I bought a $139 Kindle. Immediately de-linked it from my Amazon account and I manage it with Calibre. Fully loaded with tons of pirated MOBIs and PDFs.
To make matters worse, I bought one of the hard covers from a Best Buy which caused power shorts, then I called Amazon and got a replacement with a light from Amazon for free. Then I returned the lightless hardcover back w/receipt back to Best Buy. I wasn't trying to get a $60 cover for free, but this method works, no social engineering even required.
Can't say I always read NFOs, esp. for regularly scheduled broadcasts, but they do lend some confidence and credibility. If I see a bunch of search results, I'll check the one with the NFO first.
NFOs are useful for lesser known, possibly out-of-distribution foreign downloads, telling you about audio & subtitle languages. Sometimes bitrate and IMDB links.