Is Bit Torrent Safe? Read This...

[lhrich]

Last week I downloaded the new Adobe Acrobat 8 from about 5 different sources.
4 of the 5 stopped downloading at about 97% and one came thru, clean install, nice patch, etc. Of course I wanted this to try the program and see if I wanted to buy it.

2 days later I got a blistering and threatening msg from my ISP which included a msg. from the Business Software Alliance in Washington, DC saying I had illegally downloaded 2 separate copies of Acrobat. It listed the files exact names, sizes, my IP number and the torrent sites they came from (PirateBay and CZtorrent). No seeders/leechers were mentioned.

What is this? I am behind a router and xp firewall. Think the files were tagged?

HR

[uselesscrap]

Originally Posted by lhrich

What is this? I am behind a router and xp firewall. Think the files were tagged?

HR

I think you were caught. Your firewall and router mean nothing when your file sharing. There is currently no way to d/l copyrighted material 100% anonymously. My guess would be newsgroups being the safest means, but I am not 100% certain of that.

Many people have received those letters without any further repercussions. It's funny, the last one I heard about was also an adobe product. I wouldn't worry until you get your summons.

[DigitalJunkie]

Go get PeerGuardian, it blocks bad IP addresses from those people. It's not 100%, but will help!

[Dark Messenger]

watch out for external ip addresses in announce urls...anyone can put any address into an announce url. a torrent was probably created with an announce url for a honeypot so that when you began to download the file a request was made to the 'honeypot' by the announce url in the torrent.

do you still have the torrents for these files? maybe you can pm someone with the announce url's contained within those torrents so that this can be investigated furthur...also pm'ing the sites where they were downloaded from.

[Sparky9]

even with ip blocking on your end non-honeypot trackers send your IP to all the peers connected

[meyou123]

Newsgroups are much safer, if you are concerned with security and only download from newsgroups, you have much less of a chance of getting caught, because you do NOT upload anything.

That is why I use newsgroups in the first place....no more uploading to some stupid tracker on a private site just to keep a ratio up...SCREW THAT!

[Sparky9]

how i minimize my risks on high profile public torrents:
before starting the torrent i delete the tracker infos, disable peer exchange, and leave DHT enabled just long enough to get a few peers, then disable DHT as well
sure you get slower downloads, but youre limiting the number of ppl who know your ip

[meyou123]

Originally Posted by Sparky9

how i minimize my risks on high profile public torrents:
before starting the torrent i delete the tracker infos, disable peer exchange, and leave DHT enabled just long enough to get a few peers, then disable DHT as well
sure you get slower downloads, but youre limiting the number of ppl who know your ip

That is a good way to minimize the risk....however....if one of those "few peers" turns out to work for the RIAA, MPAA or BSA....you are still screwed.

Though it DOES seem the best way to share BT files on public trackers. Just remember though, it only takes ONE peer to sell you out.

[mrgreaper]

i have been using bit torrent for about two years and mainly use a private tracker so far i have received no nasty letters, i must admit it is not exactly safe as if you look at peers you get a list of ips and torrents can be slow and anoying but theres very little alternative (i am looking into newsgroups but to be honest i cant make head nor tail of it ,but thats a whole nother post that i have well already posted)

i tried peer guarding a while back and it said it blocked several ips with names like mpiaa but it seemed to slow it down too so i thought sod it and went with out as i say zero come back, it sounds like you got unlucky.

[meyou123]

I really cannot under stand WHY people cannot seem to use newsgroups! Basically, it may be the initial setup of the news client, but once you have the addresses correct, you simply go to an NZB site and click on the NZB the same as you would a torrent and your client automatically downloads the file!

If you have a paid newsserver like giganews or newshosting...they usually have someone who can help you get started by email. That is how I got started. It really is not THAT hard.

[mrgreaper]

Originally Posted by meyou123

I really cannot under stand WHY people cannot seem to use newsgroups! Basically, it may be the initial setup of the news client, but once you have the addresses correct, you simply go to an NZB site and click on the NZB the same as you would a torrent and your client automatically downloads the file!

If you have a paid newsserver like giganews or newshosting...they usually have someone who can help you get started by email. That is how I got started. It really is not THAT hard.

i think for me its all very daunting though some kind soul has replyed to my thread with a good tutorial so im going to look through it 2morro in detail in all my searchs the only nzb files i have seen tail of were on the newsbin site and it looked like you had to pay for the file which makes me a little more weary of newsgroups (still gonna give it ago jut not willing to commit major cash to it yet)

[drtoker]

some ISPs offer newsgroup access included with their service
comcast for example offers 1 gb per month, no extra fees

For nzb's try binsearch.info
its Free, and the easiest and most complete nzb search/create website i've found yet.

[Sparky9]

Originally Posted by meyou123

I really cannot under stand WHY people cannot seem to use newsgroups! .... Its really is not THAT hard.

maybe some of us still like uploading. aka filesharing :p

[basil800]

Bit torrent will never be safe. It needs the users ip's to communicate so they're visible to anyone that connects to you. My advice is to stay away from public trackers and go with the more reclusive private ones. It's safer.

[meyou123]

Originally Posted by Sparky9

maybe some of us still like uploading. aka filesharing :p

It IS FILESHARING, how do you think the files got ON THERE in the first place? Do you think aliens put them there? If you don't want to pay for connection to a newsgroup premium server that is up to you. But you DO take a risk with Bit Torrent, even on private Bit Torrent sites.... weather you want to admit it or not!