1337x dot to - Safe or Not?

1337x dot to is a website used for hosting and distributing links to torrent files, most of them carrying illegal content such as pirated movies and games.

This is enough to give you a very good idea of whether the website is legitimate or not. Obviously, the vast majority of content being distributed using the torrent links on 1337x dot to is illegal.

But is the website itself safe? The answer to this is generally a 'no'. If a regular user visits 1337x dot to, they will be greeted by message boxes asking for push notification permission, as well as a number of banner ads. Additionally, pressing the search button or clicking on a link to a torrent magnet string will also cause further obtrusive ad windows to appear instead of triggering the search or magnet activation.

A lot of similar sites serve advertising originating from rogue advertising networks. While on one visit you may chance upon ads related to online gambling, on your next visit you might land on much worse ads, potentially opening pages that contain malware and other potentially unwanted software such as adware and browser hijackers.

Rogue advertising networks are dangerous because they can redirect you to pages containing badware of many kinds. There is no telling when you might have a dubious website open when you click around websites like this.

If you use a robust ad-blocking browser addon, you might almost believe there is nothing wrong with 1337x dot to or similar torrenting websites. However, trying to visit or use the website with no ad-blocker active is a very different experience and you will be bombarded by very obtrusive ads, some of them potentially harmless.

Your best bet is to steer clear of similar websites, both because the content they are used to distribute is illegal but also because even if you never attempt to download anything, you may still experience redirects and pop-up ads loading potentially harmful pages.