Survey-to-download sites

Note: This page was mostly imported from the Miraheze version of this wiki.

What a typical "survey-to-download" site looks like when you try to download something from one of them.

Many file-sharing sites (such as 4shared and Mediafire) have a known reputation for piracy, but there's something in the deep web, where people and trolls store nonsense to; "survey-to-download" sites, the sites that have you do surveys to continue to your download, which 90% of the time, are completely fake. These surveys are often used to try and make fake revenue or to troll people, and legitimate websites don't use surveys for human verification, instead they use a program called captcha. So far, it's unknown where and when this trend had started, but have been known to be popular on the early days of piracy/hacks on YouTube, and they've been mostly popular on fake Roblox generators as well.

Why They didn't survey the site

1. Why do a survey in order to try and download something? You could just download it from any other website without taking a survey.
   • No legitimate website requires surveys for human verification. And if it was real, bots could just fill surveys with realistic fake information.
2. Who's gonna upload a scammy file on a site that has no rules on what is being submitted?
3. False advertising: Some shady file-sharing websites promise high amounts of income per download, but in reality, you receive nothing. It is also unknown if users can actually download the files at the end.
4. Even if someone successfully completes a survey, they are often times using for doxing/phishing purposes, such as stealing personal information. They are often endless to collect as much information to sell to advertisers.
5. Most of the time, they're scams (ranging from MMO hacks that "think" they know their way around anti-hack systems, jailbreaks, piracy, etc).
6. They often have no rules on what you can do on there, as they're mostly used for illegal hacking material such as code generators, etc. Links to survey-to-download sites are often on scam websites.
7. Even if a video/claim says "NO SURVEY", they are 90% of the time sarcastic with bots writing comments going like "WOOT" and "THANK YOU" with fake positive reviews, and also a toxic fan base on YouTube which defends these as well.
8. Despite the questionable survey-to-download system, it has never been confirmed if anyone has ever gotten any real files from these websites.