Private Trackers Announce ‘Global Ban’ Of Romania

December 28, 2008 by sharky

Romania - a real hotbed for tracker activity - has yet again found itself on uncertain ground in amongst the private tracker community. This was recently rekindled a few days ago when Waffles.fm officially announced that Romania is "largely a cesspool of spam" and is thus now globally banned from the tracker. This includes all existing members, as well as potential future invitees. Today, ScT also announced plans to rid Romanian users from its tracker.

Waffles: Due to Romania being largely a cesspool of spam, viruses, phishing, and fraud, and phishing attempts, fraudulent donations, cheating, and the like from various Romanian IPs with zero action on the part of Romanian ISPs, Romania is hereby banned from Waffles. Please take care to not invite people if you know they’re in or from Romania. We will not take action against you, but may change tune in the future.

The Waffles’ decision comes hot off the heels of a phishing scam which involved random PMs (personal messages) to other Waffles members:

Waffles: A bunch of you may have received a PM from a Waffles user “TdskLink” this afternoon. This PM was an attempt at phishing yahoo accounts. The user in question has been banned from Waffles, and the PM’s which he sent have been removed.

What.cd also issued an alert to a similar phishing scam at their tracker, although there’s no mention of an impending ban of Romania, or if .ro ranges are even involved (although we’d be leaning towards a "yes" vote on this).

What.cd: Urgent Update: If you have been sent a PM from “JerTheRipper” do not open it - it is a phishing attempt scam. We have disabled all accounts involved and are working to delete the messages before anyone has a chance to even view them. If you notice anything suspicious feel free to PM any of the Staff.

ScT Next Up To Ban Romania

Following suit today was ScT, who also opted to block Romanian IPs from the tracker, in the hopes to tighten security & thwart invite giveaways & cheaters; which in recent trends are often stemming from *.ro-based IP ranges.

ScT:

Reason: giveaways.

banning .ro solves the problem… SonOfDorel, SoKaT, Crosshair (Cappsor), TheLiquid and a few others are the users .ro have to thank for firmly making our minds up.

Waffles and ScT are not the only ones that globally ban Romania, as SCC seems to be way ahead of the curve (if not ban-happy).

Romania Has Company: Israel, Egypt, Poland…

Here’s a non-exhaustive summary of other trackers that ban countries and IP ranges. Note that this is not an official list, as data was acquired elsewhere.

• SCC: bans Israel, Poland, Egypt, Brazil and Romania (& probably even more).
• Swedvdr: you need to be in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland (all other IPs are banned).
• ScT: Poland and Israel
• HDBits.org: Poland, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, China
• Demonoid: bans Belgium
• TorrentBytes: bans Israel
• BCG: bans (parts of) Brazil
• TorrentLeech: bans all or most of Israel (probably all).
• BitMeTV: has banned Israel, some IP ranges in Brazil, Croatia, Poland and countless others.
• India’s #1 Internet provider (BSNL) is banned by HDBits.org and many other trackers.

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