard economy are ratio-based but provide little to no means of complementing one's upload amount, like bonus points or freeleech sections. As a result, there's only a limited amount of upload credit (which acts as tracker currency, there are whole academic papers about it if you're into that kind of stuff) in the whole tracker, and whatever credits you earn, someone else has to spend. Getting upload credit is quite hard and you might have to work on your ratio before being able to download whatever you want without hindrance. On the other hand, since nearly everyone is as tight on ratio as you are, everyone will be permaseeding everything and torrents will have an excellent retention.

Trackers such as What.CD or Bibliotik have a hard economy, and most struggles you hear about getting one's ratio up will typically be on one of those trackers. There are four main methods to get upload credit, on top of permaseeding everything (which you should do in every tracker anyway - you're doing that, right?): getting a seedbox, filling requests, uploading your own content and jumping on popular torrent swarms early.

• Getting a seedbox: Basically pay2win but you might end up doing that if you don't want to bother too much and have money to spend.

• Abusing the fuck out of freeleech: /ptg/ers like to preference the most active torrents especially staff picks and the top 10 most active on freeleech days.

• Filling requests: Can be tricky as people will obviously request stuff they can't find elsewhere, so unless they're particularly inept at googling and people didn't catch on you won't have any luck. If you consider the request to be worth it and you like the content requested you could also buy it, a less cheesy pay2win since you still end up with the physical medium as opposed to imaginary points on a website that might get busted at any moment, on top of the warm fuzzy feeling that you made someone you don't know on the other side of the globe happy. Looking for requested material on other related trackers also works, though the process can be tedious.

• Uploading your own content: A reliable way to get upload credit AND satisfy the usual userclass promotion requirements; however, unless you're operating from a seedbox or a very fast connection, you'll have a hard time achieving a ratio much above 1:1. That's because seedboxes usually snatch your stuff (especially if it's recent or matches certain tags, like "classical" on What.CD) before taking priority to distribute it across the swarm, since the Bittorrent protocol favors peers with a faster upload speed. You'll still get upload of at least equal to your torrent size though, so you could survive on uploading stuff alone (also, if you keep uploading consistently good stuff, users will eventually "subscribe" to you and snatch everything you upload). On sites like Bibliotik uploading enough content makes the entire site freeleech. You might also be able to get extra bonus points for uploading content.

• /pyramid/: And finally, jumping onto popular swarms (aka /pyramid/ on /ptg/) is a risky though exciting activity that rewards those who catch on early and get to upload to everyone, while those who joined in on a later date only get a fraction of the original seeders' credit, thus creating a pyramid scheme. Popular torrents include those about to become freeleech or the newest content from popular artists. /ptg/ regulars will often post about /pyramid/ tips, which means you could download from that torrent in the hope that it'll grow and eventually get you a ratio above 1. If you have a seedbox or any kind of dedicated server, automatic tools such as autodl-irrsi will snatch stuff based on relevant information (such as tags, year etc.), however you run the risk of downloading too much stuff you can't afford, even if some of it pays off. Use at your own discretion and beware, your upload speed and peering has an enormous impact on what ratio you will end up with.

Which kind of economy is the best?

Asking this question is a good way to start a shitstorm on /ptg/ and torrent forums alike, especially when you consider the different kinds of soft economy: BCG has essentially no global economy but a hard hit-and-run system that makes it difficult to seed back single torrents with ease, 32p has an inkdrop system that treats essentially replaces ratio with points, AB has a very, very elaborate formula for calculating the amount of points you get from seeding, and so on. There is probably no objective answer to that question, as there are top-tier trackers with all kinds of economy (e.g. BTN is ratioless, PTP is soft and WCD is hard) and of course countless shit tier trackers in either as well; different systems for different content. That doesn't preclude you from having a subjective opinion and posting it on /ptg/, of course.

Glossary

• 32p: Formerly ComicBT, the best tracker for comics. Peculiar inkdrop system in lieu of ratio.
• AHD: AwesomeHD, a tracker devoted to HD movies and TV. Considered the best alternative to HDBits which many people often settle for as the encodes on AHD rival that of HDB and HDB is much harder to join. Regarded as comfy-tier by /ptg/ because of the decent encodes, chill staff, availability of bonus points and easy paths to top trackers.
• AB: AnimeBytes, the best tracker for weebs. Regarded as comfy-tier by the weeb part of /ptg/ for many of the same reasons. Rumored to have HDB recruitment at Legends forum. Often opens applications in which you are required to explain in a correct English bullshit such as how you know how to torrent and seed, have decent ratio proofs elsewhere and don't actually like Naruto.
• Application: Some trackers will let new users apply for an invitation instead of simply registering. These questions are typically all the same and range from existing ratio proofs, knowledge of torrenting, interest in the site's content and what you have to offer to the site. The questions are usually very easy, unless you're an absolute retard and talk like you're on 4chan you will have no problem getting accepted.
• bB: baconBits, a general tracker for redditors. Literally. Often babby's first tracker (when it's not What.CD or AB) and used as a stepping stone for better trackers, has a decent request system and is known to be the only places KG recruits from. Just like AB and AHD, once you seed enough you end up swimming in bonus points and the tracker becomes essentially freeleech.
• BCG: BlackCatsGames, the best tracker for video games. Has weird rules about HnR, inactivity and IP, is non-Gazelle, but is still regarded as top-tier.
• Bib: Bibliotik, the best tracker for books. (Note that the best general source for books is and will always be Libgen or failing that, #bookz). Reputed for its ratio that is either completely impossible to maintain or utterly non-existent once you upload 100 torrents. Also known for its autistic staff and community, do not engage under any circumstances.
• BG: BitGamer, a low-tier game tracker infamously known for being hacked and doing nothing about it, and storing users' passwords in plaintext.
• BTN: BroadcasTheNet, the best TV tracker. Nothing much more to say, no other tracker even comes close.
• Buying: the incredibly moronic act of exchanging money for a tracker invitation or account, usually via an invite forum. A good way to lose both your money and any chance of getting into the tracker you were looking to buy into.
• Cabal: The staff of WCD, PTP, BTN and HDBits. Because they are objectively the best and everyone wants to join them, they rule the private tracker community and other trackers tend to align to them. Some trackers like IPT are enemies of the cabal and supporting these in any way on cabal-controlled zones (such as cabal forums or /r/trackers) will get you into trouble.
• Cheating: Using one of the various known methods to abuse ratio, get caught by staff and eventually banned on all cabal trackers.
• Country ban: The practice of banning people residing in certain countries from registering (even when invited), applying for an invite or interviewing. Such country lists vary from tracker to tracker but often include India, thus leading to the curry meme.
• Curry: As a noun, refers to a pleb who hasn't gotten in any private tracker and cluelessly begs on /ptg/ by thinking that grovelling enough and saying "gimme gimme" will land them an invite, in the manner of illiterate internet users from 3rd world countries and most notably India (which is infamously banned on many trackers), hence the name. As an adjective, refers to any low-tier tracker with shit content, shit interface and/or shit administrators. Note that cabal trackers, although they may have shit staff, cannot be curry.
• Deli.sh Delish, a tracker for recipes and cookbooks created by former What staff. Also known as that tracker everyone joined but no one knows why.
• E****o Exigo, one of those super ultra sekrit trackers that are incredibly hard to join (they even censor their own name) and are absolutely not worth it. Basically a subset of What, with a dead community.
• FL: Freeleech, when downloading a torrent doesn't count against your ratio but uploading counts for it. Can be global, personal or specific to some torrents. The nature, incidence and targets of freeleech are entirely decided by the staff but usually occur for special occasions (Christmas, tracker anniversary, etc.)
• FSC: FunSharingCommunity, another one of those sekrit klubs, for general content. Used to be the shit due to its exclusivity and focus for "community", is now almost dead and has worse selection than public trackers.
• Gazelle: A web framework geared towards private trackers, developed by What.CD. Because of its clean interface and organization, it has been widely adopted by other trackers in the torrent community, including most top tier trackers like PTP or BTN. However, it is regarded as shit coding-wise (notably, you have to rewrite the music-related parts if you want to deploy it yourself for something else) by /ptg/, its only redeeming quality being that other frameworks are even worse. Note that it is distinct from Ocelot, the torrent tracker itself.
• Global ban: Ban from all cabal trackers. When one commits a serious offense (such as cheating, trading, buying or selling), tracker staff ban you and share your information to other staff of the cabal, eventually getting someone banned everywhere. Information retained by staff includes all the IP addresses you've ever used, as well as location, ISP range, username, password hash, snatchlists and stylometry.
• GGn GazelleGames, the second best tracker for games (sometimes regarded as the best because it's Gazelle even though its selection is less than BCG, your mileage may vary). Who knows when it will come back.
• h*h h4h, an incredibly secret tracker with paranoid admins. People are trying to make it look like it's a meme, but it is a thing. Each webpage is watermarked so members can't screenshot without being identified. Most likely contains CP, though members pretend it's tracking leaked/confidential information.
• HDB HDBits, the best tracker for HD content. Is reputedly hard to join (invites are known to sell for $300 on the scum market) than even most top trackers, but recruitment still happens at the higher userclasses of other top movie/HD trackers.
• Invite: What you live for.
• IPT IPTorrents, a very large general tracker regarded as the best for general content. For various reasons such as being pay2join and pay2leech, DDoSing other trackers and leaking their peerlists, it is considered to be shady by the torrent community at large and is the worst enemy of the cabal.
• KG Karagarga, a tracker for obscure, rare, arthouse, foreign and classic films. Mainstream not allowed. Also has a community of bilingual speakers who write subtitles for untranslated movies.
• mRatio: Software touted by /ptg/ trolls to bait newcomers into ratio cheating and getting all their accounts banned.
• Ocelot: Tracker software used by What.CD, is distinct from Gazelle.
• /pure/: Having been invited exclusively though recruitment channels, thus ensuring that you will never be banned because someone in your invite tree's ramification got caught in a selling scheme.
• /ptg/: The private tracker general on 4chan's /g/. Basically where everything happens. Note that no one ever goes on /t/ because /t/ is shit although /ptg/er influence can extend into boards as diverse as /gd/, /ic/, /wsr/, /lit, /a/, /tv/ and /mu/ due to their respective trackers.
• PTG: The private tracker game, an RPG where climbing userclasses is the equivalent of leveling up and joining other trackers is the equivalent of unlocking new abilities. Everyone on /ptg/ is playing the private tracker game.
• PTP: The best movie tracker. Infamously known for having 312cuck in the dev team.
• /pyramid/: Once referring to the practice of jumping onto popular swarms (usually on What) to harvest upload before others like a pyramid scheme, it mostly now refers to the hierarchy of trackers from the entry-level ones like What or bB to hard to join ones like BTN or HDB. Climbing the pyramid describes one's ascension of a /ptg/ regular through these various steps.
• /r/trackers: The private tracker subreddit where people like to re-ask the same question for the 1000th time, post announcements, complain about bans and suck the cock of cabal tracker staff. Supporting non-cabal trackers is not allowed there.
• TPS: ThePirateSociety, a place to circlejerk with other pirates about trackers. Requires an application to sign in but being accepted isn't hard. Will copiously suck cabal tracker cock and openly share the information about you they have. It is however an interesting alternative path to some of the hard to join trackers like Pedro's, Exigo or HDBits.
• WFM: Waffles, a subset of What.
• WCD: What.CD, the best music tracker and probably the best music catalog of all time. Known for its interview system and preparation material, autistic staff, comprehensive invite section, hipster community and incredible music selection. Also accepts books and software for some reason. Ratio is hard to maintain at first for some people.

Notable staff

• 312c: Also known as 312cuck, he's a PTP developer and former mod of /r/trackers. Known for being autistic, power-trippy and an asshole in general. Notable achievements include getting his mod privileges stripped on /r/trackers for excessive and reckless faggotry.
• Aldy: Aldy is a based god who makes AB /comfy/ as hell.
• TARS: A what.cd staff member who reached meme status on /ptg/ by not releasing the freeleech within the promised timeframe.

Notable private trackers

• HDBits (HDB)

Large HD tracker, home to many high-profile encoders.

• Art of Misdirection (AOM)

Large magic tracker, limited to professional magicians only.

• What.CD (WCD)

Massive music tracker with over 2 million torrents.

• Broadcast the Net (BTN)

Large ratioless television tracker.

• Pass the Popcorn (PTP)

Large movie tracker. Content ranging from black and white obscura to the latest blockbuster.

• Bibliotik (BiB)

Large book tracker. Overdrive access recommended for users.

• Animebytes (AB)

Large anime tracker with over 100,000 torrents. Many torrents are freeleech.

• IPTorrents (IPT)

Large general purpose tracker.

• Waffles.FM (WFM)

Medium-sized music tracker. Regarded as what.cd alternative.

• TehConnection (TehC or TC)

Medium-sized movie tracker. Regarded as PTP alternative.

• Freshon.tv (TvT)

Medium-sized television tracker.

• MoreThan.tv (MTV)

Small up-and-coming ratioless television and movie tracker.

• OiNK (OPP)

What.CD, Waffles.FM, and other's predecessor.

Paths to getting into Private Trackers (or where should I start?)

Generally it is accepted that many major/reputable trackers recruit from What.cd (about 80% meaning that it is one of the best and most well regarded starting places).

Unlike many private trackers, What.cd has open interviewing system which allows people who are not currently part of the private tracker commnunity to advance. You can read more about getting into what.cd here: https://www.whatinterviewprep.com

Alternate recommended starting places include:

• Animebyt.es application: Weebs will love this place, but it's also much easier to find uploads for than what.cd and is arguably easier with a generous bonus point system and generous community. Registration is currently open via application although this only opens up when AB is below their usercap (currently 18000). You can get into What.cd via animebyt.es and vice versa.
• ScienceHD Application
• bB Application: Recommended for ledditors: currently closed

Getting into the desirable trackers

BroadcasTheNet (BTN)

BTN recruits from AwesomeHD, bibliotik and PTP. AHD/bib/PTP threads are in the POWER USER INVITE FORUM. All of them require SIX MONTH OLD ACCOUNTS. THere is NO EXCEPTION to this, period. There is no other way to get into BTN unless you personally know a staff member, and if you do you're already in BTN. So let's recap: If you want to get into BTN you need to be PU on AHD, bibliotik, and PTP or be elite on WCD. And you need to WAIT SIX MONTHS. So take the fucking interview.

PassThePopcorn (PTP)

PTP is currently recruiting from Animebyt.es PU and What.cd elite. Recruiters banned people for requesting invites from multiple recruiters due to the slow issuing of invites. Reportedly AHD invites are currently in limbo and have been taking months to arrive.

HDBits (HDB)

For limited times they have been known to have invite threads on PTP, BTN, AHD, SDbits, CN, and various other "well known" movie/TV trackers. If you want to get into HDB your best chance is to max out the userclasses on those trackers. Any application offers or invite offers you see on forums are fake because HDB does not allow users to give invites on other trackers.

It is reported that the threads on AHD have been closed which may or may not have something to do with the fact that the pathway became publicized.

Art of Misdirection (AoM)

WIZARDS. ONLY. FOOL.

And professional wizards only too as they apparently want to watch your acts.

Bibliotik

Bibliotik recruits from baconBits (3 month old account, Elite, plus Overdrive) and what.cd (6 month old account,PU, plus overdrive). Invites for members are currently suspended but when they open back up the Elite forum on Animebytes has unofficial member invites with no time/OD requirement. However you WILL need a way to get retail ebooks to survive on bibliotik. You've been warned.

Bibliotik is currently down due to DDOS so it is believed that all if not most threads have been removed.

AwesomeHD (AHD)

They recruit from What.cd but the thread has apparently been pulled. Thread is still up on Animebyt.es however.

Karagarga (KG)

Members of KG have to manually ask for invites in the forum, so getting an invite is harder than before. They only recruit on baconBits (6 month old PU account) for some obscure reason.

baconBits (bB)

Has been available via What.cd's PU forum, but bB has been over the usercap (6,000) for quite some time now.

bB does irc interviews for reddit users if you have a 3 month old account with 300 comment karma. If you are not a reddit user, what.cd is a much easier and more available starting point for getting into more private trackers. If you aren't on reddit but still want in, make an account, post hilarious sexual innuendos on appropriate subs like /r/AskReddit or /r/TheRedPill to farm karma, wait for 3 months and interview. Any subreddit which isn't /r/trackers is also a potential spot for gaining karma, for example anime subreddits and pokemon subreddits. The whole process is fairly trivial if you aren't a retard.

bB has been experiencing host issues since approximately Dec. 23 2015, and is currently down.

Animebyt.es(AB)

Currently open for application but apparently they have an application queue and a usercap. Also recruits on What.cd under PU. When it hits usercap the applications temporarily close until they fall below the limit. Also apparently there's a cap on how many applications can be in the queue at the same time. Apparently they are also used as a path into ADC, U2, JPS, and any other site that specializes in Japan.

External links

• /mu/'s guide to obtain music

See also

• Piracy