RIP Deimos the founder of Demonoid website and BitTorrent Dies

RIP Deimos the founder of Demonoid website and BitTorrent Dies

Wednesday, 17 April, 2019

RIP
Deimos 1980 - 2018
Demonoid April 21, 2003 - September 17, 2018

Torrent Freak reported that the founder of Demonoid, one of the most popular and old torrent trackers in history, is believed to have passed away.

Deimos suddenly disappeared without a trace last summer. According to information reviewed by Demonoid's staff, he was likely the victim of a tragic accident.

Demonoid was a BitTorrent tracker and website that included file-sharing related discussion forums and a searchable index for the tracker.

In past site went down few times but it always came back successfully.

Demonoid staffer ‘phaze1G,’ wrote following on site https://www.demonoid.info

Before I start, I hope that there is a 1% chance that this is incorrect and not true, as the local news in the report wrote one detail incorrectly.

With great sadness, I want to announce that Deimos, the founder of Demonoid known as someone who was one of the earliest and influential people on the torrent scene since its beginning has died in an accident back on August, 2018. Everything happened so fast and so unexpected, one moment I was speaking with him, next moment I found out that he died after I went to sleep and told him good night. For days I blamed myself and thought what would happen if I didn't go to sleep that day and continue speaking with him before he went out and the accident happened.

The hardest thing is that this falls on me to tell and knowing how big fan base there is for Demonoid, it is really, really messed up to tell people something like this.

The family members rejected any form of contact and I respect it as they had a traumatic experience and lost the person they care about.

There is a commemoration page which was made months ago, but I never got enough strength to release it and I'm not good with words, so you can read there a farewell message.

After Deimos death, someone was using his cheapo laptop to visit Demonoid as I was seeing activity over his Demonoid profile several times until servers were wiped out to default apache page (That laptop is the only thing which can access Demonoid backend and his Demonoid profile along with cloud backup servers). It was someone with enough tech skills such as friends or Umlauf himself, so currently there is at least one person who holds the database of Demonoid and if it ever comes back that person will not be Deimos.

Edit: As some people messaged me worrying about their privacy, the login happened around four days after accident happened, and there is no way that someone could break custom made cryptography and get on the server that fast, let alone get the laptop and do stuff. That was someone who already had access. My guess would be Umlauf, someone from close family, or a friend who was lending several servers for Demonoid.

What now? I don't know. Demonoid Fora was formed as a reminder of Demonoid and Deimos, but I have no idea what to do next, or what to do regarding Demonoid at all. Demonoid is and always was Deimos' child. Umlauf was there to help when it was hard, so without those 2 giants, there is no Demonoid. Personally, I think the best thing is to leave Demonoid rest and have it in our memories as I will not involve myself in any ressurection of Demonoid or will be part of it if someone recreate a tracker under that name.

Deimos had big expectations for Demonoid before he died, he spent over 8 hours a day coding and improving Demonoid for months and wanted to deliver what he promised to the community. Many things were happening behind the scene, he cared so much about users privacy and replied almost to everyone who private message him and asked how he was and stuff. He was really a friendly person. I'm glad that I had a chance to know him and I will miss him dearly, not because of Demonoid only, but because of the person, he was.

Photo - Demonoid Screen Shot