A scam that uses the developer community of Epic Games, famous for Fortnite, to lead to widespread pirate sites – GIGAZINE

Regulations against pirated sites are progressing, and in addition to blocking or shutting down sites, efforts are also being made to prevent pirated sites from appearing higher in search engine results. However, “the realEpic GamesThe method of posting a link to a pirated site in the Developer Forum and displaying the link at the top of search results has been reported to have become widespread.

Spammers use Epic Games website to promote ‘piracy’ scams *TorrentFreak
https://torrentfreak.com/spammers-use-epic-games-website-to-promote-piracy-scams-231210/

According to TorrentFreak, a news site that reports on piracy and copyright issues, Epic GamesDeveloper communitySeveral fraudulent links related to copyright infringement have been confirmed. The developer community is divided into pages for each topic such as “Getting Started and Setup” and “Coding and Programming” as shown in the image below, but multiple topics related to pirated sites and illegal content have been added.

Although the pirated site itself is not displayed at the top of the search results, “Posts to the Epic Games developer community that include links to pirated sites” are displayed at the top of the search results. The image below was featured by TorrentFreak,”Hardcore never dies」「Napoleon“, the Epic Games developer community appears in search results, leading to pirated links to movies released in 2023.

We’ve seen thousands of piracy-related threads added to the Epic Games developer community, with topics named after the latest blockbuster movies, popular music, and other titles to promote pirated content.

Many sites associated with the developer community ask you to register your credit card number, etc., under the guise of a “free account”, and even if you do register, there are almost no links that allow you to watch the pirated software content you are looking for. nothing. Also, if you click on an allegedly illegal music download link, it’s likely that what you’re downloading is not a pirated music file, but a virus that can cause all kinds of problems.

These scams use sites like Epic Games, which are highly rated in search engines and appear high in search resultsSearch engine optimizationIt has been called the “hacking strategy” and is considered an effective strategy since Google has intensified its efforts to exclude pirated platforms from its search results. Epic Games is not the only target targeted, but also Facebook, Google Maps and the world’s largest online signature site.Change.orgAnd famous platforms such as Steam. You can also find it on the university’s websiteCase StudyorWebsites related to the European Union (EU).There have been reports of cases where this has been abused.

When TorrentFreak reported the SEO hack to Epic Games, Epic Games said: “We are investigating this issue and do not accept any accounts that violate our developer community rules and Terms of Service rules, including user posting requirements.” We plan to take necessary measures against this.”