One of my new trackers has banned Tixati because, according to them, you can cheat with it and thus alter the upload rates sent to the tracker—just like Ratiomaster can do.


That’s crazy. Honestly, I know Tixati pretty well since I’ve been using it for years, and I’ve never seen that option, but maybe it’s just well hidden.


So, myth or not—can anyone shed some light on this for me?

Tixati doesn't have an option to change reported upload. However, people can fake their upload stats easily with any torrent client by seeding to themselves without using RatioMaster or similar programs. Of course this kind of cheating is usually not hard to detect by the site staff members.
Anyway, If you want to bypass Tixati ban see this:
https://support.tixati.com/tracker_spoof

Thank you very much for this confirmation. I imagine it won't change their stance, but at least it will be on record.

Bittorrent protocols were never made to securely exchange user traffic stats. Without additional measures, trackers merely trust the data clients send them. Cheaters can manipulate it with any torrent client (unless some private tracker makes everyone use some custom closed source abomination with hardware DRM on top of it). Look at the multiplayer games, their clients, servers, and protocols are much more complex than tracker updates, and there still is market for cheats.

What private tracker admins do is checking the behavioural quirks of legitimate and cheating clients they know about, but mostly cultivate obedience and herd mentality (also good for business). It is also mostly useless, because private tracker can just compile traffic stats on every torrent, and outline the ones where total upload and total download don't match.

So if they decide that you can't use something, you have no options that don't result in disrespect of their powers.