Internet security and privacy are two topics that are frequently in the news. Those Internet users who use the BitTorrent protocol to share files are perhaps more aware of these security and privacy issues than others. Many government agencies, special interest groups, corporations, and hackers with malicious intentions monitor torrent downloads and look for people to catch, sue, or attack.
Because of this reality, it is important for torrent file sharers to find ways to protect themselves from litigation, prosecution, bandwidth shaping, and malware. The following tips should help you make your torrent experience safer, private, and more secure.
Disclaimer: Downloading copyrighted media without the owner’s permission is illegal is some countries. Under no circumstances is this article intended to encourage illegal activity, and there are no guarantees that this information will protect you from any legal action.1. Port Forwarding
Every modern router has some form of port forwarding that you can use for your bittorrent client. With it, you can circumvent ISPs that may block common torrent ports or limit their bandwidth usage. Using port forwarding, you could, for example, forward your BitTorrent traffic through the standard web port (80). Some torrent clients also support randomizing of ports so that they will use a different one every time you start them.
2. Limit Downloads and Uploads
Since many ISPs now limit the amount of bandwidth you can consume within a month (or even at certain times of the day), it is important to not let your torrent downloading and uploading go unchecked. Torrent clients like qBittorrent have features that allow you to limit the number, speed, and even time of day that downloads are allowed.
3. Encryption
Encryption is all about privacy. There is no reason for anyone, even your ISP to know exactly what sites you are visiting or what files you are downloading. Most torrent clients support some type of encryption for the data and/or header information. It is important to note that encryption will not mask your IP address, so anyone spying on the torrent (i.e. actively connected to the tracker) will still know you are downloading it, but anyone trying to spy on your Internet traffic in general will not be able to see what you are doing.
4. Filter Lists
There are plenty of organizations that are known for their snooping or malicious intent. With an IP filter list, you can completely block them from connecting to you as peers, thereby eliminating any chance of them monitoring you and catching you in the act of downloading something. This may also help reduce the chance that you will connect to a peer that sends out harmful data or malware.
5. Proxy or VPN
Of all of the security measures on the list, this is by far the most effective. By routing your torrent traffic through a proxy or VPN, you can completely hide yourself from the outside world. Used in combination with the other tools on this list, your torrent downloading will be virtually covert. Proxy providers usually charge a subscription fee, and they will require you to either download a specially configured bittorrent client or reconfigure yours to use their proxy (often utilizing a SOCKS5 protocol).
Your privacy, however, is only as secure as the company offering the service. If they are under investigation or are willing to sell your information, using their services may not help you at all. Therefore, it is a good idea to ask around and do your research before using a proxy or VPN service.
Privacy and Security
The media often associates BitTorrent with illegal file sharing, but there are numerous legitimate organizations, from Linux distribution developers to content delivery networks (CDN), that make use of bittorrent technology. Furthermore, many free media distributors who use open licenses, such as Creative Commons, use bittorrent to help reduce their bandwidth costs.
With a little effort, you can use the above-mentioned tools to help you take back your right to download and share legitimate content and software, while also maintaining your privacy and security.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
How to Secure Your Torrent Downloads via maketecheasier.com
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2011
As has become a tradition over the years, we present a list of the most visited BitTorrent sites of the new year. At the start of 2011 The Pirate Bay continues to pull in the most visitors, followed by Torrentz and isoHunt. Demonoid settles in fourth place thanks to a year without prolonged downtime, while LimeTorrents gets the honor of best newcomer.
What’s hot in the wonderful world of BitTorrent in 2011? At first glance little seems to have changed, as the top 3 is identical to that of last year. But moving down the list we see quite a few movers and shakers as well as a surprising newcomer.
Below we have compiled a list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete and Alexa. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites.
Do you know a good public torrent site that’s not listed here? Feel free to plug it in a comment.
1. The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is probably the best known BitTorrent brand on the Internet. The site was founded in 2003 and is still expanding, despite the immense legal witch hunt launched by the entertainment industries several years ago.
2. Torrentz
Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for years. A few weeks ago the site traded in its .COM domain and switched to .EU, but this didn’t affect the site’s traffic.
3. IsoHunt
Last year was a tough one for isoHunt, as it became the first search engine that had to implement a keyword filter provided by the MPAA. Despite this setback, isoHunt is still the third largest torrent site in terms of traffic. In 2011, isoHunt hopes to get rid of the filter through the Appeals Court.
4. KickassTorrents
KickassTorrents was the fastest growing newcomer of last year, and managed to continue this upward trend throughout 2010. The site released many new features and continues to innovate, still without a single banner ad on the site.
5. BTjunkie
BTjunkie had a pretty quiet year, which is usually good news for a site that operates in the BitTorrent niche. The only setback was the removal of the site’s front page from Google due to a DMCA complaint. As last year, BTjunkie settles in fifth place.
6. Demonoid.me
The impossible happened. Demonoid finished 2010 with only a minimal amount of downtime, compared to weeks or months in previous years. A few weeks ago the site announced that it would move from the familiar .COM to a .ME domain in response to the news about US domain seizures.
7. ExtraTorrent.com
ExtraTorrent is one of those robust torrent indexes that don’t make the news very often. In 2010 it continued to expand and the site gained two spots compared to last year.
8. TorrentDownloads.net
TorrentDownloads is in the same league as ExtraTorrent, a no nonsense torrent index that provides torrents to millions of users each month.
9. TorrentReactor
TorrentReactor fooled most of the tech press last year when it announced that it had bought a Russian town, one of the better PR stunts seen in 2010. On the flipside TorrentReactor seems to have lost some traffic due to a Google penalty, dropping the site to 9th place this year.
10. LimeTorrents.com
LimeTorrents is the best newcomer of 2010 in terms of traffic, which promises a lot for the new year. The site went live half a year ago and already made it into the top 10 in this short period. It’s also a bit ironic as ‘Limewire’ got shutdown a few months ago.
Honorable Mention EZTV
If there’s one site that deserves an honorable mention it’s EZTV. The leading TV-torrent release group almost made it into the top 10 on its own, but due the seasonal traffic spikes it just fell short. It has to be noted though that unlike other sites in the above list EZTV’s traffic doesn’t rely heavily on search engines such as Google or BitTorrent meta-search engines. EZTV currently has 30 million visitors a month and continues to expand.
Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche.
Saved in: Torrent Sites
Tags: 2011, best torrent sites, new torrent sites, top torrent sites, Torrent SitesPreviously: Downloaded ‘The Expendables’ on BitTorrent? The Copyright Police Are Coming
Next: RapidShare’s Measures Against Piracy Are Sufficient, Court Rules
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Dozens of Great Alternatives To LimeWire
After more than a decade of loyal service, LimeWire was shut down yesterday by a U.S. Court. As LimeWire was one of the world’s most used P2P-applications, the shutdown affected millions of people, mostly casual downloaders. Luckily for them, there are plenty of alternatives and potential replacements former LimeWire users can choose from.
After a lengthy court battle, LimeWire lost its case with the RIAA yesterday. The New York District Court demanded that LimeWire shut down its entire operation, including all searches and uploading and downloading that occurs through the client.
In a response to the decision LimeWire made its client unusable, leaving millions of users with no other option than to find an alternative. The good news is that there are several applications and services that are ready to act as a replacement. We will discuss a few of them below.
FrostWire
FrostWire is a popular free and Open Source P2P client supporting both Gnutella and BitTorrent downloads. The application was first released in 2004 by members of the LimeWire Open Source community. FrostWire is similar to LimeWire in use and layout, and is fully compatible with iTunes. There are versions available for various operating systems including Windows, Mac, Linux and even Android.
FrostWire has always emphasized the non-infringing use of their client. In 2008, the client introduced its FrostClick service through which it promotes independent artists, which has been very successful.
MP3Rocket
MP3Rocket is another LimeWire spinoff with a very similar look and functionality. It works on Windows and Mac and the application supports both Gnutella and BitTorrent downloads.
Unlike its name suggests, MP3Rocket is not limited to finding MP3s. It is capable of downloading any file format including video files and software. In addition to downloads, MP3Rocket also has hundreds of streamable radio and TV-channels.
BitTorrent
The two applications we discussed above both support BitTorrent downloads, but like LimeWire they were rarely used for this purpose. The main reason is most likely that many of its users don’t really know where to find .torrent files. For those who want to switch over, here is a list of some decent torrent sites.
LimeWire users who want to give BitTorrent a try might also want to consider using a dedicated torrent client such as uTorrent, Vuze or Transmission.
Music/Video Streaming
Music fans who don’t mind streaming tracks in their web browser actually have a few alternatives. Grooveshark is one of the most elaborate music services. It holds more content than the average download store, supports playlists and works on various mobile phones.
For video streaming there are perhaps even more alternatives. There are literally hundreds of sites one can choose from, although we have to warn of excessive popups on most sites. A Google search for “movie streaming” should be enough to get going.
Usenet / Newsgroups
Usenet is another good alternative to download all sorts of files, but depending on the service you sign up for it can be a bit harder to figure out than the other alternatives. Also, any good Usenet service requires a paid subscription, which is the trade-off for getting one of the fastest and most anonymous download services.
Direct Download Sites / Search Engines
There are numerous sites that search open web directories or allow saving of otherwise streaming music. BeeMP3, DilanDau, MRTZCMP3, MP3Hunting and various Mulve-style alternatives such as the PirateApp and Firefox plugin Vkontakte DL are just a few of those available.
More More More
The alternatives discussed above are really just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens, if not hundreds of alternatives to LimeWire that can be used for sharing and finding files. This includes some of the older LimeWire versions that are reportedly still working. Other notable P2P applications are Soulseek, Ares and eMule.
It never ends.
Saved in: P2P and Filesharing
Tags: limewire, Limewire Alternatives, Limewire ReplacementPreviously: Torrent Site Launches VPN to Counter France’s Anti-Piracy Law
Next: Court Slams Music Pirate With Huge Fine – of $41.00
Friday, October 1, 2010
How to Trigger Torrent Downloads from Anywhere with Dropbox
Say you want to download a torrent on your home computer, but you’re away from home. Sure, you could just take a laptop and download it on that, but that’s hardly ideal most of the time. So how do you accomplish this?
What we’ll do is use Dropbox sync to easily get the torrent files from the laptop to the desktop PC at home, and then use the auto-watching feature of Transmission or uTorrent to check for new torrent files in our Dropbox folder.
Setting Up Prerequisites
If you’re running OS X or Linux and you don’t already have Transmission and Dropbox installed, you’ll need to do so, though Transmission is installed by default on many distributions of Linux. If you’re running Windows you’ll want to install Dropbox and use a client like uTorrent, which supports folder watching for new torrents.
Note: Dropbox is freely available for all platforms, and the basic free version gives you 2GB of storage, more than enough for some torrent files.
Now that you’ve got Dropbox and a torrent client installed, you’ll need to create a folder in your Dropbox that will hold the torrent files you want to download. You can name this anything, but I’d suggest just calling it “Torrents”.
Setup in OS X
To set the watch folder in the OS X version of Transmission, go to its preferences and click on the “Transfers” tab. Check the box next to “Auto add” and choose your Dropbox Torrents folder from the dropdown menu:
You’ll also want to uncheck the box that says “Display a windows when opening a torrent file”. This will prevent a window popping up that requires intervention to close, something we don’t want if we’re away from our computer:
You should also change the default download location to something other than your Torrents folder, as you probably don’t want to download files directly to your Dropbox:
That’s it for setup on the Mac. Read on for setup in Linux.
Setup in Linux
To set up the watch folder on the Linux version of Transmission, go to Edit -> Preferences and click the checkbox next to “Automatically add torrents from” and choose your Torrents folder from the dropdown menu.
You’ll also want to uncheck “Show options dialog” and set the “Save to location” dropdown to something other than your Torrent folder:
Setup in Windows
If you’re using Windows, you’re probably using uTorrent for downloading torrents, so you’ll want to head into the preferences panel, find the Directories option on the left-hand pane, and then check the box for “Automatically load .torrents from:”. Once you’ve done so, then click the file browse icon and choose the Torrents folder from your Dropbox.
You will need to also choose locations for new downloads and completed downloads, or else uTorrent will prompt you.
You will also need to head into the UI Settings section of the preferences and uncheck the option for “Show a window that displays the files inside the torrent”.
If you’re using another client, you will probably find a similar option in the preferences pane.
Starting Torrents From Anywhere
All you have to do to start a torrent on your configured machine is to put it in your Torrents folder on Dropbox, either by dragging it to the folder on another computer, or by uploading it to the web interface (which is useful if you don’t have Dropbox installed on your other machine).
You could also download a torrent to your Android or BlackBerry device and then use the Dropbox application to add it. Dropbox is in the Android Marketplace, and instructions for installing the BlackBerry app are available here.
Once you’re done, you should be able to simply add files to Dropbox and the downloads will be started automatically, as you can see in the screenshot above.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Five Ways To Download Torrents Anonymously [Privacy]
Five Ways To Download Torrents Anonymously
With anti-piracy outfits and dubious law-firms policing BitTorrent swarms at an increasing rate, many Bittorrent users are looking for ways to hide their identities from the outside world. Here's an overview of five widely used privacy services.
The services discussed in this post range from totally free to costing several dollars a month. The general rule is that free services are generally slower or have other restrictions, while paid ones can get you the same speeds as your regular connection would.
VPN (paid / free)
undreds and thousands of BitTorrent users have already discovered that a VPN is a good way to ensure privacy while using BitTorrent. For a few dollars a month VPNs route all your traffic through their servers, hiding your IP address from the public. Some VPNs also offer a free plan, but these are significantly slower and not really suited for more demanding BitTorrent users.
Unlike the other services listed in this article, VPNs are not limited to just BitTorrent traffic, they will also conceal the source of all the other traffic on your connection too. Ipredator, Itshidden and StrongVPN are popular among BitTorrent users, but a Google search should find dozens more. It is recommended to ask beforehand if BitTorrent traffic is permitted on the service of your choice.
BTGuard (paid)
BTGuard is a proxy service that hides the IP-addresses of its users from the public. The service works on Windows, Mac, Linux and as the name already suggests, it is set up specifically with BitTorrent users in mind. Besides using the pre-configured client, users can also set up their own client to work with BTGuard. It works with all clients that support "Socks V5″ proxies including uTorrent and Vuze. In addition, BTGuard also includes encryption tunnel software for the real security purists.
After these words of praise we're obligated to disclose that BTGuard is operated by friends of TorrentFreak, but we think that should be interpreted as a recommendation.
TorrentPrivacy (paid)
Torrentprivacy is another proxy service for BitTorrent users, very similar to that of BTGuard. It offers a modified uTorrent client that has all the necessary settings pre-configured. The downside to this approach is that it is limited to users on Windows platforms. TorrentPrivacy is operated by the TorrentReactor.net team and has been in business for more than two years.
Anomos (free)
"Anomos is a pseudonymous, encrypted multi-peer-to-peer file distribution protocol. It is based on the peer/tracker concept of BitTorrent in combination with an onion routing anonymization layer, with the added benefit of end-to-end encryption," is how the Anomos team describes its project.
Anomos is one of the few free multi-platform solutions for BitTorrent users to hide their IP-addresses. The downside is that it's not fully compatible with regular torrent files as Anomos uses its own atorrent format. Another drawback is that the download speeds are generally lower than regular BitTorrent transfers.
On the uTorrent Idea Bank, more than 1,600 people have asked for the Anomos protocol to be built into a future uTorrent build, making it the second most-popular suggestion overall.
Seedbox (paid)
A seedbox is BitTorrent jargon for a dedicated high-speed server, used exclusively for torrent transfers. With a seedbox users generally get very high download speeds while their IP-addresses are not shared with the public. Once a download is finished users can download the files to their PC through a fast http connection. FileShareFreak periodically reviews several good seedbox providers.
5 Ways To Download Torrents Anonymously [TorrentFreak]The author of this post can be contacted at tips@lifehacker.com
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Friday, May 28, 2010
How to Share Your Own Files Using BitTorrent [UltraNewb]
Most of us are comfortable using BitTorrent to download files, but the popular file-sharing protocol is also a great tool for sharing your own stuff with family, friends, or the world at large. Here's the basics of creating your own torrent. More »
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