

This seems like a one off for them, but for me whenever tracking ongoing TV series I would regularly get malicious files as they appear before the real ones, and get found and downloaded by sonarr.
These days I only automate from private trackers, and enable a public tracker for an interactive search only if something can’t be found on the private trackers.

The two main benefits I’ve seen of private trackers are that you avoid the issue in the OP which happens all the time on public trackers, and that shows download in seconds.
Not sure how helpful they would be if things weren’t automated. I just have things set up so my Jellyfin users can request shows and they get downloaded automatically.
But with that said, “private” doesn’t mean it costs money, just that it requires an account (and usually that is an application process). It means they can kick people off for uploading things they shouldn’t.