Slyck News
Michael Ingram
September 7, 2004

Scam sites have become a cancer in the file sharing community. With even the top P2P portals guilty of hosting their Google-ad traps, avoiding them has become as essential a skill as taking precautions against lawsuits and evading viruses.

The increasing problem was illustrated in a previous article by Slyck.

However, it is not until you are inside scam sites that their true potential damage can be seen.

Scam sites show complete contempt towards their victims.

MP3Universtiy, one of the better, but much dearer, scam sites provides some basic information on a range of file sharing applications and other tools. Although there are many clues to suggest the software is usually available for free, those who fall into MP3University’s initial trap are unlikely to pick up on them.

Other websites are less caring about continuing the scam once the money has been received.

Download Shield, which is a BitTorrent based scam, has to explain to members that the BitTorrent client used was not made by Download Shield. This is a result of a pop-up within the Experimental Client, which asks for donations.

If this was not a give-away, then using external Torrent sites such as SuprNova and N4P must be. Download Shield link off site, despite having their own, reasonably maintained, database of torrents.

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