Getting Stressed Out With Anonymous BitTorrent
Written by enigmax on November 05, 2007With 6-figure file-sharing fines being handed out, people like OiNK facing prison and ISPs meddling with BitTorrent, hiding your online activity is becoming a hot topic. Relakks burst onto the scene as savior a little while ago but are they still performing for the BitTorrent community? Relakks’ed? Stressed out more like.
Millions of people around the globe share files and most do so without a second thought for privacy issues. A lot don’t know that it’s possible for people to monitor their online activities and equally, many will know that they can be monitored but chance their hand that they are one in millions and will probably slip under the radar.
For an increasing number of net users, privacy and a level of anonymity is becoming a requirement, especially for those in locales where ridiculous fines and prison sentences are becoming more prevalent. Those faced with the menace of P2P meddling ISPs or those hassled by the nuisance of sites being blocked can solve all of these problems with a VPN - a Virtual Private Network service.
Anyone looking for a Relakks alternative (who doesn’t wish to read my rantings!) should scroll to the section below marked: “Relakks Alternatives”
The Rise and Fall of Relakks
When Relakks burst on to the scene in late 2006 it was heralded as the “world’s first commercial darknet”, promising to hide your online identity in exchange for a small fee. As a big privacy fan (some might say ‘obsessive’), I immediately signed up for this service and have been a customer ever since. Sadly, I’ve had enough.
Although great for web browsing and running one or two torrents at a time, ask it to handle more than a handful of torrents and the whole connection simply stops responding. I’ve seen many other Relakks users with this same problem and to come home from many hours out, eager to sample what you downloaded today only to find a dead connection, it’s an annoyance. When you were supposed to be seeding a friend’s Hip-Hop album all night and it died after 6mb uploaded and no-one got anything, it’s a major hassle and time to complain to Relakks. Again.
Relaxed Customer Service
Any member of Relakks will tell you - their customer support is VERY ‘relaxed’. Send them a complaint or a query - it takes at least 3 days to get a response. My multiple questions about the ‘dropped connection’ issue always resulted in ‘you have a firewall issue’ response and this is a standard response to people complaining about this. The Relakks ‘News/Status‘ page is never updated, it’s useless.
There have been many, many days where service has been sporadic at best but recently the entire Relakks network was down from Friday to Monday so I ran out of patience and complained in my capacity as TorrentFreak writer - surely this would be enough? I wrote a highly detailed email looking for some definitive answers and the great response from support@relakks.com after multiple attempts at different times was: ‘Undeliverable’
Relakks you have lost me - not on price but customer service. I have you emailed you many, many times over the months, you have never solved my problems. Your service is cheap but when I pay for a premium service I expect support - I get better support from free BitTorrent sites. Time to protest by spending elsewhere - if only I hadn’t paid you 12 months in advance.
Relakks Alternatives
VPNOut kindly got in touch to let us sample their service but due to issues with the host PC (it wasn’t VPNOut’s fault) that trial never really got off the ground but already, responses and customer service levels were way above what i’d experienced with Relakks.
Moving on, I came across VPNTunnel and I thought I’d give it a try. Sadly I had the same installation issues as I did with VPNOut but it was at this point where you really appreciate a company who not only wants your business, but is prepared to bend over backwards to get it. With nearly 20 years in sales, I know good service when I see it and VPNTunnel’s blew me away.
After complaining I couldn’t install VPNTunnel’s software (my PC’s fault, not theirs) a customer support guy got in touch within minutes and over the course of the next 24 hours and number of emails later resulted in me receiving a custom version of their software, tailored to my exact requirements! I was back in business and loving the contrast in customer service levels. Now for a trial run.
After loading 3 torrents and allowing each to connect to a minimum of 10 peers, more torrents were loaded, totaling 15. The connection remained stable with a total speed of around 5mbit, which compares to Relakks. Stability remained for all transfers even after simultaneous downloads were initiated on both IRC and Usenet. More speed would be nice but given the choice, I’ll take reliability instead. A generous 50gig monthly limit is more than enough for me.
Relakks (Sweden) do not reveal what information they hold on their customers but say they won’t give it up unless ordered to in a criminal case carrying a penalty of 2 years in jail. VPNTunnel (based in Scotland) obviously keep your payment data but only carry log in information (your real IP address) for 30 days and there are signs this may decrease further to 21 days. Any potential legal action would need to move at an unprecedented speed to have even a small chance of identifying someone.
File-sharers are notoriously difficult to please - they get everything for free and still expect customer service from torrent sites and the like. So when a file-sharer actually puts his hand in his pocket to pay for a service, he expects to be treated well. I think deep down I’m more angry with myself than Relakks. I’ve promoted Relakks for 12 months to thousands of people and then in the end, couldn’t take my own advice.
You weren’t all bad Relakks, you just took me for granted and although I’ll end up paying more with VPNTunnel, it’s worth it, if only to get stability and that ‘wanted’ feeling.
Here ends my first ever Tor-Rant. Deep breaths….in……out….
Previously: Swedish Pirates Stand Up Publicly To Stay Anonymous
Next: The War Against BitTorrent: Attack of the ISPs
62 Responses
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You can’t pay peanuts and expect the earth. As soon as VPNTunnel grows you’ll experience the same. Bandwidth ain’t cheap. If you’re that bothered, get yourself a VPS and tunnel through it.
nice article and a fantastic read. very useful information. ive never looked into VPN services, but after this article, and OiNK brought down, etc, though many trackers have stepped up on privacy, i may trial some of these.
xx
I use Relakks and also get annoyed at the dropped connections. I created a Quickeys script that periodically quits the torrent program, disconnects the VPN, reconnects, then returns to the torrent program. For the most part, it works quite well and allows me to just forget about it most of the time.
It took a while to get right because connection isn’t always easy. It’s not a flawless system because sometimes the connection drops out but the torrents keep going, all in a non-anonymous state. However, the script does kick in every 20 minutes so my exposure is probably minimal. When I’m around, I check on it myself regularly to manually run the script if the connection has ended or just dropped to zero, but the 20 minute cycle hasn’t expired.
Since I’m on a Mac, I think I’d be better off with an Automator script that tries to reconnect every time the network traffic drops below a specified threshold (and perhaps a double-check against the VPN connection status), but that’s well beyond my ability to program.
interesting article since i`m using relakks myself. i can only confirm the bad service issue.
btw, you mixed up some fatcs in the article about vpn tunnel, on the site i couldn´t find any 50Gb limit, so mb they changed it or sth.
its 10 pounds for 30Gb and you can buy as many “30Gb-packs” as u like.
I can confirm that 50gig is correct but you’re right - looks like the site needs to be updated to reflect this.
I’ve been using vpntunnel since it was beta, and I must say the connection is solid. The main reason the speeds are low is because they’re in britain. Once they outgrow their servers they have told me they plan to expand into also offering north american servers for greater speed.
couple of weeks ago i was an american gangster seeder on a relaks connection thinking i was safe. got back after 2 days vacation and the connection was gone and my real fuckin IP was all over the swarm.
thanks a bunch :(
[quote comment="204249"]If you’re that bothered, get yourself a VPS and tunnel through it.[/quote]
But when you rent a VPS, it also means that you are easyer to trace. I mean, somebody rent the server and that is you. With VPN, the isp of the vpn service, suppose to clean his logs and all.
About vpntunnel. I think it is all about the country where the service is hosted. I am from holland, and here (and I think this is EU.) there is a minimal 6 mounth log. A VPNTunnel like company in the us, is probely not a good idear. Anyway, does anybody know, how the rules are in the uk ?
Is your privacy garanteed if you look at the law ?
60 million people use P2P, around 30,000 have been harassed by the MP/RI**. Do the math, you have a better chance of winning the lottery. Even higher odds when you use protocol encryption and IP filters. Nothing but scare tactics and sad to say they are working on some levels
Looking at the law, your privacy is guaranteed, as long as we don’t recieve a court order within 30 days of the ‘offense’.
VPNTunnel is not required to keep logs for any longer than we need to in order to conduct business, period. If presented with a court order or similar, we will be required to hand over information, but if we don’t have the information then there’s nothing for us to hand over :)
At the moment we are keeping a 30-day rolling log for activity, which means we cannot trace an IP back to a username outside of this 30 day window. We keep paypal transaction IDs for 60 days to allow for refunds, but once again if we don’t know the username there’s “nothing we can do” :)
regarding the 30GB/50GB limit: I can confirm the site has just been updated to reflect this. It was a last-minute update after we talked to our bandwidth provider :)
[quote comment="204320"][quote comment="204249"]If you’re that bothered, get yourself a VPS and tunnel through it.[/quote]
But when you rent a VPS, it also means that you are easyer to trace. I mean, somebody rent the server and that is you. With VPN, the isp of the vpn service, suppose to clean his logs and all.
About vpntunnel. I think it is all about the country where the service is hosted. I am from holland, and here (and I think this is EU.) there is a minimal 6 mounth log. A VPNTunnel like company in the us, is probely not a good idear. Anyway, does anybody know, how the rules are in the uk ?
Is your privacy garanteed if you look at the law ?[/quote]
The NL is the EU yes..
But the UK is too… so whats your question?
Hi, I adviced relakks to my friend…but hopefully he doesn’t use too much torrents..so it’s quite fine. Bad that you write it now..when he paid for service…but thx for your comment about the level of customer service.
* vpntunnel does not look linux friendly… didn’t found any info on the exact protocol used…
* vpnout on the contrary seems better since at least they document the protocol in their FAQ (And is openvpn)
* For the Relakks thing… yap, week-ends are currently pretty harsh … for Customer support, I just don’t use it :-)…
On the other side, when connected, my linux seems to keep the connection quite well, even with a crazy “no connection limit”… as long as I force pptp/pppd to keep low values for mtu/mru…
For the dropped connection thing, on linux, pptp/pppd can be forced to reopen an infinite number of time the link without actually dropping the interface, this means, in case of a deconnection, that nothing can get out thru another “hole” until a successful reconnection is made… (in short, pppd/pptp will keep to himself the status change of the “relaxed” interface)… and usually, you will keep the same external ip
[cf persist and maxfail] - but okay… this is Linux only stuff… not supported officially by Relakks anyway…
I use Relakks on a 20/1 connection and I can have many downloads at the same times without problem. +30 etc.
So I love Relakks
Thanks for this great info ..
Thot i was too late to get into
Bittorents so i went with Usenet w
SSL connex. But would still like
to sample and learn about torrents.
Could some1 clue me in - which is
more secure SSL or Tunnels?
Are same thing? Work same way ?
Is there any way to chain the two?
Running Newsleecher thru Giganews SSL server thru VPNTunnel Tunnels
back home?
or likewise - run bittorents
thru two different Tunnels/SSLs ?
Or would 2x cost only provide little
extra security and much slow overhead?
OF course ur paying for 2 services
but increased security , if real,
is worth it if u can afford.
I just checked out both VPNOut and VPNTunnel.
They both use OpenVPN. VPNOut supports any configuration on any OS, including your router, as long as it supports OpenVPN. They’ll give you a tar.gz file with your login information if you’re an expert user.
VPNTunnel only supports Windows XP and Vista right now. I asked them about OS X support, and they responded within minutes! They have an OS X client in the works, which should be ready in about two weeks.
VPNOut is considerably cheaper. It’s $20 for 3 months with 15 GB of bandwidth, $60 for 1 year and 200 GB of bandwidth, or $100 for 1 year and 1 TB(!) of bandwidth.
VPNTunnel is ~$20/month (£10/month) for 50GB, which works out to $240/yr and 600 GB.
I can’t vouch for VPNOut’s support, but as long as it works, I’m not sure an extra $140/yr is worth amazing support (not to mention 400 GB less). At least not for me, anyway. If you’re planning on a month-to-month service, though, VPNTunnel is probably the better option.
I also tried Relakks. Althought they took a few days to answer, they seemed “nice”.
I was facing the same disconnect issues, and blaming them for it.
However using another ISP (that doesn’t shape traffic) I was able to connect for over a day, with hundreds of connections, downloading at 6Mbps+
On my old ISP (that shapes P2P) connections would continue to drop.
This, on the exact same hardware and configurations.
So, I believe many of the disconnect issues are really not their fault (not to mention all the other router/setup problems)- but if it doesn’t work for you, there’s not much you can do: either change ISP or VPN service.
Does anyone here go to a college that keeps a tight watch on downloading? I go to a small school, have already received a warning for downloading. (”We’re not the copyright police”… “we just see the amount of data coming in and going out…. Please don’t hog all of the bandwidth”.
Will using a VPN service really get around this hassle?
Regarding OS Support in VPNTunnel:
We use OpenVPN, and basically support any platform this runs on. The reason we stipulate a “windows only” requirement is because the helper application that wraps around OpenVPN is coded for windows :-)
If you can install OpenVPN on your operating system, we can provide a ZIP with all the files needed for you to connect. We’re working on improving this ‘out of band’ support a little, while we try and get a multi-platform client ready - if you raise a ticket, we will answer your question :)
I go to UTD.edu and nothing gets through their firewall. It’s dead air for torrents and any other file sharing . If anyone knows what schools in the US are doing to completely throttle their amazing T3 lines I’d love to know…
I think that basically all these services suck monkey balls. I mean I use about 10GB-15GB of BT traffic per day(I am on a 20/3 ADSL2+ Annex M line) so 50GB would only last me about 5 days at most. Anys service I would subscribe to would have to not slow my upload at all and provide a limit no lower then 500GB/Month or 6TB per year.
Here in Sweden (Relakks is a swedish service) it seems to work ok for most and they have no dat a limit. So the issue seems to be with International and capped connections.
This is all fine and good for now, so long as American ISPs like Comcast aren’t tossing IPSEC or interfering with encrypted traffic. They’re probably doing that next. Can’t use the work excuse either: if you use it for work here, you have to upgrade to a business account. Land of the free, right? *facepalm*
Personally i think the record companies are missing a massive opportunity here.
Imagine if Oink was not only licensed to sell music but actually had the backing of the worlds record companies and their entire back catalogues. Powered by P2P technology it would be cheap to run and could service millions.
I would pay a good amount per month for a service like that . You could even base it on a credit system where £20/month gets you 1000 credits and then reward those that seed with the ability to earn more.
£140/year is more than i pay for music currently and i think the possibility for a site like this to earn money would be huge. Forget 180 thousand members. Think 180 MILLION!
I dream of the day this becomes a possibility but i think there are too many ego’s and idiots in the record business to go for something like this.
I’ve seen Relakks (dumb name) in the blocklists.
The UK is only part of the EU on paper. They are rather the 52nd state of USA (after Iraq) and a straw man for the USA as far as the EU is concerned. They still don’t accept the Euro currency, force us to accept their BSE-infected beef, drive in the wrong lane, have managed to scrap the EU hymn and EU flag. I’d rather have the Turkey in the EU than these poodles of the USA. The UK is also a de-facto surveillance state. Just today I thought it would be funny if UK and USA re-united as “Re-united Kingdom” under King Bush. LOL!
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