Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Scammers Use Harvard Education Platform to Promote Pirated Movies (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the piracy-haven dept.

TorrentFreak reports: Spammers are using Harvard's educational sharing tool H2O to promote pirated movies. Thousands of links to scammy sites have appeared on the site in recent weeks. Copyright holders are not happy with this unintended use and are targeting the pages with various takedown notices. H2O is a tool that allows professors and students to share learning material in a more affordable way. It is a welcome system that's actively used by many renowned scholars. However, in recent weeks the platform was also discovered by scammers. As a result, it quickly filled up with many links to pirated content. Instead of course instructions and other educational material, the H2O playlists of these scammers advertise pirated movies. The scammers in question are operating from various user accounts and operate much like traditional spam bots, offering pages with movie links and related keywords such as putlocker, megashare, viooz, torrent and YIFY.

27 comments

  1. Pirated Movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are movies about pirates.

    1. Re: Pirated Movies by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm curious how somebody is scamming you by offering you links to pirated movies. I mean what, do these movies come in a .exe file or something? If so then call it malware.

    2. Re: Pirated Movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a post from manishs. You should be filtering those if you are not already.

    3. Re: Pirated Movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm getting that impression.

      BREAKING NEWS: WEBSITE WITH ZERO/SHITTY BOT CONTROL FLOODED BY SPAM POSTS something something PIRATED MOVIES

      Click their shit and you're going to get a lot more than a "pirated movie". Dumbass.

    4. Re: Pirated Movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Read the article, maybe?

      >While most students won’t mind free access to the latest blockbusters, the links provided are not leading to regular pirate sites and services.
      >
      >Instead they point to scammy portals, many of which require a credit card to signup, which undoubtedly leads to disappointment. These kinds of scams are nothing new, but seeing them listed on a Harvard website is a new development.

  2. "scammers" or "spammers" ? by sittingnut · · Score: 2

    title -
    "Scammers Use Harvard ..."
    summary -
    "Spammers are using Harvard's ..."

    1. Re:"scammers" or "spammers" ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From the article:

      >While most students won’t mind free access to the latest blockbusters, the links provided are not leading to regular pirate sites and services.
      >
      >Instead they point to scammy portals, many of which require a credit card to signup, which undoubtedly leads to disappointment. These kinds of scams are nothing new, but seeing them listed on a Harvard website is a new development.

  3. is this really a "scam"? by sittingnut · · Score: 0, Troll

    linking to "pirated content" is not necessarily a "scam".

    in fact, it can be argued that charging high prices for copying data (near zero cost operation now) , as copyright holders do, is more deserving of name "scam".

    1. Re:is this really a "scam"? by ShaunC · · Score: 1

      It's both spam and scam, really. These people are spamming on behalf of shady supposed "streaming" sites hosted in Russia and various eastern bloc nations. Whether or not those sites will actually show you the movie you're trying to see is unknown but they'll absolutely infect you with adware, malware, and other garbage.

      This shit plagued Reddit for months, they finally got on top of it and it looks like the scam spammers have moved elsewhere.

      --
      Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
    2. Re:is this really a "scam"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Links are to pirated downloads. You are a troll working for copyright holders, spamming to here with false information.

    3. Re:is this really a "scam"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      " they'll absolutely infect you with adware, malware, and other garbage."

      How do you know absolutely unless you fell for every one of them, you shill.

    4. Re:is this really a "scam"? by Haoie · · Score: 1

      Facebook was rife with these on all the big pages up until recently. It's better lately, probably filters finally cleaning them up.

      --
      If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
  4. SHOCKED! by cacahuetes · · Score: 0

    I am shocked to hear that students are sharing movies and other copyright material on their internal servers. Shocked, I tell you.

  5. How do they access? by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    TFA says access requires an .edu address. How did spammers get in? Did they hijack student's accounts?

    1. Re:How do they access? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      .edu email addresses are dime a dozen in the dark corners of the internet. They are not hacked, they are just provided by domain admins themselves.

  6. One would expect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    better of Havard educated people.

    1. Re:One would expect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      better of Havard educated people.

      George Walker Bush attended and graduated from Harvard University. What does that tell you about the institution and its alumni?

    2. Re:One would expect by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      It tells you nothing. GWBush wasn't a dumb man, he acted like a country boy to get voted in, and it worked.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  7. This is great news by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    The Pirate Movie. Treasure Island. Cutthroat Island. Captain Blood. At least these classics will get the audience they deserve. For too long Pirate movies have fallen under the radar (not the least because Pirates don't have radar). Bringing these movies to a wide audience... hang on... oh waited. Pirate_d_ movies. Well then. Carry on.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  8. these blasted scammers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scamming people out of their hard-earned... Oh wait. Who are they scamming again? I expect educational content and get links to free movies. If that is a scam then any ad is.

  9. Scamming the host by SeattleLawGuy · · Score: 1

    I'm curious how somebody is scamming you by offering you links to pirated movies. I mean what, do these movies come in a .exe file or something? If so then call it malware.

    They are not scamming you; they (and you) are scamming the non-consenting host by using it for something other than the educational material you are allowed to use it for. It's like if you call an Uber and then send your pet goat in the car without you while the driver is looking the other way.

    --
    Real lawyers write in C++
    1. Re:Scamming the host by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What? Thats not a scam. Thats misusing a service like putting unauthorised material on dropbox or google drive or amazon drive or one dive etc. Neither would your example of sending a goat in a uber car instead of a human be called a scam. Imagine this, you sign the declaration form that you're not sending prohibited goods through the post. You're then caught doing so. You'll be charged for a string of offences but scamming won't be one of them.

    2. Re:Scamming the host by DRJlaw · · Score: 2

      They are not scamming you; they (and you) are scamming the non-consenting host by using it for something other than the educational material you are allowed to use it for.

      Or they're scamming you...

      "While most students won't mind free access to the latest blockbusters, the links provided are not leading to regular pirate sites and services.

      Instead they point to scammy portals, many of which require a credit card to signup, which undoubtedly leads to disappointment. These kinds of scams are nothing new, but seeing them listed on a Harvard website is a new development.

      With links from the official Harvard domain name, the pages are an SEO goldmine and do very well in Google's search results."

      RTFA.

    3. Re:Scamming the host by retchdog · · Score: 1

      No, that's more of a "tragedy of the commons" situation as well as a plain old ToS violation.

      The putative scamming comes in the multiple layers of portals and redirects before the user finds the content. There will be several ads which are going to be even less effective than usual ads. These are placed by a robust marketplace of simulating so-called "organic" ad views, and are often used to bulk up claimed impression numbers. You could argue that it's a matter of the advertisers getting what they paid for, but since there is little in the way of self-regulation and the impressions are sold as genuine (rather than spammed through pop-ups and nested redirects), it's arguably fair to call it a scam. Marginally, the profit is pathetic, but it scales well.

      Some of the portals will also try to trick users with the usual "install this totally legitimate virus scanner!" crap. Probably no one on slashdot will fall for this, but it's still a scam albeit an obvious one. There might be more devious javascript running also, but i'm not sure about that.

      --
      "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
  10. can we just... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... throw the freakin scammers in the slammer so we stop stammering about them ?

  11. Just add water by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The real question is if those spammer-scammers posted any links to pirated H2O episodes on H2O.