In addition to bringing you news from the BitTorrent scene, we also give away invitations for various private trackers. In fact, we have now conducted over 50 giveaways in conjunction with staff from various torrent sites. During some of these giveaways, we simply direct users to a tracker’s invite IRC channel, recruitment thread, special signup URL, online invite application, etc and staff then take it over from there. In other cases we ask readers to send an E-mail to our invite request address – we process the request and send an invite back over E-mail. Whenever this is done we clearly specify the format of the mail you need to compose (with specific subject text and contents that should be included in msg body) on the the giveaway article itself. While majority of the responses we get are well formed, we do receive quite a few dodgy mails as well. Quoted below are some of the requests that made it to our hall of shame.

Included screenshots are from requests we received for our most recent giveaway, which was for BlackCats Games. Although we clearly specified how to send in the invite request E-mail in the giveaway post itself, take a look at some of the interesting responses we received. We have edited out the names and E-mail addresses of the senders to protect their privacy.

1. What we asked for was a profile link on a private tracker the reader was already a member of. Instead, we received a 4MB Bitmap image that made the E-mail server cry (the image was an screenshot of a tracker profile page – which was not needed).
response fail 6

2. This response has fail written all over it. It has none of the information we requested and even the subject line is wrong. We sort invite E-mails by the subject text and if you set this incorrectly (to something other than the one mentioned in the giveaway article), your response will not get processed.
response fail 3

3. Again, another example of a dumb request. This one does not even have the name of a tracker. I’m pretty sure this is one of those folks who litter BitTorrent invite forums and blogs with generic posts like “please send me invite for XYZ tracker. my email is dumbass@provider.com. thx in advance”. There were a lot of similar requests sent in by different users and this is just one example. Kinda sad, really.
response fail 5

4. When we respond to an invite request E-mail, we usually use the ‘reply’ button in our mail client. This particular user had support@google.com set as his reply E-mail and needless to say the invite code got sent to that address. This is not really an error with the invite request itself but just be careful what you set as the default reply-to address in your outgoing mails.
response fail 1

5. There are some folks who try to improve their chances by sending in multiple requests. Some do it from different E-mail address and some (like the guy below) do it with the same address. If we detect someone sending multiple requests for the same giveaway (and we usually do), all of those mails will go straight to the trash bin (and the addresses will also be added to the junk mail filter).
response fail 4

6. There was nothing wrong with this guy’s invite request. However, the automatic response he had set up had us surprised. “I’ll Feed You Back as Soon as Possible…”. You might want to change this text buddy.
response fail 2

By posting the above, we did not want to trash anybody. We just wanted to say that the key to obtaining an invite from giveaway threads conducted by FILEnetworks (and other blogs) is to follow instructions in the giveaway article itself. This usually has detailed information on how and what you should include in an invite request. Either way, good luck with your next invite reqeust – we have some more giveaways coming up :)


8 Comments

  1. John // 6/21/2010 07:10:00 AM  

    The guys who don't read and respond properly just don't deserve to get an invite. It's a good way to weed out dummies and those who obviously lack the ability to contribute.

  2. Unknown // 6/21/2010 01:28:00 PM  

    thank u filenetwork admins for the give
    but i'm asking i've sent e-mails at the first time u offer invites but i didn't get invitation could i send in the next time

  3. Anonymous // 6/21/2010 01:42:00 PM  

    I just wanted to make a suggestion here,since nowadays anybody who has heard the words torrent and private tracker and has become curious about them can search google and obviously come across your blog on the very first page,and thus by knowing only 5 words of English apply for them,and probably even manages to get them,can't you create a sort of a membership area where people have to fill in a simple application about torrenting and private trackers(probably ask for one or two profile links)to be able to access that area,and where you would post more exclusive articles and giveaways in?...

  4. tekcat013 // 6/21/2010 06:50:00 PM  

    Hi FN folks,

    Nice article, especially because I am acting in it as well!
    I am the multiple emailer. Only I didn't want to increase my chances by mailing all possible
    answers in separate emails, every email that I had sent was a correction on the former one.
    (I know that I didn't made that clear in the emails, a mistake that explains the article writers conclusion). I supposed that only the last one would count, wrong as I see now.
    Anyway did I understand that I can throw my email adres into the bin, because it is blacklisted
    for future giveaways?

    My excuses for the wrong mails!

    Regards,
    tekcat013

  5. Unknown // 6/21/2010 09:15:00 PM  
    This comment has been removed by the author.
  6. Unknown // 6/21/2010 09:35:00 PM  

    Thanks FN, appreciate your great works.

    This is not related to the post,but I wanted to post this to know your & hdbits' response.I heard that hdbits.org's invite system has been disabled because of the sellers.Because of only staffers have invites ,finding out an invite is truly impossible.But lots of good members looking for an invite.This is open request for all of them.If you have some connection with hdbits,please try to contribute a hdbits invite giveaway.Hope that will help them to reduce the higher demand of an invite.

  7. Unknown // 6/22/2010 10:51:00 AM  

    Spare a thought for those of us with English as a 2nd language. We do look retarded when we try to use another language. It's very difficult.

  8. microd20 // 6/23/2010 02:14:00 PM  

    No need for invite requests...just go to the site and sign up.


    http://www.seed-bytes.com/signup.php