My warning: being ignorant of BitTorrent stats "cheating" can still get you banned

I have been banned from thebox.bz for "cheating", despite not even knowing how to cheat. Below is my warning to users of all ratio-based BitTorrent sites, and in particular, to users of thebox.bz:


Last night I turned on my BitTorrent client (uTorrent 1.8.1), and noticed that all the status icons had gone red. I then went to thebox.bz's website (as 95% of my torrents are from there) to see if the tracker was down, tried to log in, but received a brief and ominous message: "Your account has been disabled."

Baffled, I went to thebox's IRC channel, and spoke to an admin in #thebox-support. I was told that site traffic statistics suggested that I had been "cheating", somehow spoofing the amount of traffic that I was actually uploading as a seeder.

And in terms of my account on thebox.bz, that was pretty much that.

The truth of the matter is that I have not cheated - at least not intentionally. In fact, last year when I heard that BitComet was one of several clients that often inflates stats, I immediately switched to uTorrent, which I have been using ever since. I honestly have no idea how someone would spoof their bittorrent traffic stats, and frankly, I wouldn't have the time nor the inclination to find out. I had a good ratio at thebox (at +54 gigs at the time of my account being disabled), so there would be no need for me to try to provide fraudulent stats.

Unlike some other people who have complained of rude administrators when confronted with a disabled account, I was treated relatively politely, although it was an abruptly open-and-shut case with a seemingly predetermined verdict.

I chatted with an admin of thebox.bz on IRC, who had a look at the system stats and told me I had been definitely cheating. When I pleaded my innocence, and was asked which BitTorrent client I used, I said it was uTorrent 1.8.1, unmodified. The admin expressed disbelief, and asked if I had also used another client, or if I had used my uTorrent to cheat at another ratio-based sites. I said no. I only had one BitTorrent client on my system (uTorrent), and the only ratio-based site I use is thebox (I had used UKNova, but didn't visit it for 3 months because thebox was so good, and thus I discovered last week that my UKNova account was deactivated due to inactivity). The admin's response was that something insidious had to have been on my system that was causing these dodgy stats. I asked the admin if he had ever heard of malware/spyware/etc that had messed up BitTorrent traffic stats, and he said "no". He was pretty much convinced that I was either intentionally using my client in an insidious way, or had intentionally installed another program to help cheat the BitTorrent traffic stats. When I said that I hadn't done so, I was then told that "I was unaware of what was on my computer", that my account would remain disabled, and that any donations made via PayPal in the past 45 days would be refunded. And that was that.

I then asked how I had cheated, so I could investigate it myself (e.g. I could see if I had unwittingly turned something on or off on my uTorrent client). The admin refused to disclose this information. Additonally, I opined that if people can inadvertently cheat without intending to, then thebox.bz should educate people as to how to make sure they are not cheating. Again, brushed aside, as if all "cheating" is intentional, and as if I were simply telling a lie.

I was rather surprised by the quick verdict; I made it clear that this was a mistake, and that if there were unusual stats that they were not caused by any intention on my part to cheat the system. I also explained that I felt I have a model user of the thebox.bz community for several reasons:
* I have been a member of the young site for more than a year (and am thus one of the longest-standing members on the site)
* My combined upload/download total is nearing one terabyte
* I have maintained a good ratio (+54 gigs at the time of account deactivation, gained primarily in Sept and the first half of Oct), and thus would have no need to "cheat"
* I have donated money to the site in the past
* I have never received so much as a warning since joining (more than one year ago!)

All of that was pretty much waved away as an irrelevancy. I was treated the same way any n00b would be treated.

Now please understand that this isn't a "boo hoo, woe me" whine. It's not the end of the world that my account has been disabled: I can always go back to UKNova, and if I was absolutely desperate to get back on thebox, I'm sure there are ways it could be done.

But frankly, I don't think I want to be a part of a community that treats a long-term member the same way that it treats a one-week newbie. If I had only been on thebox for a week or two, had a poor ratio, and had been giving off seemingly dodgy traffic signals, then fine, lift up the drawbridge without so much as a warning. But for a long-standing member with a good ratio to be cast away with the same disregard, despite pleading innocent? That's just shoddy.

I can fully understand the admins being pro-active against cheating. I would expect such a stance from any ratio-based BitTorrent community that I am a part of. But clearly, if I have not intentionally cheated, and yet there are somehow traffic stats saying that I have cheated, then there is something wrong somewhere. Perhaps the system that we all take for granted is fallible; perhaps thebox's traffic stats are not as black-and-white and foolproof as the admins might think.

My warning to everyone (BitTorrent users in general, and thebox.bz users in particular) is that something must be wrong somewhere in the overall bittorrent system (whether it be a tracker, or a client, or something else), and that you could fall victim to this, just as I have. If I can be accused of cheating despite not having intentionally done so, than this whole episode of suddenly having my account disabled can happen to any of you. In fact, a simple search for "thebox.bz disabled" on Google shows numerous similar incidents. In my case, I suppose that either thebox.bz's tracker is dodgy, or (perhaps more likely) my BitTorrent client (fully up-to-date uTorrent 1.8.1, unmodified) is giving off bad signals. Regardless of what's to blame, ignorant users simply sharing torrents innocently can fall victim to the same thing as I have.

I suppose the only way that users can attempt to avoid a similar fate is to pro-actively learn HOW to cheat, so that you understand how it works, in order to avoid doing so unintentionally. Ignorance apparently is not bliss, as I have found out the hard way. The sad thing from all this is that such a BitTorrent community would then be filled with users who know how to cheat the system. Definitely not ideal, is it? But again, ignorance will not protect the individual.

It has been a fantastic 53 weeks on thebox.bz for me. I live in Canada and don't even own a TV set, as I'm only interested in UK tele. Thebox.bz basically was my tele. I suppose I'll be able to get a good chunk of the content from UKNova, but I'll be gutted not to be able to get things like the upcoming IT Crowd series three (unless it's on Mininova), as well as some of the old programmes from decades past (I especially like collecting the older shows, as I am an amateur comedy script writer myself).

Oh well. Cheerio, thebox.bz.

you should watch american TV it's better

Maybe one of the site coders will step in here and help with some information for you ? All I can say is that sites run purpose written scripts that hunt for unrealistic upload stats. These scripts themselves are usually modified by the coder concerned, or designed from scratch, hence the admin's unwillingness to go into how their cheat detection works.
I have been accused of cheating myself in the past, because of high upload stats on a tracker, in my case it was that I was using a dedicated seedbox and had not notified the site, a lower level staff member was initially very rude and abrupt but I persisted and talked to a site admin and managed to prove my case. I do understand the indignation you feel at being a good member of a site and being abruptly disabled.
I can however offer some alternatives, TVTorrents has a good range of UK shows, UKNova you already know, there is a new site called TV Vault which specialises in older shows and hard to find content, and finally SCT, a 0day tracker has alot of current UK TV show content as well and being a very fast site actually has the content up earlier than some of the sites you are used to using.

i read carefully your post and i fail to see why or where u admit your fault on the issue, as u say you know nothing about cheating, which i will assume as true.

might have happened someone else was cheating at the same torrents as u were, and their sum up was that you cheated instead, as torrent stats gone wrong.

btw. if you are into 0-day series, TL is what you need.

edited.
comfort.

edit2: how about BMTV? they have both UK and canadian sections.

unintentional cheating?
thats a new phrase :lol:

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Originally Posted by Dithersky

unintentional cheating?

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Seems like a load of crap to me too.

Some things to think about: The OP joined today ... wrote only 2 posts and the second one is a rather lenghty one about being banned somewhere ... :shifty:

As Art said there can be misunderstandings when there's some info not known to some staff-members, but talking to an admin who actually looked into the users stats and after looking into those confirmed he was certainly cheating.

Anyway ... tough luck for you ... move on get another TV-site ... maybe some naive schmuck will offer you a BitmeTV, an ScT-invite or another great tracker and you will have achieved your goal, you certainly put some thoughts and effort into it :whistling

P.S. Sorry for the sarcasm, but if you've been here as long as me (and I suspect this ain't your first account) you'd react the same.

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Recently it has come to our attention that with an update to the latest version of µtorrent (1.7.7) by default there are several options turned on that absolutely must be turned off. DHT (distributed hash tables) and Peer Exchange, as well as Local Peer Discovery are features in µtorrent that allow you to connect to peers that are not part of the tracker. Failure to turn these options will cause µtorrent to misreport data to the tracker. This is not only a security risk, it is also a bannable offence as your client will report more data uploaded and less data downloaded from the tracker, thus falsely increasing your ratio. Also, if you are seeding to peers from outside the tracker, you won't be able to seed to S** members as quickly as possible. Please disable these features as soon as possible.

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^something to think about. but many people argue this isnt true because the torrent has a private flag. i, personally, wouldnt risk it

We all know cheating will make the account disabled
so,what can i say
Never cheat

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Originally Posted by kondrae

^something to think about. but many people argue this isnt true because the torrent has a private flag. i, personally, wouldnt risk it

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I don't think it can happen even when you put DHT on ... the tracker-side won't allow it

did u by any chance install WM Recorder on ur computer?

Sorry to hear about your TheBox hassle BWA123 . I'd say welcome to FST, but judging by the amount of negative replies, i doubt you'll be staying long .

Anyway, for all the people laughing at the unintentional cheating idea, here's exactly how it's possible, on TheBox .

Upon joining TheBox , i checked the usual FAQ's & Rules, including the Allowed/Banned Torrent Clients thread . I use the latest stable version of Utorrent, downloaded directly from the Utorrent.com, so it hasn't been modified by anyone ( i've neither the inclination or knowledge to do so myself) . It's allowed, so i'm good to go . For some reason, i carry on reading & find the following in the Banned Clients list :-

WM Recorder (Do NOT install this - u will get an instant ban with this software installed)

WTF , i've used that . That's not a torrent client, it's for ripping audio streams from net radio . Luckily, i'd found an alternative source for the radio shows i was after & had uninstalled WM Recorder prior to joining TheBox .
Otherwise, i could have been banned, for cheating, unintentionally .

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Originally Posted by Jaits

did u by any chance install WM Recorder on ur computer?

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Ack, yes! I've actually had WM Recorder on my computer for ages, but rarely use it - and when I have used it in the past, I always closed down uTorrent, because I wanted to devote all of my bandwidth to the video stream that I was recording. But I did use it to record something for a couple of hours on Sunday evening (Korean footie that I capped for fbtz.com), and I was banned from thebox for "cheating' on late Sunday evening. Must be that I was recording with WM Record and had my uTorrent open at the same time. I guess that would explain it!

According to Spillage above, the FAQ says that having WM Recorder results in a ban, but I was honestly unaware of this. I read the rules/FAQ inside and out when I joined 53 weeks ago, and regularly read the system announcements, but I don't recall ever reading about WM Recorder. I assume that the discovery of problems involving WM Recorder came up (and was added to the FAQ) within the past year?

Jaits, given that I've been a member of TheBox for more than one year, is there any chance you could let one of the admins know that this was what was causing "cheating" stats to appear on my account? If my thebox stats got messed up on Sunday evening, I don't mind if the admins take 5 or 10 gigs off of my ratio to make up for it. I would hope that my long-standing status on thebox would have some sway...

i have already enabled ur account... make sure u uninstall the software be4 u hit the tracker again or else it will re-disable u

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Originally Posted by BWA123

According to Spillage above, the FAQ says that having WM Recorder results in a ban, but I was honestly unaware of this. I read the rules/FAQ inside and out

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It's not in the FAQ or Rules, it's in the Forums, specifically the Read This First section .

Anyhoo , welcome back & au revoir to WM Recorder .

Glad to see a happy ending for BWA123. :)
The moral of this story -
Instead of educating myself how cheat works, I'd rather spending time to re-read rules, FAQs, and sticky posts in forum on every tracker I have.

Well...I guess this just goes to show that not everyone that posts here about an account disabling has not necessarily cheated on purpose. Glad it worked out for you BWA.

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Originally Posted by Disme

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Originally Posted by kondrae

^something to think about. but many people argue this isnt true because the torrent has a private flag. i, personally, wouldnt risk it

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I don't think it can happen even when you put DHT on ... the tracker-side won't allow it

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Well I dont agree with that one bit.
Not sure how things work now, or exactly what happened to be before, but:
Back when i first started working with torrents, I stumbled apon an unusual thing. There were torrents on TL I could not download due to wait times. I found a way around this using DHT. I would dl the torrent, set DHT to on, and wait. With some luck (didn't work all the time) eventually I would start getting peers and data, even though the tracker status was red saying wait time blah blah.

Now this doesn't work, but it did at one point, leeding me to the conclusion that DHT is not controlled by the tracker, in fact, its on the client and client only. Once my client found a peer that was using TL and on the same torrent as me, it would update my peers list and off I went.

Note: I dont condone this, I was new to torrents at the time, and this was years ago. Doubt it would work anyway, but this is my disclaimer for safety, lol.

Thank you. Jaits. I really appreciate your efforts - especially taking the time to think of why this might have happened, and suggesting WM Recorder. Rest assured it is off my system.

Thanks to everyone else who had helpful things to say as well. This is a cool little forum. Shame I hadn't found it earlier.

Can someone explain how WM Recorder affects stats a torrent client tells a tracker?

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Originally Posted by Tokeman

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Originally Posted by Disme

I don't think it can happen even when you put DHT on ... the tracker-side won't allow it

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Well I dont agree with that one bit.
Not sure how things work now, or exactly what happened to be before, but:
Back when i first started working with torrents, I stumbled apon an unusual thing. There were torrents on TL I could not download due to wait times. I found a way around this using DHT. I would dl the torrent, set DHT to on, and wait. With some luck (didn't work all the time) eventually I would start getting peers and data, even though the tracker status was red saying wait time blah blah.

Now this doesn't work, but it did at one point, leeding me to the conclusion that DHT is not controlled by the tracker, in fact, its on the client and client only. Once my client found a peer that was using TL and on the same torrent as me, it would update my peers list and off I went.

Note: I dont condone this, I was new to torrents at the time, and this was years ago. Doubt it would work anyway, but this is my disclaimer for safety, lol.

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Trackers have the option of ensuring that their downloads are marked with a "private" flag in the .torrent file. uTorrent respects that flag and will not register or search for anything related to a download that is marked Private.

With DHT running, double-click one of your downloads from that tracker. You should notice that the DHT and Peer Exchange boxes at the bottom are greyed out. This is because the .torrent was marked "private." If they are not greyed out, then you have the option of enabling or disabling DHT and Peer Exchange for that download by using those checkboxes.

What some people do is create "hacks" or use old buggy software that ignore that private flag. Getting caught DOING THAT will get you banned from private trackers.

But trackers have no reason to tell you not to use DHT at all, so I'm sure that they mean not to use DHT on their swarms. If they are marking their .torrents properly, then uTorrent will keep you out of trouble, even with DHT running on your non-private downloads.

If you always use private trackers, then DHT is of no use to you.

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Originally Posted by rulereric

Can someone explain how WM Recorder affects stats a torrent client tells a tracker?

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I'd like to know this too. As I read the rules and faqs of every tracker I use, and none of them mention this recorder(unless I'm being blind). Is this only a thebox.bz thing?

So trackers now are dictating which programs we have installed on our computer? Will there be a "automatic ban if using Win2k SP1" next? And how is the site detecting what software you have on your PC?

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Originally Posted by Rilly

So trackers now are dictating which programs we have installed on our computer? Will there be a "automatic ban if using Win2k SP1" next? And how is the site detecting what software you have on your PC?

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Uhh dude, if you don`t like it just don`t use the tracker! You download stuff from them free of charge, so obey their rules.

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Originally Posted by AMnesko

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Originally Posted by Rilly

So trackers now are dictating which programs we have installed on our computer? Will there be a "automatic ban if using Win2k SP1" next? And how is the site detecting what software you have on your PC?

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Uhh dude, if you don`t like it just don`t use the tracker! You download stuff from them free of charge, so obey their rules.

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Yes. i don't use thebox.. as usually someone jumps in with "its free, don't use it then.. " which, i agree as well.. so I don't use it.., but doesn't mean I can't make statements about them

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Originally Posted by Rilly

And how is the site detecting what software you have on your PC?

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It doesn't seem probable that the site can directly detect what software you've installed . It's more likely that anomalies were detected in the tracker stats, discrepancies which pointed towards the use of WM Recorder (or something similar) .

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Originally Posted by Rilly

So trackers now are dictating which programs we have installed on our computer? Will there be a "automatic ban if using Win2k SP1" next? And how is the site detecting what software you have on your PC?

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lmao that was very funny! Srsly I too am curious about the WM recorder/cheat thing - i used to use WM recorder about 2-3 yrs back to tape commercials off ad sites that wouldn't allow downloads from the embedded stream player, and never noticed that post on thebox FAQ or forum! Glad I had stopped using it at least before i joined there!