Anonymize BitTorrent Transfers with BTGuard
Written by Ernesto on March 09, 2008BTGuard is an easy to use proxy service that adds an extra layer of privacy to your BitTorrent transfers. The service is designed for BitTorrent users who don’t want their ISPs or any third party to log or throttle their IPs or traffic.
BTGuard reroutes all your BitTorrent traffic through their servers in Canada. This means that anyone who connects to you via BitTorrent, even the MPAA or RIAA, will see BTGuard’s IP, and not yours.
BTGuard does not have any bandwidth or volume restrictions, and while we briefly tested the service (from Europe), the speeds were almost equal to an unsecured connection. Setting it up is fairly easy, the only thing you need to do is enter the username and password provided by BTGuard, and you’re ready to go. Please note that this is only a proxy service, so the traffic between the user and the server is not encrypted, which means that ISPs can (potentially) still monitor it.
TorrentFreak asked one of the founders of the project why they launched the service, he told us: “More and more, people find their privacy being invaded on the Internet and we find it to be a very disturbing, unethical trend. There are some countries that still actively protect privacy, one of which is Canada.”
The BTGuard team decided to setup in Canada not only for privacy protection, but also its close network proximity to the US. “The US is experiencing a privacy invasion epidemic more so than most. ISPs are issuing disconnection notices with little regard for privacy or the accuracy of those who notified them.”
“Companies like MediaSentry collect IP addresses on P2P protocols like BitTorrent; right holders then send the IPs to your ISP. However, MediaSentry systems and techniques have no governments’ authority and are certified by no one and many institutions have received false claims. Companies like this should not be allowed to go around and make or break your Internet connection. These days, some people’s lives depend on it. This is where BTGuard comes in. The only IP companies such as MediaSentry will see is ours.”
BTGuard works differently then some other similar services like VPNOut or Smarthide. Most notably it does not VPN your entire Internet connection. You simply configure your BitTorrent client to route through their servers, so it will only effect your BitTorrent downloads. BTGuard says it has received reports that it effectively bypasses throttling but at this point they cannot confirm that it works in all cases (please let us know in the comments if it does).
BtGuard offers a free trial, and they welcome people to try it, so you can see if it’s works for you. After the trial it costs 4.75 Euro per month which is cheaper than most other services, and a small price to pay for privacy.
Previously: Stage6: The Beginning of the End for Streaming Video
Next: The BitTorrent Legend Returns: I Am aXXo
120 Responses
Excellent idea for throttled hosts…
Sounds good :)
I might try it out.
I hope the uptime is better than Relakks - which is:
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt, LIVE WITH IT”.
they can fuck right off with their 5 bucks a month……could join a private tracker, or use PG(i know i know…..)
how about merely ‘hiding ‘ in the anonymity of millions of peers.
they better start building more jails.
america is on a red alert today.
the ‘death clock is 5 to midnight!!!
go back to bed you fuckin sheeple.
its miller time
We are in a time in witch we pay for our freedom literally. Soon we’ll pay for the air we breathe.
Bittorrent is free, and so I refuse to pay.
This came at the right time ! aXXo is back :)
@4, you think you are safe on private trackers?
+ this is a great service for those with ISPs which throttle bt-trafic, think before you speak dumb fuck.
#8, you’re a *lot* safer on a private tracker. They usually only bother with public trackers (so far). In fact, I haven’t heard about someone being busted on a private tracker. Prove me wrong on that (hopefully, you can’t, though).
If you use this… coudl there be anby problem on personal bt client passwords?
Mr paranoind
sorry for typos :¬(
THIS IS GOOD STUFFZ
Site says $7 a month. Canadian dollars, i’d guess, actual real money unlike this American toilet paper today (watch the US dollar plummet, yo!) As for the service…well, I couldn’t get it working on either Azureus or uTorrent….
Is this working on Private Ratio Torrent Sites ?
The costs are oki for a highspeed service but i dont think they can offer up to 2 megabyte per second downstream.
And you have to agree to not use it for any illegal activities whatever they will include.
So they log ? otherwise they wouldnt
put it in their agreement.
This is good, I’m getting 600K/s which is faster then I normally get…
I have serious doubts on the doability of this. Won’t traffic just heap up and end up costing way too much, just like stage6?
Traffic costs money, rerouting it is pure gold you spend.
lol no, you’re not safe on private trackers, peerguardian detects the same amount of crap if it’s a popular enough torrent…
So its basically a proxy…
As others have said, bit torrent is free, so paying to use this, kind of defeats the point.
hmmmm…
I just activated the trial and set the settings as the site described.
Still the same throttle activity via Sandvine/Comcast.
No difference.
[quote comment="307569"]So its basically a proxy…
As others have said, bit torrent is free, so paying to use this, kind of defeats the point.[/quote]
The point is if your being threatened by your ISP and you still want to continue using BT. There is nothing available legitimate or illegitimate that can match it. That’s basically like saying you won’t pay for any media distribution system no matter how great.
Little more information about Relakks:
Jonas Birgersson, the founder of Relakks, is intervjued by Thomas Crampton. Birgersson talks about Relakks and why he thinks it is needed. It’s a good and interesting interview!
Link to the clip: http://light.vpod.tv/?s=0.0.201364
[quote comment="307571"]hmmmm…
I just activated the trial and set the settings as the site described.
Still the same throttle activity via Sandvine/Comcast.
No difference.[/quote]
I heard that form others as well. It seems to work for some, but not all throttling ISPs.
Its a service for the minority thats for sure. If your ISP is not one of thoes that give you a bit of protection against the shitty legal threats then a proxy may be a good idea. But then again if your ISP is prone to falling over at the first sign of a legal letter than perhaps you should consider moving ISP’s if your a heavy download user rather than having to resort to proxy’s.
Based in Canada, where Demonoid got shut down. Should be safe then!
It sounds like a good idea, but what happens when service providers realise that people are using BTGuard to hide their torrent traffic? Won’t they just throttle all of the traffic thats been routed through BTGuard? Doesn’t sound like a long term solution.
Enough of these ‘anonymous’ pay services. Bittorrent is meant to free. If you want to be anonymous and pay just use Usenet.
Just as I thought, it’s an authenticated socks 5 proxy, which means the claim “We even protect you from your own ISP” is complete and utter BS.
Register a trial account and check it for yourself with a packet sniffer. Everything is in plain text.
The only thing this will do is hide your IP from the swarm. Your IP will still be logged on the site though, because you cannot use authenticated socks5 in any browser yet.
With it being plain text, it’s no suprise some people are complaining it does nothing to stop sandvine.
[quote comment="307592"]
The point is if your being threatened by your ISP and you still want to continue using BT. There is nothing available legitimate or illegitimate that can match it. [/quote]
Read above about things being in plain text. Your ISP will laugh at you for wasting your money.
If you want real protection from your ISP and the mafiaa, you need an encrypted VPN or SSH tunnel.
We are already working on adding the option of encrypting the port to our proxy with ssh. This will be available in the days to come, and will still not require you to VPN your entire connection. Your ISP doesn’t sniff your packets to find you out as system mentioned above, it’s companies that monitor the swarms for right holders. The most important thing you can do is protect yourself in the swarm, which BTGuard does. The additional option of encrypting the port will work with sandvine, but behind that unless your really paranoid it’s not worth installing the extra software IMO.
how much more expensive is it going to be to use a VPN and have real protection? not much
[quote comment="307569"]So its basically a proxy…[/quote]
“BTGuard is an easy to use proxy service”
Erm… yeah. ;D
@9
oink
idiot
@31, thank you, not just oink, there are several private trackers that have been forced to shutdown. I have been on 2 private trackers that have been shutdown, oink and Elite torrents.
There are more.
I see alot of people mentioning using a VPN. Thats kind of retarded. First of you have to slow down your connection by routing through another network. Second, encrypted or not a VPN is legally bound to log all of your activity. Using thier proxy is way better. I got a account and have had no problems. In fact i’m getting alot faster download speeds and i’m already on my last warning from my ISP. I love these guys/gals?
Just tried the trial.
It seems to work.
All my connections were going through their proxy server and my bittorrent speed hasn’t changed a bit from what I normally have.
Those people complaining about such services costing anything…
See it as a donation and a excuse to snack or smoke less in a month.
By donating such a small amount, you get a lot in return with what you can get via bittorrent.
Why be greedy and want everything for free?
torrentfreak should write a review about
http://swissvpn.net/
price/month: 5$ ~3.26€
connectable: yes
location: Switzerland
just buy a seedbox
[quote comment="307516"]#8, you’re a *lot* safer on a private tracker. They usually only bother with public trackers (so far). In fact, I haven’t heard about someone being busted on a private tracker. Prove me wrong on that (hopefully, you can’t, though).[/quote]
EliteTorrents was not a public site. -1. Fail.
But look, the answer here is obvious. If you’re concerned about security go out and buy some. VPN FTW.
i’ve tried the trial version and followed their instructions to the letter, yet it still doesn’t work for me.
all of my torrents say in their tracker status bar is that the tracker is invalid and that it’s also an invalid url, but when i stop my proxy server all of the tracker information returns to normal so it looks like it does more harm than good for me since it slows me down.
oh well, it was worth a try.
good luck to everyone else that tries it.
If you’re that worried about getting caught filesharing, then I suppose paying for BT guard would pay off, but the reason many of us share content in the first place is because we don’t want to pay for it.
Instead of hiding behind proxies, lets make our software better. Lets make it more anonymous. Lets develop more secure trackers. These are better long term solutions by far.
Guys, open your eyes: Even if you’re using a proxy, all the incomming connections are completely unanonymized!
Check it out yourself: Download Netlimiter or a similar program and take a look at the connections your Torrent-Client establishes. You’ll see that a lot of connections are not send through the proxy.
Proxys DON’T make you anonymous in the P2P-networks. Only VPN does that, because it forces ALL connections to go through it.
So please, don’t pay them a cent - It’s a scam!
[quote comment="307600"][quote comment="307571"]hmmmm…
I just activated the trial and set the settings as the site described.
Still the same throttle activity via Sandvine/Comcast.
No difference.[/quote]
I heard that form others as well. It seems to work for some, but not all throttling ISPs.[/quote]
Not really. I don’t mind paying the content artists, but I am not paying someone else.
I am still ‘breaking the law’ if I pay for this service or not.
[quote comment="307669"]@31, thank you, not just oink, there are several private trackers that have been forced to shutdown. I have been on 2 private trackers that have been shutdown, oink and Elite torrents.
There are more.[/quote]
I never seen either site as private other then the fact that they closed their doors to the public…
As a member of a REAL private tracker, A tracker can only truly call them selfs a private tracker when their torrents can not be found on indexing sites. Oink was on TPB, MiniNova, IsoHunt, and many others and if memory serves me correct. Elite Torrents, torrents were able to be found on index sites as well.
Also… on the topic at hand. I have also signed up with BTGuard, Only thing I have noticed is that my speed actually has diminished compared to how much it usually does without a proxy.
It may be a good proxy but it doesn’t impress me. This group might help in some ISP issues but personally can’t report anything good it’s doing that I can’t do using a “free” anonymous proxy.
@20 Their are ways of protecting yourself using legal and illegal measures. This is the internet, if you can think it, their is someone that can build it and/or destroy it for free.
Never under estimate the power of annoyed programmers.
[quote comment="307804"]Guys, open your eyes: Even if you’re using a proxy, all the incomming connections are completely unanonymized!
Check it out yourself: Download Netlimiter or a similar program and take a look at the connections your Torrent-Client establishes. You’ll see that a lot of connections are not send through the proxy.
Proxys DON’T make you anonymous in the P2P-networks. Only VPN does that, because it forces ALL connections to go through it.
So please, don’t pay them a cent - It’s a scam![/quote]
Dude your an idiot and a troll.
in case you haven’t noticed, trashing each other is not providing the rest of us with any useful information about file-sharing.
[quote comment="307669"]@31, thank you, not just oink, there are several private trackers that have been forced to shutdown. I have been on 2 private trackers that have been shutdown, oink and Elite torrents.
There are more.[/quote]
Komodo Island was another
Thanks BTGuard!
Good niche, good price, much needed, much appreciated.
Appreciate your honesty and work; you are a service well worth paying for.
GUYS,
This service doesn’t say no one can snoop on your traffic; people still can, they admit that.
This service doesn’t say you will not get in legal trouble, because that is always a possiblity.
This service DOES say, if you are being blocked from downloading by your ISP, then this service should be able to bypass that.
Its that simple; if your ISP is screwing with your torrent, these guys can probably help you. That’s all they are saying, no more, no less. [English isn't rocket science!]
€4.75 meeh sounds orite to me! good stuff!
Why do you want to be annonymous?
THIEVES! I’m reporting you all right now!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
All those fucking Idiot refusing to pay for a little privacy because Bittorrent is supposed to be “free” just don’t get what nowadays controversy in terms of rights-managements is about.
How long will it take you to realise what the word “free” actually means? It’s for sure not about not paying for stuff …
until Comcast just blocks
or jingles with bt traffic to BTGuard
this is a temp fix
Im waiting for the real fix from utorrent: the RST RST fix for Sandvine bypassing
Well, if you’re looking for anonymity, look elsewhere :
http://offsystem.sourceforge.net/
That’s nice, except for the minor issue that Canadian ISPs throttle BT traffic… And sooner or later the legislation will pass giving the industry Americ… draconian powers to sue their customers at will.
Hope they didn’t set it up in Quebec; Videotron will certainly harass them for their logs.
Another $60-$80 a year for a dubious benefit invisible service, just to protect privacy which should be a basic right? Why not just pay royalties? Sounds like a protection racket to me. Who would willingly pay that? If it were free as it should be, then I’m sure it would get consideration. In fact if it can be done, why doesn’t someone else develop a free system? Base it on the other one, I don’t care.
I’m not sure why everyone is assuming Canada is this “safe haven”. The conservative government recently brought forward US style DMCA legislation that was highly restrictive. The current Canadian government is easily bought by American corporations if push comes to
shove. I guess the bittorrent industry has to be a nomadic one for the foreseeable future…
Let’s hope Rogers isn’t their ISP…
There’s an built-in problem with these kinds of services, in that you have to trust the folks you’re routing your traffic through in the first place (remember Fausty?)
So while I’m not necessarily bagging on BTGuard, not knowing a thing about who is running the operation makes me still favor Relakks.
VPN sure cuts down on the number of peers using same….
I’ve been a customer of Great Works Internet for almost five years now. Recently they started monitoring torrent traffic and contacted me twice about questionble transfers. Nevermind the fact that neither transfer ever completed, and all I had was basically slag on my hard drive. Next “offense” they cut my internet. Oi.
So would a service like this mask my traffic? Or merely route it through a different source?
And this is how you get stupid copyright reform laws passed in Canada. Thank you stupid fucks for your inane idea.
How about using I2P or freenet for a _real_ change ?
Let’s see…
1. Set up high capacity servers with “red hot” (c) files, and allow it to talk /only/ to this proxy.
2. Let a million downloads happen.
3. Subopena the proxy’s records, identify every transfer you participated in.
4. Lawuits!
5. $$$$
So instead, if you want anonymous file transfers, use Freenet, the next generation tool: Encrypted, anonymous, open source (no back doors likely), and of course free.
[quote]I heard that form others as well. It seems to work for some, but not all throttling ISPs.[/quote]
If the throttling is either consumption-based or Deep-Packet Inspection-based, then this service will not prevent it. Another way P2P is detected uses connection-mapping technology for detection (it is a reuse of anti-DDOS technology), and this service would prevent throttling based on that technology.
But what is equally worth consideration is that this BTGuard technology breaks other useful P2P technology. Peer Guardian, for example, prevents your computer from connecting to most anti-P2P addresses. If you use Peer Guardian, then you need to figure out how to use Azureus’ Safepeer plugin (or similar features in other clients).
Place-shifting your IP address does little good if most of your peers are malicious MediaSentry and MediaDefender peers.
https://www.relakks.com/?cid=gb
What if that is another honeypot like MiiVi? If it did not only collect your ip address but your credit card number, too?
[quote comment="307854"]GUYS,
This service doesn’t say no one can snoop on your traffic; people still can, they admit that.
This service doesn’t say you will not get in legal trouble, because that is always a possiblity.
This service DOES say, if you are being blocked from downloading by your ISP, then this service should be able to bypass that.
Its that simple; if your ISP is screwing with your torrent, these guys can probably help you. That’s all they are saying, no more, no less. [English isn't rocket science!][/quote]
Actually, they do say right on their site that they protect you from your ISP. They cannot do that by using a plain text method.
Nor can they prevent any throttling based on actual packet inspection. Because it’s all plain text, packet inpection will still show you up as using bittorrent. Many ISPs use ellacoyas for DPI to prevent bittorrent use. Sandvine is not the only nasty out there.
As for their argument that “Your ISP doesn’t sniff your packets to find you out”, they obviously have no clue how things work at various ISPs. If they did, then they would know 3 of the biggest UK ISPs are about to start copying all traffic passing over port 80 for the purposes of targetted ads (including the traffic you now send through this proxy). Once this happens, the BPI can make a very easy case for copyright infringement tracking being the responsibility of the ISP as they are no longer merely conduits for data. The UK govt has already threatened legislation if the ISPs cannot come to an agreement with the BPI.
ISPs in other countries have to comply with draconian government regulations which this does nothing to protect against.
A VPN or SSH tunnel protects you against both ISP monitoring and mafiaa monitoring. They state in their comment above that they are working on an SSH solution.
If they truly believed their own crap about ISPs not looking at packets, they would not be building an SSH solution.
So if I jon the service, now BTGuard can tie name, address, and credit card info to an IP address. How do I know BTGuard is not like mediadefender or related to the RIAA/MPAA in anyway?
no thanks.
Nothing too new about only putting through p2p traffic through the VPN which has been done by quite a number or providers…we’ve been running a similar service like this for about a year now out of pure necessity since our national ISP has throttled all p2p to unbearable levels.
http://www.bolehvpn.net/
http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/625801
http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/434613/+2540#entry15507770
And for a list of all Malaysian VPN providers (which should work to all other countries as well):
http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/435028
What a shameless solicitation!
Plus, Canada is far from safe for bittorrent users now.
1) any ISP that throttles will recognize and throttle (most likely deny) traffic from the company’s IP address block.
2) when, not if, an legal request is enforced everyone has all your personal information, include a credit card number / paypal account.
other than that, i thinks it a great idea.
they’re going to be making tons of money on the clueless torrent community (just like the fake torrent clients do), terrible
for those whining about comcast, enable protocol encryption in utorrent in your options menu, then run peerguardian and zonealarm. I have no problems with throttling…
Tried this and it defeats the throttling of French ISP C.l.u.b Internet.
I don’t know if they use Sandvine, but for the past year during the day BT speeds drop to zero with all clients and max encryption, and at night a maximum of 35kB/s. on direct download speeds are 600kB/s.
Trying BTGuard this morning and it was downloading 3 or 4 TV show torrents at 250kB/s. Considering this is the first time I’ve been able to download a torrent since I moved to this damn country a year ago, thats not bad.
Is everyone really scared this could be a trap set by the RIAA/MPAA? Well isn’t that a american office? in america theres this protective law called “entrapment” so if they set a “trap” for you to do something illegal, not only can they not charge you, but they get in some serious trouble. Also this company claims in there terms of service that they do not log anything and your not suppost to use it for illegal activity or you will get refuned and your account will be shut down. Everyone is curently attacking the bt sites. btjunkie priates bay etc. The canadian goverment isn’t going to care because they are techincally proving a “internet security service” and if the americans or any other country wants to take them down, pretty sure they can’t do much besides send them a letter, and in that letter they will say they are very angry at them. Get out of your parents basement and get some sunshine. not everything on the net is a conspiracy although there is alot of scams this doesn’t appear to be one.
[quote comment="307824"][quote comment="307804"]Guys, open your eyes: Even if you’re using a proxy, all the incomming connections are completely unanonymized!
Check it out yourself: Download Netlimiter or a similar program and take a look at the connections your Torrent-Client establishes. You’ll see that a lot of connections are not send through the proxy.
Proxys DON’T make you anonymous in the P2P-networks. Only VPN does that, because it forces ALL connections to go through it.
So please, don’t pay them a cent - It’s a scam![/quote]
Dude your an idiot and a troll.[/quote]
Instead of attacking me, you should just try it out yourself.
It’s not my freakin’ problem if you are going to be sued, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Proxys don’t make you fully anonymous in the p2p-networks.
Wanna proof? Look here:
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/724/utorrentgehtnetyf1.png
Oh, and dude?
I’m neither idiot nor troll.
And I did not only test this with uTorrent, but also with eMule.
Here’s a post a made on a forum (one of the biggest in germany, and I suggest that you have a little look at my postcounter. I’m not just some guy that has internet since friday and is now spamming just for fun):
http://board.gulli.com/thread/961552-welcher-vpn-anbieter/18/#432
Just look at those screenshots, especially the one with Kademlia activated.
Again: Don’t trust me, do it yourself. It’s really no big deal.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Anyplace that has a repository of my personal info can and will give it up to authorities under enough pressure.
I prefer not to pay someone $10 a month to store all my info in a convenient location. My torrent downloads through comcast are fine (they are time warner infrastructure here, they just have the comcast name thusfar)
quit bitching about paying for something, especially to route bittorrent traffic. I agree this isn’t a revolutionary idea for P2P, we do need a way to anonymize but maintain a BT type design that’s free. But this is an excellent patch to get some through until that day for those getting pressured by their ISP!
those who are complaining about having a repository of info aren’t so bright. Your ISP has a repository of your info that you are putting out in the open by using your IP. At least this way your behind a Canadian IP from people who seem to care a little more about your privacy then your ISP does.
With 4.75 Euro per month i could buy most of the junk porn i download…
For me only free services are good enough.
wich part of “i want to pay as little as i can to as little entities as i can” do this people don’t understand.
i pay for internet so that i don’t pay for movies, music and games.
and this people garantee that no canadian asshole will get those datas????!!!!
My guess is that the bandwidth with a proxy service is probably relative to the capping ISP already put on Torrent Downloads.
You’d get better use wiping your ass with that $5!!!
[quote comment="308456"] in america theres this protective law called “entrapment” so if they set a “trap” for you to do something illegal, not only can they not charge you, but they get in some serious trouble. [/quote]
Another one falls for that old myth.
Not only is entrapment limited to law enforcement or its agents (which the RIAA/MPAA are not), but simply offering a service in which they collect your details while you commit a “crime” would not be anything like entrapment. It would be called a sting operation, and stings are perfectly legal.
*IF* this service has links to any rights holders, they could very easily bring civil cases against you.
It may be Canadian, but WHOIS is pointing the finger at the US for all info….
And what’s the deal with the BT Guard website?? It looks like it was designed to look like a late 90’s website!
I smell a Honeypot….
[quote comment="307516"]#8, you’re a *lot* safer on a private tracker. They usually only bother with public trackers (so far). In fact, I haven’t heard about someone being busted on a private tracker. Prove me wrong on that (hopefully, you can’t, though).[/quote]
Um…Oink???
http://www.torrentfreedom.com/
VPN don’t slow me down
@13
as the dollar plummets more people invest in it meaning we actually come up so heralding that as the downfall of americas economics is showing how big of an idiot you are.
They log massively and keep the logfiles for 6 month
—
torrentfreak should write a review about
http://swissvpn.net/
price/month: 5$ ~3.26€
connectable: yes
location: Switzerland
relakks is based in sweden, new european law says that traffic data has to be kept for 6 month = not safe
It seems that, since you must (eventually) pay for the service, that simply by checking your or BTGuard’s financial records, it would be arguable that you were paying for illicit services. Makes me think twice about their service.. :(
why btguard hide their identity?
they are registered in the USA with an anonymity service … why must they hide?
RSS Feeds do not work with this.
“Cashing In on Naive BitTorrent Users”
I’ve gotten my share of threatening emails when i’ve used private trackers.
You people disgust me!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
at 93. what trackers?
another hoax. and as stated above. demonoid was based in Canada and was shut down so don’t bother paying for some lame program. you can use vidalia. it’s free and it does the same thing. And by the way. if you pay than a money transfer will be involved aka personal data. you will be a sitting duck than. dont be stupid people.
I should add this to my list of protection.
I had previously written an article on bittorrent protetion. Take a look,http://neel-ug.blogspot.com/2008/01/protect-yourselves-from-bittorent-evils.html
Take a look at my del.icio.us bookmarks, I collected some interesting (mostly G7-offshore) VPN providers:
http://del.icio.us/CDrewing/relakks
As promised I’ve added the ability to add an encrypted tunnel yet maintain the pro of only having it effect your BT downloads. You can find the encryption option now under the install menu.
der[quote comment="307824"][quote comment="307804"]Guys, open your eyes: Even if you’re using a proxy, all the incomming connections are completely unanonymized!
Check it out yourself: Download Netlimiter or a similar program and take a look at the connections your Torrent-Client establishes. You’ll see that a lot of connections are not send through the proxy.
Proxys DON’T make you anonymous in the P2P-networks. Only VPN does that, because it forces ALL connections to go through it.
So please, don’t pay them a cent - It’s a scam![/quote]
Dude your an idiot and a troll.[/quote]
He is actually right. The Outgoing Traffic is routed through the btguard-proxy but you still get incomming directly from the seeders. Which kinda is the whole Problem with filesharing. VPN saves you some trouble there. vpntunnel.co.uk was recommended here some time ago and seems to be a bit overloaded at the moment, but will be back to faboulus hopefully soon.
Any service that doesn’t allow anonymous payments I would avoid like the plague.
If you pay by credit card, paypal, echeck or any other kind of fiat currency you’re screwed.
For financial privacy, cash and digital gold are the only options.
[quote comment="310887"]
He is actually right. The Outgoing Traffic is routed through the btguard-proxy but you still get incomming directly from the seeders. Which kinda is the whole Problem with filesharing. VPN saves you some trouble there. vpntunnel.co.uk was recommended here some time ago and seems to be a bit overloaded at the moment, but will be back to faboulus hopefully soon.[/quote]
Actually you’re wrong, I tested it myself and you can too. Start a BT transfer, run “netstat -n -b”, and you’ll see that you’re only connected to there server.
I just got my trial username/password for this and set it up on uTorrent. Ever since the school dorms I live in switched ISP’s, my Web and BT traffic has been horribly slow, we are talking download speed of .7k, but usually 0. If I fire up eMule or Ares, traffic is better, but still not stellar.
So, with this proxy, my speeds have went up to 50k, which I haven’t seen for months. I dunno about you guys, but for me, that is worth $5/month. I wish I could just switch ISP’s, but the dorm management controls the provider. Hopefully I’ll be seeing > 100k speeds soon :)
[quote comment="308172"][quote comment="307854"]GUYS,
This service doesn’t say no one can snoop on your traffic; people still can, they admit that.
This service doesn’t say you will not get in legal trouble, because that is always a possiblity.
This service DOES say, if you are being blocked from downloading by your ISP, then this service should be able to bypass that.
Its that simple; if your ISP is screwing with your torrent, these guys can probably help you. That’s all they are saying, no more, no less. [English isn't rocket science!][/quote]
Actually, they do say right on their site that they protect you from your ISP. They cannot do that by using a plain text method.
Nor can they prevent any throttling based on actual packet inspection. Because it’s all plain text, packet inpection will still show you up as using bittorrent. Many ISPs use ellacoyas for DPI to prevent bittorrent use. Sandvine is not the only nasty out there.
As for their argument that “Your ISP doesn’t sniff your packets to find you out”, they obviously have no clue how things work at various ISPs. If they did, then they would know 3 of the biggest UK ISPs are about to start copying all traffic passing over port 80 for the purposes of targetted ads (including the traffic you now send through this proxy). Once this happens, the BPI can make a very easy case for copyright infringement tracking being the responsibility of the ISP as they are no longer merely conduits for data. The UK govt has already threatened legislation if the ISPs cannot come to an agreement with the BPI.
ISPs in other countries have to comply with draconian government regulations which this does nothing to protect against.
A VPN or SSH tunnel protects you against both ISP monitoring and mafiaa monitoring. They state in their comment above that they are working on an SSH solution.
If they truly believed their own crap about ISPs not looking at packets, they would not be building an SSH solution.[/quote]
Actually, ever since I started using them, the throttling has stopped working and I am getting deceent download speeds from my dorms ISP. So maybe its time to backpedal…eh?
[quote comment="307516"]#8, you’re a *lot* safer on a private tracker. They usually only bother with public trackers (so far). In fact, I haven’t heard about someone being busted on a private tracker. Prove me wrong on that (hopefully, you can’t, though).[/quote]
Umm Oink…..
I dont see anywhere to get this “free” trial mentioned
i hope this works..what 5 bucks u talkin about
Anyone know any usenet providers not based in the USA or Canada??
Hmm. Well, if and when one of our ISPs gets us, and prevents one of us from seeding.. then we’ll do something about it… mebbe try out this service… until then, screw them.
I signed up to bt guard.so many clients do not allow tracker connections in the u.s.
My expierience…that the same torrents underway were imediatly open to a butt load of trackers…speeds went way up,tho not,”amazing”Also…my secondary internet use speed has increased dramitacally(throtteling?)finally…the peace of mind of privacy for my legal downloads…2 cups of good coffee a month…I am a fan so far and recomend giving it a go
works -
actually my speed increased
Is anybody else concerned by the following?
1) there is very little info about them on the web
2) nothing pre-dates March 2008
3) certain discussion groups contain hints of possible “honey trap”
Am I just being more paranoid than normal?
No, you’re being cautious. BTW, BTGuard is on the Bluetack/Peer Guardian blocklists. So, for those using this “service”, you’re not going to connect to anyone that filters IP’s.
Well, well,
What a discussion here at the other end of the world…
In Europe we have the same problems with legal downloading, etc, etc.
What about hiding your IP-addresses with hideyouripaddress or sthng like that?
Where is the free trial? The link to the free trial page only takes you to a purchase page. What a scam.
They target PRIVATE trackers.
It is because, paying for torrenting is REALpiracy. Free torrenting, is not, according to the Telecommunications Act of 1996…
information wants to be free :)
These comments are some of the dumbest shit I’ve ever read!
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