Each and every day, there are anonymous p2p anti-piracy (more like anti-p2p) groups sprouting up, and accessing torrents at random, to log IP addresses. These groups are paid, and hired by typically corporations and greeding production companies in the industries of software, gaming, movies, and music, to "catch" those suspected of downloading copyrighted materials. Their methods are cheap, low, and for the most part, in-effective in stopping p2p and torrents. Though there are some casualties of any war, there are a few whom do get "caught", and even more who do not. This is a handy reference for those of you who need protection.
Many ask, "How can I hide my IP address and stay safe?". Well there are many answers, and it basically depends on what most suits your financial, bandwidth, and productive needs. Obviously there are many ways to stay safe, and many new developments in technology to also counter-act that safety.
Encryption. Encryption is something that is not necessarily new to the internet, but in fact, is "newer" to the torrent scene. Certain torrent clients, such as recent builds of Bit Torrent, Azureus, and uTorrent, all have the ability to enable file encryption. This encrypts traffic, which is somewhat a beginning to a line of defense, although its not necessarily the most productive method. Only the headers that are being encrypted, though. This prevents the data from being identified as BitTorrent traffic. The actual “stream” of data being sent is not being encrypted and doesn’t have to be. It's a start though, as the future of p2p I believe, will be over completely encrypted network traffic, to protect your anonymity. Although the founder of the Bit Torrent Protocol, Bram Cohen, is one to believe that this could cause future incompatibility issues between clients, as well as increase CPU usage. I suggest to him that safety outweighs this.
VPN. VPN's, or Virtual Private Networks, are typically a pay service, which allows you to tunnel all of your network traffic, through various global servers, rendering your personal information such as IP/location/MAC completely anonymous. This is by far the BEST method for using the Bit Torrent Protocol, or any other "mischievous" protocols. Nothing is more reliable, more secure, than having your connections tunneled in this manner. I personally also use this method, to do anything on the internet, even browsing, I stay connected to my VPN. (You never know who is watching or what info they can obtain from your IP) Although again, this method is not usually free, its very inexpensive. If freebies are for you, then this is not what you're looking for.
IP Filter. IP filters come in many shapes and sizes, but also require constant updating. A popular tool for use with uTorrent, is ipfilter.dat , and can be simply added to your directory with ease. The downside to this, is you must also use an ipfilter updater, and you must update regularly. What ipfilter.dat does, is protect you from "known" IP addresses of organizations known to attach themselves to torrents, and log IP's. This method can be found on many youtube or social networking videos, and is simple to follow directions and use. It is NOT fool proof, but again, any protection is better than no protection. Condoms do not prevent aids, but they do block certain STD's. Get my point? Moving on.
Protection Applications. PeerGuardian, and the recent builds of PG2, and up, are some of the most popular p2p safety software tools on the market. PeerGuardian works in many ways similarly to most IP filters, but again does not fully protect you. I again will state, that some protection, is better than no protection, condoms may prevent you from having children, but sometimes they break. This method, is also very easy to install, and a simple Google search can point you in the right direction.
Seedboxes. Seedboxes are another way to keep your IP hidden, and your safety completed. Although this is again not something that everyone needs, unless you are uploading, chances are you will not be making alot of use out of this idea. With a seedbox, you will simply add .torrent files unto your web interface, and then after completing the download to the webui seedbox, you can then use file transfer protocol, FTP, to download securely and privately to your PC. This is another good option, but unless you really need it, it can be another costly method.
Everyone should remember, that there are always many alternatives, and/or options to protecting yourself. If there were one piece of advice I could give, it would be that it is of course better to stay protected in some manner than no protection at all, hence the condom analogy. Attempting to prevent intrusion into your privacy is very important. Although there are MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of people using torrents daily, it is only a very small percent whom actually receive copyright letters, and an even smaller percentage that use protection. (Obviously the lack of protection is why the world is overpopulated
)
It is highly unlikely, that an FBI agent will be knocking at your door. This kind of propaganda is spread and literally does not exist. You do not have to worry, but as they say, better safe than sorry. I suggest everyone try something, at the least, it will give you the comfort of feeling safe. If you do again have the resources, a VPN is the best method. If you only frequent the torrent world rarely, chances are, you do not need this. Those of you though, which are dedicated seeders ( like me ) I would suggest trying one of the inexpensive but pay services. Sharing is caring, and safety is, well, security.
Many ask, "How can I hide my IP address and stay safe?". Well there are many answers, and it basically depends on what most suits your financial, bandwidth, and productive needs. Obviously there are many ways to stay safe, and many new developments in technology to also counter-act that safety.
Encryption. Encryption is something that is not necessarily new to the internet, but in fact, is "newer" to the torrent scene. Certain torrent clients, such as recent builds of Bit Torrent, Azureus, and uTorrent, all have the ability to enable file encryption. This encrypts traffic, which is somewhat a beginning to a line of defense, although its not necessarily the most productive method. Only the headers that are being encrypted, though. This prevents the data from being identified as BitTorrent traffic. The actual “stream” of data being sent is not being encrypted and doesn’t have to be. It's a start though, as the future of p2p I believe, will be over completely encrypted network traffic, to protect your anonymity. Although the founder of the Bit Torrent Protocol, Bram Cohen, is one to believe that this could cause future incompatibility issues between clients, as well as increase CPU usage. I suggest to him that safety outweighs this.
VPN. VPN's, or Virtual Private Networks, are typically a pay service, which allows you to tunnel all of your network traffic, through various global servers, rendering your personal information such as IP/location/MAC completely anonymous. This is by far the BEST method for using the Bit Torrent Protocol, or any other "mischievous" protocols. Nothing is more reliable, more secure, than having your connections tunneled in this manner. I personally also use this method, to do anything on the internet, even browsing, I stay connected to my VPN. (You never know who is watching or what info they can obtain from your IP) Although again, this method is not usually free, its very inexpensive. If freebies are for you, then this is not what you're looking for.
IP Filter. IP filters come in many shapes and sizes, but also require constant updating. A popular tool for use with uTorrent, is ipfilter.dat , and can be simply added to your directory with ease. The downside to this, is you must also use an ipfilter updater, and you must update regularly. What ipfilter.dat does, is protect you from "known" IP addresses of organizations known to attach themselves to torrents, and log IP's. This method can be found on many youtube or social networking videos, and is simple to follow directions and use. It is NOT fool proof, but again, any protection is better than no protection. Condoms do not prevent aids, but they do block certain STD's. Get my point? Moving on.
Protection Applications. PeerGuardian, and the recent builds of PG2, and up, are some of the most popular p2p safety software tools on the market. PeerGuardian works in many ways similarly to most IP filters, but again does not fully protect you. I again will state, that some protection, is better than no protection, condoms may prevent you from having children, but sometimes they break. This method, is also very easy to install, and a simple Google search can point you in the right direction.
Seedboxes. Seedboxes are another way to keep your IP hidden, and your safety completed. Although this is again not something that everyone needs, unless you are uploading, chances are you will not be making alot of use out of this idea. With a seedbox, you will simply add .torrent files unto your web interface, and then after completing the download to the webui seedbox, you can then use file transfer protocol, FTP, to download securely and privately to your PC. This is another good option, but unless you really need it, it can be another costly method.
Everyone should remember, that there are always many alternatives, and/or options to protecting yourself. If there were one piece of advice I could give, it would be that it is of course better to stay protected in some manner than no protection at all, hence the condom analogy. Attempting to prevent intrusion into your privacy is very important. Although there are MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of people using torrents daily, it is only a very small percent whom actually receive copyright letters, and an even smaller percentage that use protection. (Obviously the lack of protection is why the world is overpopulated
)
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