The most common and widely used privacy services are VPNs that allow users to connect to the Internet whilst hiding their own IP-address, making BitTorrent transfers completely anonymous.

ItsHidden is one of the rare free VPN solutions currently available. It launched July last year and TorrentFreak has learned that less than 12 months later the service already has 300,000 members with a free account.

Update: Itshidden stopped offering free accounts but TorrentPrivacy currently has a limited free trial available here.

Besides the free accounts, tens of thousands of people have signed up to the paid option. These benefit from additional features and no bandwidth restrictions, which is probably the preferred choice for heavy downloaders.

A while ago we spoke with David, one of the people behind the service, who told us that they set their VPN up with BitTorrent users in mind.

“It has been created to put some rights back in the favor of the user and that includes us,” David from ItsHidden explained to TorrentFreak. “There are so many bodies, mostly unelected, that seem to have full access to the most intimate of online details with little or no justification and more importantly, no evidence.”

The service encrypts the connection between the user and ItsHidden’s servers and prevents anyone from reading this data as it is sent or received. No data logs are kept of the user’s transfers, which makes it as private as it gets.

Of the 300,000 free users that signed up in the past year, 56,262 log in on an average day, transferring thousands of gigabytes. Due to the overwhelming interest in free accounts, ItsHidden had to disable new signups a few months ago, but they are currently allowing new members to join again.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

These services, such as The Pirate Bay’s Ipredator, usually charge a recurring monthly fee to pay for bandwidth and hardware bills. However, this week a new player entered the VPN market, offering their services for free – no strings attached.

Named ItsHidden, the free VPN solution has opened up a BETA test to the public, who can now privatize their Internet traffic – including BitTorrent transfers – in next to no time. ItsHidden was set up with torrent users in mind, allowing them to hide their identities from ‘third parties’ who choose to snoop on their activities.

“It has been created to put some rights back in the favor of the user and that includes us,” David from ItsHidden explained to TorrentFreak. “There are so many bodies, mostly unelected that seem to have full access to the most intimate of online details with little or no justification and more importantly, no evidence.”

The service encrypts the connection between the user and ItsHidden’s servers and prevents anyone from reading this data as it is sent or received. We were further assured that no data logs are kept of the user’s transfers. The best news is of course that it’s totally free, and they hope to keep it like this in the future.

“It is a free service, we will of course have to limit in some way eventually to stop the whole lot collapsing, but we will always have a free account. The paid account would be geared at about $5 and will add port forwarding and other features,” David said.

During the BETA phase the service uses shared IP-addresses, but once they have completed more testing ItsHidden will be able to issue static IPs. The servers are all located in The Netherlands at present, but they will spread to other locations once the service is out of BETA.

We have of course tried ItsHidden ourselves and the service is offering good speeds for a VPN, although this might differ based on the user’s location and the load on the network. Right now, we are hoping that it wont collapse once thousands of new users flood the network. Fingers crossed.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.