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Private trackers
In this article, you will be guided in how to get into (and survive) the world of private trackers.
Contents
Commonly asked questions that everyone is tired of hearing
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. A few peers will still seed many torrents for obscure content that you wouldn't normally find any peers for on ThePirateBay or KAT 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 stringent rules on the 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 two torrents than to stop two 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; and 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). Using two-factor authentication is also advised, where available.
- 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.
- Green trackers are the cabal - essentially the holy trinity of PTP/BTN/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).
- Yellow 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 | RED | PTP | BTN | HDB | KG | GGN | BIB | TG | EMP | AB | RTT | IPT |
| Tier 2 | OPS | None | MTV | HDT | CMK | PxC | MAM | BM (ded) | PB | BBT | AR | NC |
| Tier 3 | RT | PTN | TVV | AHD | SC | PB | TG | BS | PL | AT | DH | TD |
- Audiobooks: MyAnonamouse (note that the best GENERAL source of audiobooks is audiobookbay and occasionally rutracker/kat)
- Piano sheets: MyAnonamouse
- Comics: 32pag.es
- E-learning: TheOccult (esoteric), TheVault (business), TheShow (entertainment), ThePlace (seduction),
- Older TV not available for purchase: MySpleen
- B-movies: Cinemageddon
- Older movies/TV: ILoveClassics
- x264 media: x264.me
- Hentai: Oppaitime, AnimeBytes
- Korean porn: Sinderella
- JAV: yourexotic, Oppaitime, M-team, Sinderella
- J-Pop: Jpopsuki
- Music Software: Audionews
- 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)
- Magic: ArtOfMisdirection, MagicTorrents
- Weird shit: SocietyGlitch
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