‘Demonoid’ distances itself from .to domain to avoid confusion with scam site By Kavita Iyer –

In August 2019, Demonoid, one of the world’s most popular BitTorrent trackers, had moved to dnoid.to domain, which was launched by staffers of the original community. It is now learnt that Demonoid has again moved away from .to domain to avoid confusion with an obvious scam site, reports TorrentFreak.

For those unaware, Demonoid is one of the oldest BitTorrent sites that was founded sixteen years ago. However, things turned around last year when the site’s founder and original owner, Deimos went missing. As weeks and months passed by, the site disappeared completely. It was later learnt that Deimos had died in a tragic car accident back in August 2018.

While the news of Deimos’s death devastated many staffers of Demonoid, they decided to launch a new site to keep the legacy of founder Deimos alive. With the original Demonoid site stagnant, the staffers launched a new domain ‘dnoid.to’ in July 2019 with a completely new user database. This means that users have to sign up for a new account.

The new site has the same feel and look like the old site, and works like a magnet index for users to add links. However, the new site doesn’t host any torrents, nor does it operate a tracker either.

“Demonoid has a really massive user base, many of them are fans just like me, and just seeing the look of Demonoid feels like a ‘home’ to thousands,” Demonoid staffer ‘phaze1G’ had told TorrentFreak at the time.

“The point is not to compete with the original Demonoid or to be above other public torrents sites. It’s just to keep a memory of Demonoid and its founder Deimos, who is well-known around old folks and who set really high standards for torrent communities ever since 2003,” phaze1G said.

“Demonoid always had a special spot in people’s hearts. Keeping a memento of it without letting others ruin it by making copycats and phishing sites from it is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to him and keeping his legacy alive.”

While the new site’s userbase slowly started to increase in the weeks that followed, it also became obvious that the domain name was not the ideal choice.

Apparently, a notorious scam site, Demonoid.to is also using the .to domain that encourages people to download a binary client. But instead of offering torrents, the client download URL redirects to an associated link for a paid Usenet service.

The dnoid.to / demonoid.to domain name confusion has resulted in several users ending up at the wrong site. In recent weeks, more than 800 emails with complaints about this issue were received, according to phaze1G.

The alarming number of emails prompted the team to register a new domain name, Demonoid.is, which is now the new home. The staff is hoping that the ‘new’ Demonoid will avoid any confusion and other domain troubles. Currently, visitors to the old domain will be automatically redirected.

“The Tonic registry is not as reliable as it used to be with their redacted whois. They are handing over owner details, even following DMCA complaints, as we were told by some people from other sites,” phaze1G says.

In the meantime, it will continue to keep the dnoid.to site operational, which has been doing pretty well over the last few weeks.

“The site itself is doing fine. It’s not oversaturated, which is our goal. Many former users returned and lots of newcomers are stopping by too,” phaze1G notes.

“We are trying to keep a moderated size of visitors, so the infrastructure doesn’t include more cost as the revenue from ads is not enough to cover the costs itself,” he adds.