If you’ve been watching open signup threads on various BitTorrent forums, you may have stumbled across a new site, www.scenetorrents.biz. Not only does this tracker have the same name, favicon, logo, category icons as the legendary ScT (now defunct) but its staff even claims it to be a resurrection of SceneTorrents known as ScT v2.0. As much as old ScT members would like to hail the return of their beloved torrent site, these claims simply aren't true. SceneTorrents.biz is not ScT reborn – it’s just another General/0Day torrent tracker that tries to ride the popularity of a BitTorrent legend. Not only has the impostor site been shot down on ScT IRC channel but SCC, another respected scene tracker, has issued a warning about ScT.biz administrators having ‘malicious intentions’.

SceneTorrents

When SceneTorrents.biz opened up a couple of days before, there was an interesting message on the homepage (quoted below). As you can see, site admin claims they have brought ScT back from the dead (although not in very good English):

Hello Friends ... After R.I.P. Old Stuff Decides Bring SCT Back to Alive Again!!

Us Will Take Some Time to Config Old Dump Again (1,2 Months), Us Need Uploaders If You Have Server With +100Mbit and Scene Acess Contact Staff on Menu INFO and SUPPORT
Us NEED DONATIONS, to KEEP us ALIVE, Dont Let SCT Dies Again.
Old Users if can PROOF old stats, Send Jpeg Link For Us With Your Old Stats on Menu INFO on SUPPORT, and Soon Your Old Status Will Be Recovered.
About IRCD. Nomore ANNOUNCE on IRC will be used. Security Reasons!

Kind Regards,
The SCT Staff Leader.

However, the trusted IRC channel of SceneTorrents (called ex-user hangout channel after the shutdown) refuses this claim. Quoted below is the channel topic from a few days before:

* Now talking in #SceneTorrents
* Topic is '[scenetorrents ex-user hangout chan] :: no invite asking / trading / offering :: ScTBDev - Out Soon :: SCT-SCC Theme - 0.9 :: - ENGLISH ONLY - scenetorrents.biz is a fake scam site.'
* Set by feeling on Wed Feb 17 02:51:30

If the above was not enough proof for skeptics, another warning came from SCC, a well respected private tracker in the BT scene. SCC issued the following security reminder to all its members through their homepage. Pay attention to the text in bold:

Security Reminder
We would like to remind you that you should NOT use the same password on SCC as you do on other sites. Additionally, it is important to use a complex password, with at least 8 characters (and not easily guessable, but easy for you to remember). Not all websites encrypt the user passwords, meaning they will be able to see them in clear text. We thought it would be a good idea to remind everyone of this as there has been a ScT "Scam" site popping up under a .biz domain, we have reasons to believe they have malicious intentions with the site.

We’re not quite sure what these malicious intentions are but user account theft would be a fine guess. We have so far not heard from anyone who signed up with ScT.biz that their accounts got stolen but it’s always good to heed the warnings and change your passwords ASAP if you did register there.

If you’ve been reading us for long, you’d have noticed that we rarely flame BitTorrent trackers. However, there’s been some cases where sites we thought to be trustworthy turning out to be rogue trackers. For example, we received so many complaints from our readers regarding password theft by a MusicThe.Net , a tracker we reviewed couple of weeks ago [Read the comments here].The morale here is you can’t trust anyone these days. As we have highlighted many times before, using different login details for different trackers can go a long way in protecting your tracker accounts. If you can’t remember them, save the login information in your browser. It’s best to back up the saved credentials with a tool such as XMarks so you’d never lose them even if your PC fails.

Related Articles


10 Comments

  1. Michel // 2/21/2010 04:58:00 AM  
    This comment has been removed by the author.
  2. MRINMOY // 2/21/2010 08:06:00 AM  

    Thanks for the information

  3. Yarkz // 2/21/2010 08:29:00 AM  

    Honestly, he's not trying to scam anyone, I think he just wants ScT to bring back ScT, but no matter what ScT cannot be duplicated.

  4. Violated // 2/21/2010 09:37:00 AM  

    @Yarkz,
    If he wants to do that he can say that. But what he's saying here is old staff of ScT run this site which is not true. Thats scamming in my book.

  5. Unknown // 2/21/2010 11:28:00 AM  

    He's not scamming. My word is useless in this situation, but I know for a fact that his intentions are sincere.

    You will all see what I mean soon enough, but I've spoken to him enough to know he's not scamming anyone.

    Let's just say that when ScT came up, they didn't decide to rename themselves as EliteTorrents, in the same way, this dude has decided that it's best to move on from the name.

    Wait and see, before you believe every skeptical scam-hunter in town. =)

  6. Unknown // 2/21/2010 12:23:00 PM  

    He is clearly claiming to be old ScT staff, why would he do that jojo?

  7. Unknown // 2/21/2010 01:04:00 PM  

    hes gone the wrong way about it. scenetorrents evolved from elitetorrents, taking with it some staff, and a level of leetness. this muppet speaks for nobody and barely knows a word of english. its just another site, 100000% unrelated to sct. he has no right to try bring sct back, it isnt his to bring back, and he clearly doesnt have the blessing of sct staff, quite the opposite infact.

  8. Aron Newshlick // 2/21/2010 08:03:00 PM  

    etiv@hmamail.com

    so bad .. member their.. anyone have a dupe etiv account which i can use? i'm desperate

    if you have one.. plz email it to etiv@hmamail.com

  9. Unknown // 2/22/2010 07:34:00 AM  

    @Anders, am I that easy to differentiate from everyone else's tone?

    I didn't mean to post with that account anyways, I was simply too lazy to go through the effort of logging into this account.

    You know I needn't hide myself.

  10. george // 3/14/2010 04:14:00 AM  

    vreau si eu o invitatie va rog just_allly@yahoo.com