It it incredibly difficult to vet with 100% certainty that a binary you run it safe. If you have the source code, its so much easier. As others have said, the best way in piracy to be safe is downloading from a reputable source. Monkrus is pretty good. I am assuming you’re referring to the Adobe master collection? If so, GenP is excellent (and open source).

If you are on windows, one thing you can do is run any programs in sandboxie and see what it writes to the disc. If it tries to edit things that it shouldn’t like the registry or parts of the os that would be a red flag.

You could also setup firewall rules to block the application from accessing the internet. I am on macOS so I use a program called little snitch (lulu by objective see is also good). I am not familiar with the windows side of things. But essentially what I do is block the program and any processes it starts.

If you want to learn more about malware, https://objective-see.org/ is a great resource. It’s macOS focused however but I’ve learned a ton from it. In particular their book on mac malware teaches a lot of analysis techniques.

Welcome to the private tracker community! It is a lovely place to be.

I personally am not a member of torrentleech but here is some advice to get you started!

1. Make use of the bonus points system

Typically most private trackers have some sort of economy in which permaseeding is rewarded with points. These points can then be used to buy upload credit to improve your ratio.

2. Download freeleech content

Often they also have freeleech content that does not count towards you download (thus preserving your ratio). Most trackers require you maintain a certain ratio. At first you can just manually search or download new freeleech content. Eventually, you may want to set up autobrr to automatically download new freeleech torrents. Other users have provided helpful links to get you started. Keep in mind as you explore other trackers some do not allow autobrr to be used.

3. Get connectable

The need for a VPN is not always as crucial as it is for public torrents. That being said, sometimes it is difficult to get connectable (forward ports) on your home network. Thus some users use a VPN such as AirVPN that allow port forwarding. You don’t need to be connectable to seed, however you are unable to seed to other non-connectable users (thus decreasing your upload potential).

4. Avoid the forums and chat

This advice is often over said and most of the time the forums and chat are pretty decent. It comes from the odd power hungry moderator getting a bit too ban happy. However, what I will say is avoiding the chat and forums is not a terrible idea if you are not too familiar with the sites rules. Sometimes they are very specific and can get you if your not paying attention.

5. Upload content once you are familiar with the site

Once you feel comfortable with the above, uploading can really help your ratio. Make sure you follow all the rules of torrentleech if you are going to upload. Often private trackers have very strict and stringent rules. This is why I generally don’t recommend uploading if you’re new to the whole torrents scene.

Typically, the uploading process goes something like this. Create the .torrent file using qbittorrent or something similar. Make sure you mark the torrent as private in the creation tool and include your unique tracker url (you get this from the private tracker). Upload the .torrent file and actual file to your seedbox (or if you’re just seeding from the computer begin seeding once you create the torrent). Sometimes you need to do a force recheck to get it seeding. Then you upload the torrent to the private tracker and add relevant metadata. Force re-announce the torrent on qbittorrent and it usually shows up. You will need to be connectable to upload.

I was curious so looked at my qBittorrent stats. I’ve uploaded 378 TB in the last year.

What happens if you run all the steps on host? The VM is nice to have but not essential. I’ve had users report getting it to work on arm MacBooks by skipping the VM step.

I don’t think GenP works on windows through parallels sadly. Let me know if you get it working. I’ll update the Adobe Zii wiki accordingly.

• Post 1: Adobe Zii Guide ➜ https://web.archive.org/web/20240803045318/https://www.reddit.com/r/AdobeZii/comments/1c1zpxq/an_updated_guide_for_adobe_zii_in_2024/
• Post 2: Unfortunately I did not save a copy of this post. The essence of it was a post saying that reddit took down my Adobe Zii guide and that I will be moving to lemmy. I also included the email that the reddit team sent me. It is very similar to this post I sent to r/piracy ➜ https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1kiyaxq/received_copyright_warning_for_adobe_zii_guide/

Always excited to see a new project like this. I would def move away from reddit and Github. Both have a track record of going after piracy projects. Reddit used to be safe but they are going full hammer rn. Github seems to be fine unless its too obvious its piracy. Discord is still safe.

So true… honestly at this point I hope it just gets worse so people jump ship to lemmy. Might be hopeful thinking that people will actually switch. But having a company control public discourse always seems to end badly. Not looking at you twitter.

Ikr! That is what my thought was. I always prefer to be anonymous online and giving them all my personal info seems like a very bad idea.

MAM economy is actually so easy. I’m at 10 TiB of upload and still have bp left over. I think my actual upload is something like 700 GiB.

Can concur that using trash guides is the way to go. Never had any issues.

Don’t use invites to gain access to a private tracker. If the person who invited you gets banned you will get banned. Go through official interview process for MAM, OPS, or RED. That will get you in and you can jump to other trackers from there.

Yeah it appears they are cracking down heavily on piracy. I would not be surprised if more subreddits go down.