Top tips on how to keep your identity safe from prying eyes and keep out unwanted visitors.
If you want to stay safe when downloading or sharing your favorite files online, the following tips wil help keep you from getting busted.
They’re simple, straightforward, and easy to follow, but if you have any questions ask them here in the forums.
1. Use Private BitTorrent tracker sites:
The first is fairly obvious and that is of the inherent risk of using public BitTorrent tracker sites instead of private members only ones. The risk stems from the fact that almost anybody can connect to the swarm and take a peek at your IP address.
2. Don’t act as a “Supernode:”
The RIAA has targeted subpoenas at users who allow their computers to be “Supernodes” on the FastTrack P2P System (used, for instance, by KaZaA or KaZaA Lite). In order to further reduce the risk of having your ISP subpoenaed or of being sued yourself, we recommend that you make sure your computer is not being used as a Supernode. To learn more about Supernodes and how to make sure your computer is not one, look here: Disabling the Supernode function with KaZaA (PDF 331k).
3. Try to use campus DC Hubs:
The RIAA and MPAA have sued college students for using publicly-accessible file sharing networks, including systems like i2hub. However, with one particularly notable exception, the RIAA and MPAA have not targeted users downloading or uploading music over closed, college campus intranets — in other words, students sharing with other students at the same school over the school’s own network. Tracking intranet infringements is practically more difficult, though not necessarily impossible.
4. Use IM data transfer programs:
Similarly, the RIAA and MPAA have not targeted file sharing through instant messaging systems, closed networks such as WASTE, and other sharing tools in which users can limit access by third-parties.
5. Use PeerGuardian:
This handy tool blocks “harmful” IP addresses from connecting to your PC. Using a list that’s regularly updated on Blocklist.org, it detects and closes connections from specified IP ranges.
6. Use Safe Peer:
This handy Azureus plugin for BitTorrent users is similar to PeerGuardian in that it also imports a list of IP addresses from Blocklist.org to use as an IP filter before connecting to peers.
What else can I do?
The Electonic Frontier Foundation(EFF) has posted a list of additional tips to help you avoid getting busted for illegal file-sharing.
First off, for those of you who are unware of what constitues illegal file-sharing, the crime occurs in the “dsitribution” of copyrighted material, the uploading or sharing of content, and not by simply downloading it.
The EFF points out that there is no way to know for sure as to exactly what the RIAA and MPAA are going to do or who they are going to sue but, in the meantime users of publicly-accessible P2P networks can take the following steps to reduce their chances of being targeted:
Either…
- Make sure there are no potentially infringing files in your shared folder. This would ordinarily mean that your shared folder contains only files 1) that are in the public domain, 2) for which you have permission to share, or 3) that are made available under pro-sharing licenses, such as the Creative Commons license or other open media licenses, and
- Remove all potentially misleading file names that might be confused with the name of an RIAA artist or song (e.g., “Usher” or “Madonna”) from your shared folder
Or…
- Disable the “sharing” or “uploading” features on your P2P application, if your application allows it (see below).
We hate this option — it blocks your non-infringing sharing, and it doesn’t get us any closer to a real solution that gets artists paid while making file sharing legal. But, at the moment, it does appear that turning off sharing will reduce your chances of becoming a lawsuit target.
This can usually be accomplished in the “Options” or “Preferences” of your P2P application by removing all shared directories and sometimes setting an explicit option not to share files or to allow zero uploads. The specific method will vary depending on your P2P application, but looking at a few examples can give you the general idea.
EFF suggests (but cannot guarantee) the following links for instructions (you can also try Google searches for (“turn off sharing”+the software’s name):
- University of Chicago’s resources: http://security.uchicago.edu/peer-to-peer/no_fileshare.shtml
- Duke University resources: http://www.oit.duke.edu/helpdesk/filesharing/steps.ht
**Note: Not all clients allow you to turn off “sharing.”
If you use software such as BitTorrent and eDonkey (as well as related clients like Azureus and eMule, respectively), you will automatically be uploading whatever you are currently downloading. In eDonkey, these files may appear in search results and thus become visible to the MPAA and RIAA. In BitTorrent, you must connect to a BitTorrent “tracker” to download a file, and your Internet address is visible to anyone else — including the MPAA or RIAA — connected to that tracker. In these instances, you may be at greater risk.
Too bad I don’t live in Sweeden, or Iceland, or wherever the hell The Pirate Bay server is located.
Hey everybody. Be f*cking careful enaugh to find out how copyright-infringement laws work in every country you visit (especially if you intend to use any p2p client while staying). I have just been busted in Germany, I had no idea how seriously these guys take file sharing. 956 € (which of course I’m not paying to those madafakas) for ONE Kasabian’s torrent I was seeding. Watch out.
you know what’s funny? look at all these music stores that sale used cd’s and other media platforms and make a heck of a profit off of it! shouldn’t that be copyright infringement? cause every time it sales, that musician or musicians aren’t getting more profit off of it!! just a thought,
Typical in our society. Lets make sure the rich stay rich and those that are clever enough to share media amongst each other can will just have to kneel before the mighty corporations, federal government, and those studios with copy rights. Offering up our hard earned cash to those who don’t need it. Actors who can afford to buy jewelry worth enough to end global starvation.
(It’s supposed to be a trickle down economy) They could have went another route by counting the honesty of people. Making the prices for average consumer a little less difficult to digest they could commend a lot of respect for their copy right material and turn people away from piracy. I guess they will eventually get their cake, and eat it too.
you guys r trons….keep up the good work.
Can i get pregnant through p2p file sharing, i know it is unsafe but it feels so good. I shared the other day without using any of the above named safety precautions and know i am stressed out !Is there a easy and safe way to test if i am already. I’m asking this because we learned about human reproduction and a friend of a friend got f****d pretty badly because of this.
p2p sharing is no different than a radio dj playing my favorite song and me pressing record on a cassette player. That is what everyone did back in the day, and there was never any issue with that. I don’t see a problem if it is for your own personal enjoyment. If you are turning around and selling the media for profit, then that is a different story.
Agreed there anyway
It’s stupid really.. Only thing is, i can understand where they’re coming from. The people who made these movies, games, songs etc need to make a living too, and this is how they do so.
Actually they tried to make a big deal about recording songs with cassettes back then too. Proposed taxing blank tapes with procedes going to the record copanies and many other things..
i have RLLY slow internet.doesit reduce your risk of getting cought if u only dl about 500mb a day for for say 10 days a month. i set my upload rate to 1kb\s on u torrent. i just want to WATCH good movies and cant afford to buy all of them. I think its wrong tht they should be able tohack onto MY computer. seems like invasion to me. pls let me know
yellowpather & wavecatcher are right, All we are then is leaches
Disable the “sharing” or “uploading” features on your P2P application if your application allows it (see below). does this not defeat the purpose of P2P?
the best way to download and share, with out getting busted is to use a hacked modem. hacked modems are safe because you can change the mac address of the modem, get an uncapped config file, and download pretty much anything you want with out getting those pesky letters in the mail. my current ISP are really strict on piracy, they have been suspending user accounts for up to 6 months now, i know this because of close friends have had this happen, any ways, if you have a cable ISP, this is the best option. sorry DSL users, this will not work for you
i know hacked modems are illegal, but so is downloading/uploading copy written content anyway
I came home one day and opened Chrome, and there was a long message from my cable provider telling me to stop downloading and delete all files. After closing the browser, Windows Explorer (7) failed and I could not recover. I am now running Linux Mint, any suggestions? I cannot get Mobloquer to install. Obviously my safest option is to stay abstinent, but where is the fun in that?
FunkyZero stated: “If you know how to bring a rough cable modem online, you are safe.”
Your full of it… Cable modem, DSL modem..phone line modem..all the same..all connect to the internet.
Hide your IP, use proxy services. That will aid you. If you do upload, don’t use descriptive names of the files and use zip or rar or 7zip to archive them. Password and encrypt those archives before uploading.
Mac users definatly use “transmission” for torrents. its a program that downloads and only asks you to seed after ur file is completely downloaded.
hi
I downloaded many files from my office through bittorrent but i need to know IT people can come to know what i hv downloaded.
Please reply
Simple answer? Yes, absolutely.
Yes, but it depends on how the Park uses an ISP’s service. Are you being routed through the parks router, or are you directly connected to an ISP with your own cable modem?
Im in mexico doing movies on a rv park ip can i be caught
lol..
It sounds funny to say that its not safe to use torrents, but i can say that it leans more towards the safe side (90%) rather than the non safe side (10%) for eg: UTorrent has an option of enabling outgoing protocol encryption and a choice of allowing incoming legacy connections which basically stops/slows your ISP from verifying that you are using P2P trackers for downloading/uploading also if you go for things that have rar files instead of straight out exe,movie or music files that also limits your chance of being caught and then you have the ones which live somewhere like canada or spain which have their own websites and upload a shitload of content which by the way is where about 70% of it comes from which is where there are no enforcment laws on illegal copyright content on their websites and then after all of that they still have to pick out the ones that are uploading the most illegal content which by the way is in the numbers of hundreds of thousands and even if they want to catch someone they have to make sure it is well worth their time as it takes the Feds about 3-6mths to get warrants through the court systems, so you tell me from all the millions of people uploading and downloading, who are they really going to target and what do you think the odds of your everyday person getting busted????????????
Earlier versions of limewire allowed downloading of torrents while also allowing options to completely disable uploading (no shared directories, not allowing sharing of incomplete files and setting max uploads to “0″) I understand that this is counterproductive to the filesharing community but like an earlier post stated, the crime is committed through UPLOADING, not DOWNLOADING. For people like me who have Cox as an ISP and already have 2 strikes, there isn’t much room for error. And I can verify that downloading will NOT get you in trouble as the second time I was cut off and called in for re-connection the operator told me in so many words that it’s not what you download, but the act of uploading that constitutes copyright infringement. I love to use programs like bit torrent and help seed and all but I can’t afford to lose my internet connection for good. So that’s my 2 cents…
to be compleatly safe all you have to remember is “all energy flow acording to the whims of the great magnet”
Seriously, It is rare that I see so much bad advice in one thread. Although some of these “tips” from the OP and the commenters can hinder efforts of someone trying to locate your identity, NONE of it protects you. The closest thing you can get is direct sharing with people you know personally. Anything else is, well.. just being naive. For the nebs: do NOT think that ANY of these suggestions will protect you. If you know how to bring a rough cable modem online, you are safe. Outside of that, the only way to be truly safe is to not use P2P networking to share copyrighted materials. Bad advice like that in this thread is a disservice to the novice and can get them into a whole lot more trouble than they know how to get out of.
Here are some really great tips on not getting caught from anti-P2P ass-holes is to have these list of software : if you use Bittorrent use 6.0.3 version ONLY!! because it allows you to encrypt your out going IP address, Peer-guardian 2 (Block Anti-P2P, Ads, Government, Spy-ware, Trojan Sites) , Windows Washer to delete Tracking Cookies and Super Cookies from tracking your usage on your computer, Spyware Terminator because it is free and it protects in Real-Time from hackers and Unknown applications from accessing your computer without you knowing about it, and AVG because it deletes tracking Cookies on the fly when you connect to your web browser. For these list of software that i had mentioned to work correctly is for you to use these settings I mentioned in order for you to stay protected. And for much better protection (if you have the money is for you to buy a WIRED router.) Because a wired router is much harder to hack, it gives you a extra protection by putting a firewall between YOU and the INTERNET. Having a router enables you to set better firewall settings to Block certain protocols of your choice and another thing is it can be password protected!!.
How does a system like Emule/edonkey rate in safety concerns compared to say U torrent compared to say limewire, say compared to overnet etc etc?
@mike
No you can’t hide the ip, other wise the download doesn’t know where to go, you can run a proxy type deal where the download routes though another ip though.
now why would we care if artists get paid? don’t those pricks make enough as it is? the number of torrent/p2p downloaders could increase by 50% and those overpaid artists would still be overpaid.
here’s an idea: why doesnt somebody create a version of torrents/torrent programs that completely hides or encrypts the ip addresses of those in the swarm? i mean, im no networking whiz, but i think its entirely possible to hide an ip address from everyone… wouldnt matter if you did some super crazy scan on someone.. the ip address could be a totally legit one of course, but show up as all 0′s.
watch online tv channls and online movies Download movies
http://masti101.net
It is worth looking into anonymous networks such as Freenet: http://freenetproject.org/
I have been using Freenet for filesharing for a few years and it has really started to become a viable option recently. Freenet’s security is pretty good it has a dedicated team of developers including one paid full time coder. Its main focus is a censorship-resistant anonymous network and that makes it very good for filesharing too.
To give you some idea of speeds a full album of music can be downloaded in a couple of hours to a day depending on your connectivity and the popularity of the file. There are several uploaded every day and the number of uploads does seem to be increasing rapidly at the moment. Full DivX movies are also uploaded regularly.
Freenet is very easy to install and set up. It is a Java program but it is pretty light on CPU and memory.
It can run in a ‘darknet’ mode where you only connect directly to people you know and trust or ‘opennet’ mode where the program peers you with strangers at random. The darknet mode is most secure but as people will likely not know other Freenet users at the moment the opennet is more convenient. Your direct peers can’t tell for certain what you are doing on the network but there is a theoretical possibility of statistical attacks if an adversary can control enough of your peers. Opennet security should be provide good enough anonymity for 99% of uses.
Freenet comes with an anonymous filesharing program called Thaw and an anonymous message board called Frost which can be used to request files. It is definitely worth checking out and I think it is where the future lies with all the legal attacks on filesharers.
Private is safer than public file sharing.
So that means friend to friend services like Dargens.com should grow although it is only for new unsigned bands.
If you only connect to friends then only they know you are sharing. And you share with their friends friend’s of friends and friend’s of friend’s of friends and so on.
If im on a mac am i safer?
For those of you concerned about being tracked you might be interested in reading about a new identity theft monitoring service called IdentityTruth.com.
A review of it is available on the Security Dreamer blog.
I’m working with Steve Hunt author of SecurityDreamer a site devoted to reviewing and analyzing physical and IT security.
You can read it here:
http://www.securitydreamer.com/2007/06/first_look_at_i.html
lol disable ‘sharing’ or ‘uplaoding’ features. that is what p2p is all about sharing.
by disabling uploading there will be no more files to download.so they will destroy us from within
I use Shareaza and it seems to work well for me…no cops knocking at my door yet. This was really helpful info so I shared it with everyone on http://www.ListAfterList.com. If you have any other helpful info on this subject or otherwise or anything to add to this list share it here. Check it out: http://www.listafterlist.com/ListAfterListcomListsAbout/tabid/57/ListID/7411/Default.aspx
This must be one of the most stupid “tips” collections i’ve ever seen.
I can’t believe i’m reading this on zeropaid.
The only really helpful “tip” is hidden in #4: Use closed networks you are on a campus and have bandwidth coming out of your back. Then learn how to use anonymizing darknets or encrypted vpn proxies.
After all you are on campus to learn aren’t you ?
The tip of using ip blocklists is only half helpful and only if you know how to handle them properly.
Every overzealous idiot is contributing ip ranges and the list providers don’t have the resources to check and recheck all the ranges on a regular basis. Therefore they are complete overkill and do more harm than good.
And the copyright goons know about them as well !!
If you HAVE to use public p2p (maybe you are looking for rare stuff) DISABLE VIEWING YOUR SHARED FILES ASAP !
If your client doesn’t support this change it or even the network.
The best tip in my opinion is STAY INFORMED AND LEARN TO USE YOUR TOOLS OF TRADE.
The times of brainless p2p fun are over.
Or…
* Disable the “sharing” or “uploading” features on your P2P application if your application allows it (see below).
does this not defeat the purpose of P2P?
A world that went a stray. My only fault was not getting into newsgroups at an earlier age. If your sharing anything your not anonymous your going to be seen and there really is no safe way to share. The only thing this article does is depict the way your ass gets handed to you. Not every bad IP will be blocked by peerguardian not every private site is truly private (Example Demonoid). If you really do love sharing just post to newsgroups and let the almighty users distribute among their networks/friends. Some private sites are better in security then others not keeping ratio data on their hosted servers but in another country together by only supplying trusted members or power users with invites keeping all doors locked and having no more then 40000 users listed rathern the 100000′s of thousands on some private sites. DC hubs can be busted even if its only in the network i seen it happen and posted on the net with college servers hogging bandwidth and the students get thrown out. And above all else DONT USE KAZAA or Shareaza or any gnutella client.. They were created before the lawsuits came and now days their obsolete in many ways.
New comers and old pros alike should read this article!
Got a question what if people will announce torrents always with the filename like knowppix-linux.ISO.torrent. People would know what the file really is from the description BUT nobody can prove that he thought he was downloading a genuine linux distribution ISO.
Use newsgroups and just leech. That is about as safe as it gets!
You forgot the most safe & most obvious. Encrypt your entire HD drives.. Free fast fun & secure.
You forgot the most safe & most obvious. Encrypt your entire HD drives.. Free fast fun & secure.
thx1138
You could always use Shareaza with the security filters from the Shareaza Security Centre