Showing posts with label Torrent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Torrent. Show all posts

Bittorent Releases Torrent Client for Chrome Browser

BitTorrent released a new torrent client, but, unlike what you’re already used to from the company (hint: uTorrent), this is integrated straight into the web browser, Google Chrome, that is.

It is a simple extension, currently in alpha, called BitTorrent Surf, which is already available for download from Chrome Web Store.

The core functionality of a torrent downloader is deeply rooted into this extension, so you won’t have trouble connecting to peers or downloading the files. What is more important, though, is searching for the stuff you want to download.

With BitTorrent Surf you can employ multiple websites to find what you’re looking for. The result is a super search function that looks into multiple sources to retrieve results.

BitTorrent Surf displays the estimated torrent health together with the number of people sharing and downloading the file as well as the total downloads to date.

How to Use BTGuard to Completely Anonymize your Bittorrent Traffic

If you're using BitTorrent without taking special measures to hide your activity, it's just a matter of time before your ISP throttles your connection, sends you an ominous letter, or worst case, your ISP gets a subpoena from a lawyer asking for your identity for a file-sharing law suit. Here's how to set up a simple proxy to keep your torrenting safe and anonymous.


Note, you don't need to be doing anything illegal. Maybe you just want to keep Big Brother out of your business and from throttling your connection. Either way, if you really want to keep your activity private, your best bet involves routing your BitTorrent connection through an external service. BTGuard is a dead simple BT-focused proxy server and encryption service, and it's my service of choice. Below, I'll explain what it does, how it works, and how to set it up to privatize and anonymous your BT traffic.

How BTGuard Works

When you download or seed a torrent, you're connecting to a bunch of other people, called a swarm, all of whom—in order to share files—can see your computer's IP address. That's all very handy when you're sharing files with other netizens, but file sharers such as yourself aren't necessarily the only people paying attention. Piracy monitoring groups (often paid for by the entertainment industry either before or after they find violators) also join BitTorrent swarms, but instead of sharing files, they're logging the IP addresses of other people in the swarm—including you—so that they can notify your ISP of your doings. A proxy (like BTGuard) funnels your internet traffic—in this case, just your BitTorrent traffic—through another server, so that the BitTorrent swarm will show an IP address from a server that can't be traced back to you instead of the address that points to your house. That way, those anti-piracy groups can't contact your ISP, and your ISP has no cause to send you a harrowing letter.

But wait, can't the piracy groups then go to the anonymizer service (BTGuard) and requisition their logs to figure out that you're the one downloading the new Harry Potter? Theoretically, yes, but the reason why we chose BTGuard is because they don't keep logs, so there's no paper trail of activity leading back to you. All the piracy monitors see is BTGuard sharing a file, and all your ISP sees is you connecting to BTGuard—but not what data you're downloading, because it's encrypted.

If you subscribe to an ISP that throttles BitTorrent traffic, and aren't using an anonymizer service, you have an additional problem. Your ISP can still see what you're doing, and if they detect that you're using BitTorrent—even if you're using it for perfectly legal purposes—they'll throttle your connection so you get unbearably slow speeds. When you encrypt your BitTorrent traffic, your ISP can't see what you're using your connection for. They'll see that you're downloading lots of information, but they won't be able to see that it's BitTorrent traffic, and thus won't throttle your connection. You still have to be careful of going over your ISP's bandwidth cap, however, if that exists.

BTGuard offers you both a proxy (to combat spying) and encryption (to combat throttling)—though many torrent clients have encryption built-in as well.

First, BTGuard isn't free. At $7/month (as little as $5 if you pay for a year in advance), it isn't very expensive, and we think it's well worth it if you want to torrent anonymously. A law suit settlement, if it comes to that, will cost you at least a couple thousand dollars, which equals a couple decades of BTGuard subscriptions, so keep that in mind, too. The other potential downside is that piping your downloads through another service may decrease your upload and download speeds. How much depends on what torrent you're downloading, who from, and a lot of other factors, but just know that it's a possibility. In my experience, more popular torrents stayed at their top speed of 1.4 MB/s (my bandwidth cap) with a proxy, while other less popular torrents (which flew at 1.4MB/s without a proxy) would fluctuate around 200 or 300 kB/s with BTGuard in place. Again, though, a little longer wait on downloads is well worth the protection you get.

Lastly, proxies aren't supported by every client, which means you'll have to use one with more advanced features. uTorrent (for Windows) and Vuze (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) both support proxies, but sadly Mac and Linux favorite Transmission does not. (If you're absolutely stuck with a client that doesn't support proxies, check the end of this article for some alternative solutions to the anonymity problem.)

How to Set Up BTGuard

BTGuard has a one-click install process, but we're going to show you how to do it the manual way, since it works in any BitTorrent client that supports SOCKS5 Proxy—not just the ones supported by BTGuard's installer. It'll also give you a better sense of what exactly BTGuard does, so if you run into problems, you'll have a better idea of how to fix it.

Step One: Sign Up for BTGuard

First, sign up for an account over at BTGuard.com. It'll just take a minute, and then you can get to configuring your client. Their BitTorrent proxy service costs $6.95 a month, but you can get discounts by buying multiple months at a time (up to a year's service for $59.95). Once you're done, you should receive an email telling you that BTGuard is ready to go.

Step Two: Configure Your Client

Next, open up your torrent client of choice and find the proxy settings within its preferences. In uTorrent, for example, this is under Preferences > Connection. Your client may have them in a different place (Google around to find out where), but no matter your client, your settings should look like this:

  • Proxy Type: Socks v5
  • Proxy Host: proxy.btguard.com
  • Proxy Port: 1025
  • Username: Your BTGuard username
  • Password: Your BTGuard password
You'll also want to make sure you're using the proxy for hostname or tracker lookups as well as peer-to-peer connections, so check all boxes that say anything like that. You'll also want to disable connections or features that could compromise the proxy, so check all the boxes under uTorrent's "Proxy Privacy" section, or anything similar that your client may have. Hit Apply, exit the preferences, and restart your client. Your proxy should now be active.


Step Three: See If It's Working


To ensure that it's working, head over to CheckMyTorrentIP.com. This site can tell you what your IP address is, and compare it to the IP address of your torrent client, which will let you know whether your proxy is working correctly. To test it, hit the "Generate Torrent" button, and open the resulting torrent in your client. Then, go back to your browser and hit the Refresh button under the "Check IP" tab. If it's the same as your browser IP—which you'll see next to the Refresh button—then your proxy isn't working, and you'll want to double-check all of the above settings. If it shows a different IP address (often from another country like Germany or Canada), then BTGuard is successfully tunneling all your traffic for you.

Step Four (Optional): Enable Encryption

If you want extra security (or if you're trying to protect your connection from being throttled), you'll also want to encrypt all that traffic. Many clients have this feature built-in. In uTorrent, for example, just head to Preferences > BitTorrent and look for the "Protocol Encryption" section. Change your outgoing connection to Forced encryption, and uncheck the "Allow incoming legacy connections" box. From there, you should be good—your ISP shouldn't throttle your connection after this is enabled.

If your client doesn't support encryption, or you want a more powerful encryption behind your torrenting, BTGuard offers an encryption service as well. Just head to their Encryption page, download the software, and install it to C:\BTGUARD (this is very important; don't change the installation directory). Then, start the BTGuard Encryption program (accessible from the Start menu), and open up your BitTorrent client. Change your proxy server from proxy.btguard.com to 127.0.0.1, restart your client, and you're golden. Again, this isn't necessary if your client already supports encryption, but it is an extra layer of protection if you really want to keep everything private.

BitTorrent isn't the safe place it once was, and if you're going to use it to share and download files, we highly recommend getting some sort of protection from the services above so you can avoid DCMA notices and throttled speeds. Got any other tips for keeping your file sharing on the down low? Share them with us in the comments

Pirate Bay's Web Host PRQ Has Been Raided By Swedish Police

PirateBay logo
Rumors are flying after the Pirate Bay's website took a dive on Monday just as news broke of a raid by Swedish police on its hosting company PRQ – but the group says the two facts are not related.

"Dear internet. We have not been raided. We are not shutting down. We like turtles, waffles and you," the group said on its Facebook page. "Sorry for not fulfilling your pirate needs tonight. It's ok if you cheat on us with another site, just once. We know that you still love us, deep down in your cursed pirate heart."

The site's problems appear to stem from a power outage on its servers rather than the boys in blue making their call. So far, the site has been down for around nine hours, and internet users looking to get their dose of purloined files will have to go to other providers.

While it is true that the Pirate Bay's Swedish hosting company did receive a visit from local police, this does not appear to be the cause of the outage. In an interview with Nyheter24, the current owner of hosting firm PRQ Mikael Viborg said that the police had taken four servers, but at this point it isn't clear what they contained.

"PRQ is known to host the things that no one else wants to host, and not ask any questions. It can be any of those that are targeted. Until we get more details about the servers, I will not speculate on it," Viborg said.

In comparison with some of PRQ's customer base, the Pirate Bay is about as offensive as puppies frolicking in beige flowers. The ISP, which is run by two of the Pirate Bay's founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, believes in hosting all content, no matter what its interests, and as such carries content for groups such as South Park's favorite pederasts, the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).

Cofounder Svartholm himself won't know too much about this, of course. After a lengthy period of being incommunicado, Svartholm was tracked down in Cambodia, where he was arrested by the local police and deported to Sweden, where has will be facing charges related to the hacking of IT consultancy business Logica.

Top 10 Most Popular File Sharing Websites Right Now

BitTorrent is no longer the dominant player when it comes to file-sharing on the Internet. The five largest English language websites dedicated to swapping files are all related to centralized file-hosting services, also known as cyberlockers.

Here are the 10 Most Popular File Sharing Sites as derived from our Rank which is a constantly updated average of each website's Alexa Global Traffic Rank, and U.S. Traffic Rank from both Compete and Quantcast. "*#*" Denotes an estimate for sites with limited Compete or Quantcast data. If you know a website that should be included on this list based on its traffic rankings, use the comment box below to share it.

FilesTube
Files Tube

FilesTube is a metasearch engine, specialized for searching files in various file sharing and uploading sites such as RapidShare or Mediafire, and now also including sections for Video, Games, Lyrics and Software. It is owned by Polish company Red-Sky. Established in 2007.

FilesTube removes illegal content from its search results on request. As an attempt to rid the problem of illegal downloads, Malaysia has currently blocked access to FilesTube and other several file-sharing websites online.

26,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 249 - Compete Rank | 179 - Quantcast Rank | 144 - Alexa Rank. Most Popular File Sharing Websites

4Shared
4Shared

Officially the most popular site here, 4Shared offers a decent free option for those who are reluctant to reach for a credit card. A free account provides 10GB of free storage space which can be used to upload files below 2GB. Interestingly there are also apps available for the iPhone, Android devices and BlackBerry phones as well as an outdated Symbian version too.

Premium accounts provide 100GB of space and vastly improved download speeds, and the cheapest I could find started at $6.50 a month based on a year’s subscription.

24,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 436 - Compete Rank | 148 - Quantcast Rank | 73 - Alexa Rank. Most Popular File Sharing Websites

MediaFire
MediaFire

MediaFire include unlimited storage and a limit of 200 MB per file (4GB for Pro users and 10GB for Business users). MediaFire provides users with the ability to create image galleries from folders of images and view and share common document, presentation, and spreadsheet file types inside the web browser. MediaFire's free account service does not require download activity in order to preserve files, and is thus often suitable as a temporary or secondary backup solution although MediaFire does not officially support free data warehousing (long-term storage for inactive accounts).

13,300,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 476 - Compete Rank | *800* - Quantcast Rank | 59 - Alexa Rank. Most Popular File Sharing Websites

Rapidshare
Rapidshare

A free membership allows you to upload all you want, with no restrictions. That’s right – unlimited file size and unlimited storage for free! However, if a file is not downloaded within 30 days it is earmarked for deletion – so be warned.

Premium accounts start at around €10 for a month’s access and removes this 30 day limit, as well as the usual download speed restrictions.

12,960,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 736 - Compete Rank | *650* - Quantcast Rank | 100 - Alexa Rank. Most Popular File Sharing Website

Dropbox
Dropbox

Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by Dropbox, Inc. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and client software. In brief, Dropbox allows users to create a special folder on each of their computers, which Dropbox then synchronises so that it appears to be the same folder (with the same contents) regardless of the computer it is viewed on. Files placed in this folder are also accessible through a web site and mobile phone applications.

5,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 461 - Compete Rank | 1188 - Quantcast Rank | 158 - Alexa Rank. Most Popular File Sharing Website

Box
box

Box (formerly Box.net) is an online file sharing and Cloud content management service for enterprise companies. The company has adopted a freemium business model, and provides 5GB of free storage for personal accounts. A mobile version of the service is available for Android, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and WebOS devices

3,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 2,714 - Compete Rank | 1,082 - Quantcast Rank | 1,038 - Alexa Rank. Most Popular File Sharing Websites

HotFile
hotfile

Hotfile allows users to upload and download files with any web browser. Non-registered users are allowed to upload up to 400 MB at once. After a successful file upload, the user is given a unique URL which allows others to download the file. Non-registered users have to wait 15 seconds in the download queue and might need to enter a CAPTCHA and have to wait 30 minutes to download another file after a previous download session ends (even if the file did not download completely).

2,800,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 868 - Compete Rank | 4,569 - Quantcast Rank | 80 - Alexa Rank. Most Popular File Sharing Websites

Uploading
uploading

Uploading.com provides fully functional file hosting service to users all over the world for free. One can upload multiple files up to 2 Gb (10 Gb for premium accounts) each to their service and download the files required absolutely free of charge. However there are some limitations for the download speed and waiting timeframe before a download begins.

2,350,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 3,026 - Compete Rank | 2,737 - Quantcast Rank | 580 - Alexa Rank. Most Popular File Sharing Websites

DepositFiles

With maximum file sizes of 2GB, unlimited storage and no deletion policy, this host is a beast. The site’s layout is clean and not littered with distracting adverts and there are a variety of ways to upload including queuing up multiple files.

Granted, as a free user your download speeds will be limited, but for around €9 a month, you can lift those limits.

2,100,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 5,552 - Compete Rank | 2,895 - Quantcast Rank | 348 - Alexa Rank. Most Popular File Sharing Websites

FileServe

Another cyberlocker for all your uploading needs, FileServe provides free accounts that are good for files under 1GB. The site says that split archives are allowed too, so with some clever archiving you should be able to overcome the size limit.

Premium accounts are competetively priced and remove download/speed limits and increase the size cap to 2GB.

750,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 1,852 - Compete Rank | 10,238 - Quantcast Rank | 974 - Alexa Rank. Most Popular File Sharing Websites

Top 10 Best & Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2012

Last year I posted the best p2p software clients and here again I've listed the world's most popular BitTorrent sites. At the start of 2012 The Pirate Bay continues to pull in the most visitors, followed by Torrentz and KickassTorrents.

This list is based on traffic rank and reports from Compete and Alexa, though we are all aware that Alexa isn't perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but putting the two services to use at the same time on similar niche proved worthwhile.

So here we are, a compiled list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year.

Don't forget to use BTGuard to protect your Bittorent Traffic, So be careful and good luck.

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1. The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay (commonly abbreviated TPB) is a Swedish website that hosts magnet links, which allow users to share electronic files, including music, computer games and software, via BitTorrent. The Pirate Bay bills itself as "The world's most resilient BitTorrent site" (as of 2012, "The galaxy's most resilient...") The Pirate Bay is currently ranked as the 78th most visited website in the world and 20th in Sweden by Alexa Internet, has over 5.5 million registered users and, as of February 2012, hosts more than 4 million torrent files. According to the Los Angeles Times, The Pirate Bay is "one of the world's largest facilitators of illegal downloading" and "the most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright or pro-piracy movement".

2. Torrentz

Torrentz is a Finland-based[2] meta-search engine for BitTorrent that is run by an individual known as Flippy. It indexes torrents from various major torrent sites such as yourBittorrent and offers compilations of various trackers per torrent that are not necessarily present in the default .torrent file, so that when a tracker is down, other trackers can do the work. It was the second most popular torrent website after The Pirate Bay in 2010[3], and it currently has a traffic rank of 145 on Alexa.

3. KickassTorrents

Founded in 2009, KickassTorrents is one of the youngest sites in the list, and this year it moved up to the top 3. Responding to the increasing worries about domain seizures, the site moved from its kickasstorrents.com domain to kat.ph a few months ago. The site continues to innovate and release new features every other week, and it currently ranks 257 on Alexa.

4. IsoHunt

IsoHunt is a BitTorrent index with over 1.7 million torrents in its database and 20 million peers from indexed torrents. With 7.4 million unique visitors as of May 2006, isoHunt is one of the most popular BitTorrent search engines. Thousands of torrents are added to and deleted from it every day. Users of isoHunt perform over 40 million unique searches per month. On October 19, 2008, isoHunt passed the 1 petabyte mark for torrents indexed globally. The site is the third most popular BitTorrent site as of 2008. According to isoHunt, the total amount of shared content was more than 13.44 petabytes as of September 29, 2011.

5. BTjunkie

BTJunkie was a BitTorrent search engine operating between 2005 and 2012. It used a web crawler (similar to Google) to search for torrent files from other torrent sites and store them on its database. It had nearly 4,000,000 active torrents and about 4,200 torrents added daily (compared to runner-up Torrent Portal with 1,500), making it the largest torrent site indexer on the web. During 2011, BTJunkie was the 5th most popular BitTorrent site.

6. ExtraTorrent

ExtraTorrent is one of those robust torrent indexes that doesn’t make the news very often. Compared to last year the site has moved up a spot and is now the 6th most popular torrent venue.

7. Demonoid

Demonoid is a website and BitTorrent tracker created by an anonymous programmer (supposedly of Serbian origin) known only by the pseudonyms "Deimos" and "Zajson". The website indexes torrents uploaded by its members. Demonoid.com was ranked the 538th most popular website overall in December 2010, according to Alexa. Demonoid's torrent tracker had an estimated three million peers in September 2007. The site had over 252,427 torrents indexed as of May 3, 2009 (torrents uploaded prior to August 4, 2005 were removed to free server resources).

8. EZTV

Unlike the other sites in the top 10, TV-torrent distribution group EZTV is a niche site specializing in TV content only. Despite its fair share of downtime this year, EZTV has managed to get a spot in the top 10 for the first time in its six year existence.

9. Bitsnoop

BitSnoop is another newcomer that gained a large audience this year. This didn’t go unnoticed by the RIAA, who filed a complaint at the U.S. District Court of Columbia and obtained a subpoena to reveal the identity of BitSnoop’s owner a few months ago.

10. 1337x

1337x is also new to the top 10, and focuses more on the community aspect than some competitors. The site’s owners say they started 1337x to “fill an apparent void where it seemed there was a lack of quality conscience ad free torrent sites with public trackers.” Its 10th place this year proves that they’re getting the success formula right.