Top 10 Largest File-Sharing Sites

Ernesto
August 27, 2011
177
cyberlockers,
file-sharing,
Torrent Sites
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BitTorrent is no longer the dominant player when it comes to file-sharing on the Internet. The five largest English language websites dedicated to swapping files are all related to centralized file-hosting services, also known as cyberlockers. The Pirate Bay and Torrentz are the only BitTorrent sites that managed to secure a spot in the top 10.

The Internet is the largest copying machine ever invented, and if we take a look at the massive amounts of traffic file-sharing sites get, millions of people are using it to its full extent.

4shared, the largest English language file-sharing site, is serving 2.5 billion pageviews alone every month, and this number is increasing rapidly.

Below we have compiled a list of the top 10 largest (general purpose) file-sharing sites on the Internet, based on measurements by Google. What stands out immediately is that 8 of the 10 sites are related to cyberlockers, and only 2 are BitTorrent sites.

This picture is quite different from the landscape 5 years ago when BitTorrent sites dominated the file-sharing space. Early 2007 Mininova was the first BitTorrent site to earn a place among the top 100 most-visited sites on the Internet, and soon thereafter they were joined by The Pirate Bay.

In the years that followed BitTorrent sites continued to dominate, but in the background cyberlockers were catching up, and catching up fast. Where most BitTorrent sites were seeing moderate growth, several new cyberlockers saw their traffic surge. In the last year many cyberlocker sites have outgrown The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, isoHunt and other popular torrent sites.

Below is the full list of sites based on Google’s ranking. We have to note though that several site owners in this list told TorrentFreak that the monthly pageviews and unique visitors are hugely underestimated. The Pirate Bay for example claims 1,500,000,000 pageviews, which is more than double the Google estimate. Other sites report similar ‘downgrades,’ so overall the ranking would still hold.

July, 2011
Ranking	Website	Category	Unique monthly visitors	Monthly pageviews
torrentfreak.com
1	4shared	Cyberlocker	55,000,000	2,500,000,000
2	Megaupload	Cyberlocker	37,000,000	400,000,000
3	Mediafire	Cyberlocker	34,000,000	330,000,000
4	Filestube	Meta-search	34,000,000	280,000,000
5	Rapidshare	Cyberlocker	23,000,000	280,000,000
6	The Pirate Bay	Torrent index	23,000,000	650,000,000
7	Fileserve	Cyberlocker	19,000,000	190,000,000
8	Hotfile	Cyberlocker	16,000,000	110,000,000
9	Torrentz.eu	Meta-search	15,000,000	340,000,000
10	Depositfiles	Cyberlocker	14,000,000	110,000,000

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Anonymous

The underdogs have to go somewhere!
- Anonymous
  
  Good to see a multitude of popular file-sharing alternatives, be they cyberlockers, usenet groups, torrents or mates down the pub swapping USB sticks.
  
  US Maffiaa interests may be pulling out their hair over the loss of control, but the clear winners are everyone else, a whole world of underdogs helping each other to obtain everything from a suger-coated pop single to better agricultural techniques.
  
  Imagine the effect the availability of all this information is having on collective human development. Some are standing in the way of that development for personal greed based reasons, but going by the popularity of the above sites, they are not having much affect.
- Anonymous
  
  Good to see a multitude of popular file-sharing alternatives, be they cyberlockers, usenet groups, torrents or mates down the pub swapping USB sticks.
  
  US Maffiaa interests may be pulling out their hair over the loss of control, but the clear winners are everyone else, a whole world of underdogs helping each other to obtain everything from a suger-coated pop single to better agricultural techniques.
  
  Imagine the effect the availability of all this information is having on collective human development. Some are standing in the way of that development for personal greed based reasons, but going by the popularity of the above sites, they are not having much affect.
  - Foulkeyou
    
    Uh, yeah … it’s really just a bunch of kids downloading free music and movies, but all that shit about the betterment of society, the victory of the underdog, and so on is cool too.
    - Anonymous
      
      Nah – ya wrong
      
      It’s about the ownership of patents for genetically modified food and cancer detection techniques. It’s about farmers growing their own crops or licensing their heritage to some rat-fuck American corporation that claims it owns its own gawd-given right to control the fucking FOOD SUPPLY.
      
      It’s about medicine and science and boo-ya fucking communications. It’s about control. A small number of rat-fuck monopolists want to hamstring humanity for their own personal greed syndrome and to do that, they’ll take everyone else down with them – including you, you rat-fuck sympathiser.
      
      So relax, it’s not about a few kids copying tunes on the tubes. It’s about everything. The right to access and use information without some bunch of rat-fucks telling you the what, when, where, why and how much it’s going to cost you.
      
      So – ya wrong
    - blame canada
      
      anyone else channel a canadian southpark accent through that rant?
      
      “can you tell us again what yur angry aboot?”
    - Anonymous
      
      i cant believe this!! me and my sister just got two i-pads for $42.77 each and a $50 amazon card for $9. the stores want to keep this a secret and they dont tell you.
      go here, EgoWìn.com
  - Anonymous
    
    nicee
  - Anonymous
    
    ì just got an iPad 2-32GB for $ 22.54 and my girlfriend loves her Panasonìc Lumìx GF 1 Camera that we got for $ 38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS. I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $ 657 which only cost me $ 62.81 tobuy.
    Here is the website we use to get it all from,
    bit.ly/ShopBid
jhg

wtf is 4shared ? never used this site
- Anonymous
  
  Clearly a Cyberlocker service and it seems one of the best kept secrets.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
    
    The best kept secret:
    
    “What is a man”
  - Anonymous
    
    Indeed it was the only one in the list i did not know… weird.
  - Anonymous
    
    I’ve known it since it was a start-up actually. I didn’t know it was used that much for file sharing though, not more than the average upload service at least.
- 4shareduser
  
  4shared is a file hosting website that gives you over 15+ gigs of free storage with the option to buy more if needs be. It is presently a banned site on social media site facebook which has pissed millions of users off who share photos and other data related stuff via the facebook link system…
  
  I know cos i’m a pissed of user who has an account…
- Superdude_92
  
  I use 4shared to download jailbroken apps! :D
- Guest
  
  A very good site that went to shit recently (introduced unreasonable waiting times after 2 downloads).
http://www.facebook.com/samir.allioui Samir Allioui

Why are NZB sites not included ?
The “casual” downloader that leeches some files aprox once a week might like those fileockers, but the people who tend to download more frequently laugh at it.
- Randy_Lahey
  
  Yep, 8TB posted daily on usenet. Even a hummingbird couldn’t catch them at work.
- Anonymous
  
  Because they’re not in the top 10 maybe?
  - http://twitter.com/cgtdk Christoffer Thomsen
    
    Do you realize that your avatar is a picture of an evil murderer?
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OK7Y7PCSTJ27RCKZ2MGRSAYCTE NEIL
      
      Doesn’t look anything like President Bush
    - Anonymous
      
      Your avatar might infringe on someone’s copyright (mine does too)
      :p
    - http://twitter.com/cgtdk Christoffer Thomsen
      
      I don’t know why, but I cannot reply to the comments to my original comment so I will answer here instead.
      
      @Drag0nflamez: My avatar does not infringe on anyones copyright. My avatar is composed of two works. The danish flag in the background (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Flag_of_Denmark.svg) is in the public domain because it is ineligible for copyright and the V for Voluntary anarcho-capitalist symbol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VforVoluntary_normal.svg) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
    - http://www.facebook.com/calvin.a.miner Calvin Miner
      
      I don’t think fighting for independence from an imperialist power is “evil,” even if you have to go to war to do so.
    - ndmushroom
      
      Anarcho-capitalism, huh? I’m a Christianomuslim myself. I also like to dress like a lady on occasion.
      (Yes, I know it exists. But just like for many anarchists anarcho-capitalism is a joke while for you is the ideology of choice, you have to realize that your description of Che as an evil murderer is your own personal opinion, while for many others he was a hero, a revolutionary or some guy that looks good on a t-shirt. There’s no such thing as the absolute objective truth).
- Anonymous
  
  and if i could do nzb for free, there would be one more
  - Guest
    
    You can.
    
    Hint: just4today
johnwilson285

Um and why is The Pirate Bay on it that site is dead lol
- 98taacn
  
  6 The Pirate Bay Torrent index 23,000,000 650,000,000
  
  Really? with 23000000 unique monthly visitors and 650000000 monthly pageviews the site is dead? No comments there…
- Anonymous
  
  no offense but you are the one who is dead(again no offense meant), go there and see if its really dead as you claim.
- Anonymous
  
  TPB is the best, most reliable torrent site around with the highest quality, genuine files. It’s my go-to downloading destination.
  - Guest
    
    agreed totally there ! there cannot be a virus if you are downloading from there !
leech for jesus

To me I find the title of this page to be misleading. For me file-sharing sites would be P2P meaning your uploading and downloading with 100′s of people at the same time each sharing with each other. Cyberlockers are more direct download which isn’t anywhere near sharing compared to P2P.

People that use torrents usually share, people that use direct download sites such as cyberlockers, usenet, or xdcc, are leechers and are sharing nothing.
- Guest
  
  The users might not be sharing, but the site certainly is… And that’s what the subject is about…
  - 4shared user
    
    4sure the site shares, they farm out your files to other websites…some of my ‘product’ has had 275,678 hits [downloads] via some third party sites which is good for me ;) and good for the hosting site who gets advertising via the link…
leech for jesus

To me I find the title of this page to be misleading. For me file-sharing sites would be P2P meaning your uploading and downloading with 100′s of people at the same time each sharing with each other. Cyberlockers are more direct download which isn’t anywhere near sharing compared to P2P.

People that use torrents usually share, people that use direct download sites such as cyberlockers, usenet, or xdcc, are leechers and are sharing nothing.
Guest103

but you don’t really need sites to the same extent with modern trackerless bittorrent anyway.
Guest103

but you don’t really need sites to the same extent with modern trackerless bittorrent anyway.
http://gplus.to/onsamyj Andrew

You need 1 page to download movie from tracker, but 7/42/etc. pages to do the same from some filesharer – it’s not popularity, it’s inefficiency.
http://gplus.to/onsamyj Andrew

You need 1 page to download movie from tracker, but 7/42/etc. pages to do the same from some filesharer – it’s not popularity, it’s inefficiency.
johnwilson285

Alot of the files that get shared through torrents come from usenet,NZB sites in the first place away..
- Anonymous
  
  Sure. What you are using is the best, the quickest and always first.
- fagsubber
  
  You sir need to get some knowledge about how the piracy piramid works. :P
  And no usenet is not the first place moron. :>
  - http://www.facebook.com/calvin.a.miner Calvin Miner
    
    I’m curious now. What is the “first place?”
http://twitter.com/Mathew30 Mathew Lisett

anybody every notice that everytime they state “the best torrent sites” its always bloody poublic sites that are mentioend and never private sites.
- Guest
  
  Well, i really don’t know that… Never read such a story with the title “the best torrent sites”. This one at least is “Top 10 Largest File-Sharing Sites”… Anyways, good for you that have access to private trackers and don’t like to share…
  - http://twitter.com/Mathew30 Mathew Lisett
    
    better to be private than gain from public andget caught with your pants down. private sites give you added security tht you dont have all eyes on you and you will 90% of the time gain content before public sites
    - Anonymous
      
      Caught? It’s legal here. Because we did something with our vote.
- DarknezzMadnezz
  
  Private sites normally enjoy remaining private… like the secret societies… If everyone knew about them then they wouldn’t be very private… Just another public site like Demonoid.
- Anon
  
  How can a site no one has access to be a “good site” ?
  Stop talking about “open data” and “sharing” when the websites you claim to be the best ones are actually those that require invites (read: money) to get onto.
  
  The best restaurant I went to to is one where I was able to get what I was looking for (that is: good pizza in a pizzeria, sushi in a japanese, etc).
  The best torrent sites I visited offered me the possibility to download torrents.
  
  Public site : visit -> search -> download
  Private site : visit -> need invite -> Install IRC -> spend 3+ hours with a random guy on a channel to explain why you can’t reencode a MP3 in FLAC -> Get to your email client -> create an account -> login -> search ->download
  
  It reminds me of the whole : DVD with un-skippable anti piracy shit VS downloaded AVI thing.
  - Tamir
    
    Your example is pretty much… wrong.
    Public site: visit -> search, and sometimes you have to visit some more public sites in order to find what your need -> download, sometimes in a really bad speed.
    Private site: a friend gives you an invite (only once) -> register & login (only once) -> search -> download at max speed.
    - Dan
      
      yeah but you forgot the every 20mins “please donate”!!
  - Ghjg
    
    invite != money
    
    invite = you know how to use p2p & seed back what you download and are an active member of the p2p community. then it’s not hard to get your first invite, on the private site that’s about the content you are interested / involved in and then… :)
- Anonymous
  
  they are private sites, in that you keep your privacy using them. It’s not like you’ve got to sign up, and then have your activities logged, like a Registration Required site, is it.
  I’ve never understood why handing over lots of information to a tracker made it ‘private’.
  - johnwilson285
    
    Your not really that private in those sites yes your more private in them the public sites but not much…You can buy your way into iptorrents and some other sites your right they are allot faster than public sites less hit and runs ..A VPN or even better a seedbox makes you allot safer..No need to worry about ratio with a seedbox or some donate to keep the ratio up in sites..
    - Anonymous
      
      In case you’d forgotten, money = paper trail, plus intent.
    - johnwilson285
      
      BJonesTF you do not even have to use a real name to get a seedbox
    - johnwilson285
      
      BJonesTF you do not even have to use a real name to get a seedbox
  - Hjkhjk
    
    that is the problem with private sites imho: they log your past activity…
- Anonymous
  
  they are private sites, in that you keep your privacy using them. It’s not like you’ve got to sign up, and then have your activities logged, like a Registration Required site, is it.
  I’ve never understood why handing over lots of information to a tracker made it ‘private’.
- Anonymous
  
  they are private sites, in that you keep your privacy using them. It’s not like you’ve got to sign up, and then have your activities logged, like a Registration Required site, is it.
  I’ve never understood why handing over lots of information to a tracker made it ‘private’.
johnwilson285

users like Lifechanger and that have seen sense and left that site lol
PuffoBuffo

WOW! So 4shared is bigger than Rapidshare? And Megaupload? I can honestly say I didn’t expect this… good to know
- Guest
  
  Yeah, i think until some time ago rapidshare was the biggest, by a good distance. But since they started to remove a lot of files, and reduce the download speed of free users a lot they lost a lot of room…
http://profiles.google.com/orfetheo Orfeas Theofanis

Brave step from torrentfreak to announce the top 10 of illegal sites ;)
Also, I made a little list showing the average pageviews per unique visitor:

4shared: 45.45
Megaupload: 10.81
Mediafire: 9.7
Filestube: 8.23
Rapidshare: 12.17
The Pirate Bay: 28.26
Fileserve: 10
Hotfile: 6.87
Torrentz.eu: 22.66
Depositfiles: 7.85

I was trying to reach a conclusion from this list but I’m tired so I’ll leave it to you.
The basic idea is that, the higher the number, the most active the users are on the site (they visit it continuously and not once or twice).
- ndmushroom
  
  I very much doubt that 4shared is the cypberlocker of choice for illegal downloads. But I have to admit that whenever a friend tries to send me a large file (i.e. small-scale, one time only distribution) they usually send it via 4shared. Maybe these two are related (too much traffic on the more “pirate-popular” sites, therefore not very attractive for actual file transfers?)
Guest

I am pretty sure 4shared is not number 1.
- http://twitter.com/damiengiroud Damien Giroud
  
  I’m certain it is not indeed, maybe not even in the top10
- Anonymouse
  
  It may well be if there is a lot of legal content shared on it for social networks as someone mentioned earlier.
  
  these figures don’t cover illegal activity only.
- another guest
  
  yeah, because their speed is pants.
  oh well. because of TF here, they make a good target now instead of others LOL
Guest

The Pirate Bay – I love you!!!
Pingback: Top 10 Largest File-Sharing Sites | We R Pirates
Pingback: Top 10 Largest File-Sharing Sites – TorrentFreak | We R Pirates
johnwilson285

Get some luck here http://opentrackers.net/
http://goo.gl/bFts Needlez

I’m sorry to burst what bubble these cyberlocker sites are having at the expense of running over normal torrent indexing sites like tpb. Now while I’ll admit that they are nice and quickly catching up with sites like tpb and ISOhunt. I don’t know if I truly would say that any page that is a cyberlocker has as much pull as 4shared is claiming. It may get lots of people visiting it one time but time and time again where do most people go to get stuff TPB, ISOhunt, Demoniod, and others, rapidshare, hotfile, and other cyberlockers are liked by the community that doesn’t want to seed files back and forth. Which in turn I could see how these could be catching up, but the amount of trust between sites like TPB, ISOhunt, & Demoniod is much greater then that of the cyberlockers. Not to say that I don’t like them myself I do use 4share, and hotfile every now and again, but I don’t think the numbers in this report are valid.
http://goo.gl/bFts Needlez

I’m sorry to burst what bubble these cyberlocker sites are having at the expense of running over normal torrent indexing sites like tpb. Now while I’ll admit that they are nice and quickly catching up with sites like tpb and ISOhunt. I don’t know if I truly would say that any page that is a cyberlocker has as much pull as 4shared is claiming. It may get lots of people visiting it one time but time and time again where do most people go to get stuff TPB, ISOhunt, Demoniod, and others, rapidshare, hotfile, and other cyberlockers are liked by the community that doesn’t want to seed files back and forth. Which in turn I could see how these could be catching up, but the amount of trust between sites like TPB, ISOhunt, & Demoniod is much greater then that of the cyberlockers. Not to say that I don’t like them myself I do use 4share, and hotfile every now and again, but I don’t think the numbers in this report are valid.
puddipuddi

As far as I’m aware, you can’t use an rss feed to automagically grab your files from these “cyber lockers” or whatever they’re called. I don’t have anything against them, but for me it’s convenience. Speaking of convenience, it is probably more inconvenient for non-tech-savy to set up an rss feed in their torrent tracker. But for someone that takes the time to understand it, it becomes their main source of grabbing files (especially your tv shows :P )

The other reason I won’t stray away from torrents is because of the community. The community of a private tracker is half the fun, sometimes more than half. If I have a technical question, I’ll post in the forums or irc and get a one on one tutorial from a fellow torrenter rather than google it.

Again, if you torrent your shows, and you don’t use the rss, you’re doing it wrong. Ratio booster + tv shows ready to go when getting home from work. It’s easier tha cable.

PS. I feel like using file hosters bypasses the community and goes straight for the file. Maybe a lot of people like that. But I don’t. I also don’t like to pay to download, I’d rather donate to my private site voluntarily. Especially when I have direct communication with the people who are running the show, rather than chilling in their expensive mansion.
- Guest
  
  dude you can totally get rss for cyberlocker downloads….
  ever here of http://ev0.in/ ?
- Skeptikone
  
  i agree totally with everything said here.
  
  If you’re savvy enough and willing to co-operate, private torrent sites have everything you need. I used to use usenet for this, but now have a free alternative for TV/Music/Movies/whatever else.
  
  If you take the time to involve yourself in their communities, then, as said above, it can be really rewarding.
livingunderarock

4shared.com? This is the first time I’m hearing about this site. I had no idea cyberlocker sites were that popular – who knew…
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
  
  4Shared is pretty good. It doesn’t try to sugercoat the file, I doubt they follow the DMCA, and it seems to cater to the customers instead of going the Rapidshare route.
  
  What more can you ask for?
Pasttense

Doesn’t anyone have the energy to go through the entire list and list all the file sharing sites on it?
http://twitter.com/K1rkpad Dylan Kirkpatrick

Note, 4shared has been around a LONG time. It has also gained popularity in the app-sharing community.
http://twitter.com/K1rkpad Dylan Kirkpatrick

Also, REALLY surprised to see FilesTube. I had no idea it was so popular. I use maybe 5 of these 10 sites on a monthly basis (private trackers for the win!) and filestube is the most used for sure.

I would be interested to see how many visits websites like rlslog pull in.
- Guest
  
  Yeah, when I speak to “new” (recent / last years) users to the internet / file sharing thing, they know cyberlocker, they know streaming sites but they often don’t know bittorrent! And it takes some time for them to understand how does work a torrent client (and after a while they go back to streaming even if quality is crap!)
Pasttense

Dylan, you can use Alexa to give you some rough estimates:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rlslog.net
- http://twitter.com/K1rkpad Dylan Kirkpatrick
  
  Yep, that’s what I did. Thanks though!
Phil Landry

Never heard of 4shared
Pingback: P2PTalk » Top 10 Largest File-Sharing Sites
leech for jesus

@Anon your a complete tard. Since when does joining a private site mean you need money to be invited. Your explanation of how a private site works is complete fantasy.

Private site is easy 1, wait for open sign ups 2, know someone who is a member get an invite. Where do you get needing to install mIRC or one of the other IRC clients to join? As far as I know using irc isn’t a requirement of ANY private site.

I would much rather be a member of a private site that has rules then a public site that anyone can upload anything to. Lets just see how many viruses get spread around via public sites compared to private sites.

Anyone that obviously doesn’t understand pvt sites like you are leechers and probably get banned because you refuse to seed or at least keep a min ratio,
- http://twitter.com/K1rkpad Dylan Kirkpatrick
  
  Lol, my thoughts exactly. I just ignored him because obviously that person has had some bad experiences with private sites.
- Bruce Almighty
  
  I think Anon is talking about those elusive private sites like SCC and FTN which open sign ups once in a blue moon and require existing members to donate to receive an invite. Well, that’s an indirect way of saying to people who are trying to acquire membership that you must pay up an existing member to join us or better wait till you get old. Yes, I know there’s the IRC and all but the staffs are not always kind.
  
  As much as I am fan of file sharing, I really hate that as I myself had to wait patiently for many years before I got membership into some of the elite sites. I have membership at a lot of private trackers now and never gotten close to being banned on any of them because I always maintain great ratios. I never really paid for any of them except one and that too was a measly 1 buck.
  
  But needless to say there are many unscrupulous people who make a great deal of money selling invites at various sites to those who can’t wait forever to get an invite the proper way. I think this is something operators of private torrent sites need to address by opening sign ups often enough so that people don’t feel desperate enough to pay for invites but in hindsight I feel these site operators enjoy the donations too.
  
  Anyway enough of the ramblings. Its quite obvious though not everything is black and white.
- Guest
  
  Anyway, the one that ask you to pay are crappy sites.
  
  The good privgates sites are the ones where you _want_ to make a donation, no matter that it won’t change your ratio or anything, but because you want this site to stay alive.
  
  Buying ratio sucks. You want ratio? Upload!
  You have shitty speed / don’t want your computer to be on 24/7? seedbox!
Anonymous

I don’t think this list says much. The file sharing world has just expanded and diversified when people now have a hundred different ways to get their daily fix. This list should also not be confused with copyright infringement when many valid applications like Creative Commons would also share this bandwidth.

We may all love TPB but clearly it has aged and there are plenty of other BT sites around jostling to become the next big thing. Torrentz is a good search interface for this when people can still pick their favourite to download or second or third best should their favourite not have it.

Some people of course have valid reason to move away from BT such as Hadopi in France and speculative invoicing in the United States. So that shifts more people to Cyberlockers and the Usenet. That or VPN.

I love that Sharing is Caring logo above. That is so ripped.

Well file sharing goes on unstoppable. I think it says a lot when many of the top 100 websites are all about media sharing from those ten, through YouTube, then down to YouPorn. The World is sure changing.
bla blah

People here have failed to take notice that the 4shared is highly popular in S. Korea…
Bruce Almighty

Where the hell did 4shared come from? I rarely see 4shared links anywhere. Is it used by some special interest groups only or what?

I am also surprised to find depositfiles and Hotfile in the Top 10. Both are horrible sites. Depositfiles has something like 2 hour wait time between each file download. Hotfile pretty much suspended every uploader’s account once the lawsuit was upon them and I have never found a single live hotfile link since then.

However, Megaupload, Rapidshare, Fileserve and also Filesonic are quite good. I hold premium accounts on all four sites and needless to say they are easily the fastest and easiest way to download something for me. Its also infinitely easier to get old vintage stuffs and lesser known content from cyberlockers than torrents due to lack of seeds.

Another reason why cyberlockers have literally taken over the market is due to the security aspect. You can download away 24×7 without fearing receiving any letter from ISP. No anti-piracy organization can monitor or track your IP. It gives a certain peace of mind. Rapidshare also supports secure SSL downloads.

That’s not to say torrents are on the way out. Despite holding all these premium accounts, I still quite often download from torrents just because I like the idea of seeding back to the community.
No

why is rapidshare there. thas bs wupload has more then them by now
Pingback: Top 10 Largest File-Sharing Sites | p2p | DigitFreak
Anonymous

tinyurl.com/429zubp
Rikkenback Barnoz

There are plenty of free premium accounts online everyday. Any file-sharer that doesn’t use cyber lockers is an idiot. Torrents only go so far and cyber lockers carry you the rest of the way.
Foff

I really wished there was no articles about cyberlockers. Usenet was under the radar for a long time. Then paid indexers like newsbin made it a target. Torrents have been a target for a long time but it is very hard to legislate them out of existence without stepping all over free speech. I hope they don’t become a big target but one advantage is they have all the hardware so if they get attacked they can easily close shop and start a new cyberlocker they can never really be sued for infringement but only be forced to monitor links closer. What would kill them is laws that limited downloads of public folders thus if a link was good for only 10 downloads cyberlockers for us would becoe useless

Cyberlockers are good but can really go bad fast. Rapidshare was king for awhile the links were almost always good and the wait time even for free was minimal. Now sites that post links to cyberlockers don’t even want Rapidshare links. Hotfile links are useless now. Almost all are dead and if a hotfile link is posted it has a very short life span. Most sites don’t even bother with hotfile links. Megaupload was a flash in the pan. I don’t see many megaupload links on the sites I visit. I don’t see enough deposit file links to justify a premium account either. I won’t list what I think are the best right now because I hope they stay good for awhile. What I can say is that once a cyberlocker gets aggressive deleting links and closing accounts it is dead and guaranteed a new one will take it’s place. Right now there are three or four good ones that have replaced the ones that I have mentioned.

I am basing my statements on the english speaking users. It could very well be that sites like the ones above that have been threatened are aggressive in how they handle files for english. Hotfile which I think is based in hong kong probably doesn’t delete all the chinese links and is probably very popular over there. Since Rapidshare is still in business I assume that German posts are probably not deleted but I think their new way to charge premium accounts suck. They are now by far the most expensive cyberlocker to get a premium account for and since only a few old links that have not yet been deleted still exist they are not worth it to english speakers.

One good piece of advice I can give with cyberlockers is do not pay for more then 3 months membership at a time because a cyberlockers can fall out of favor very quickly and then your premium membership becomes a waste.
Sharjeel Sayed

Beginning in June 2009, even for private accounts (marked by users as ‘Unshared’), 4shared began to allow both big and indie record labels alike to search through individual, private user accounts and then file removal-claims for mp3, .wav, RealAudio, and other types of audio media. The aforementioned record labels are allowed to search both paying (Premium), and non-paying (Free) private 4shared User accounts, and ask for material to be deleted by 4shared.
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getoffayaweebassa

what? you mean i can download films and music for free on the internet?
*uck me! what will they think of next.
getoffayaweebassa

what? you mean i can download films and music for free on the internet?
*uck me! what will they think of next.
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Anonymous

It was a natural step, for 2 mayor reasons: First: the mayority of asimetric internet connections (Download speed >> Upload speed) so with bittorrent you have to stay and seed for a while to obtain a 1:1 ratio. Second: Right now it feels more safe to use ciberlockers, when you hear that “this guy” or “that internet sherif” grab and storage 25,000 ip adresses, for some tracker.

The order, however was unexpected, but even if its not entirely true, it can’t be all wrong. So china or rusia or india or mongolia prefer 4shared.
Dan

HAHAHAHAHA LOL try and stop all that mafiaa!! theres only one way, make internet illegal… which will never happen!!!! now go shove ur dino buisness model where the sun dosent shine!!!
Anonymous

Wow, are those guys for real? that is like totally insane dude

web-privacy.it.tc
http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

I hope we can see another TF report revealing why this sign-off to the article is true – how too please.
“We have to note though that several site owners in this list told TorrentFreak that the monthly pageviews and unique visitors are hugely underestimated. The Pirate Bay for example claims 1,500,000,000 pageviews, which is more than double the Google estimate. Other sites report similar ‘downgrades,’ so overall the ranking would still hold.”

After all, it wouldn’t be like to Google to lie or censor anything yeah?
Or if they are ‘tweaking the stats’, maybe they’re doing it to protect filesharers – lol.
http://goo.gl/bFts Needlez

If people are so afraid of getting there IP snatched up then pay for VPN or use magnet links which don’t use a tracker. And most stuff now is trackerless, and runs just fine. Seriously cyberlockers are ok for some files I can’t find every now and then, but 9/10 times I’ll use kickasstorrents, demoniod, TPB, & ISOhunt. not sure why Kickasstorrents doesn’t come up on that list they are surpassing TPB in my opinion.
- Confa
  
  If people are so afraid of getting there IP snatched up then pay for VPN or use magnet links which don’t use a tracker. And most stuff now is trackerless,
  and runs just fine.
  
  Magnet links only obviate the need for a central tracker. They don’t protect downloaders and uploaders when directly connecting to peers.
  
  VPns are rapidly becoming expensive.
  
  A warning to all looking out for a good VPN. Stay away from StrongVPN. They
  log and lie about their logging policy.
  
  Many VPNs are scammers.
  - Jack
    
    I’d avoid any US located VPN, I’d been considering StrongVPN but their small print says that they would hand your private data to the authorities if ordered to do so.
    With stuff like the Patriot Act and the way big US corps own judges, it’s best not to even do business with a US VPN.
  - Jack
    
    I’d avoid any US located VPN, I’d been considering StrongVPN but their small print says that they would hand your private data to the authorities if ordered to do so.
    With stuff like the Patriot Act and the way big US corps own judges, it’s best not to even do business with a US VPN.
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TheEmpathicEar

I wanted to give an example of my limited use of file lockers:

I am on Hiren’s [Boot CD] short list and get a list of links every so often via Email:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UNX70YDS&Hirens.BootCD.14.0.zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/3100667938/Hirens.BootCD.14.0.zip
http://www.zshare.net/download/9060975188ee063a/Hirens.BootCD.14.0.zip
http://www.2shared.com/file/wIcg4x-9/HirensBootCD140.html Pass: hb
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1073550134/Hirens.BootCD.14.0.zip

Usually, I upload this to TPB, h33t and Demonoid. But, of course, you can get it just about anywhere.

I have never paid much attention to file lockers with this exception. Can someone summarize the advantage for using file lockers vs Bittorrent? I understand that they sometimes have stuff that may be not be seeded very well as in Bittorrent.
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popat

really nice info about file-sharing on internet, thanks for sharing
http://www.techtica.com
popat

really nice info about file-sharing on internet, thanks for sharing
http://www.techtica.com
Tmc80tmc

This ebbs and flows.. you gotta understand that most internet users aren’t too bright about tweaking and installing a bittorrent client, then inserting a blocklist, etc. Point and clicking a website is low hanging fruit of the internet. That’s ALL of these websites have been the subject of lawsuits from the copyright industry. However, after losing a few rounds, they’ve come back strong winnig a few rounds because many of the larger companies such as Apple and Google have started to give these sites safe harbor by starting their own “cyber locker services” and won’t be bullied by the copyright lawyer happy fools. ** Also, up until now, it’s only been convenient to download “SMALLISH” files from these web services.. that could end up chaging as the file size capacity increases to about 4.7 gb vs a few hundre megs.
- TheEmpathicEar
  
  Thx. I use uTorrent and a VPN in order to keep myself “safe”. But, this probably seems “extreme” to many folks.
- TheEmpathicEar
  
  Thx. I use uTorrent and a VPN in order to keep myself “safe”. But, this probably seems “extreme” to many folks.
Anonymous

Ahh, I’ll stick to my private torrent site, and demonoid for others. Thanks.

File Lockers pose way too many threats.
- TheEmpathicEar
  
  And, R U going to invite us to your “private” site?
http://www.mtxm.com Admin

Yep, 8TB posted daily on usenet.
Guest

Ahh, I’ll stick to my private torrent site, and demonoid for others. Thanks.

File Lockers pose way too many threats.

Since many if not most private trackers ban VPNs and IP masking services, and log personally sensitive data about uploaders, it’s doubtful if private trackers are more secure than cyberlockers.

A cyberlocker with a good VPN – ideally with headquarter in another jurisdiction is virtually as secure as a good seedbox.

If a user from country a uploads to a cyberlocker in country b, and proxies all trafick through country c, there is a good chance that he’ll stay safe.

There is also the question of differentiating the risk to uploaders from the risk to downloaders.

It’s likely that most cyberlockers have no interest in logging downloader IPs, but most if not all reserve the right to log the IPs of uploaders.

Other factors important to user security include the period of data retention at the user’s ISP, VPN service and proxy service and the technical possibility and feasibility of correlating all the provider logs to a degree likely to prove the user guilty in a civil or criminal case.

In theory, you could make evidence correlation very uneconomic simply by chaining trafick through different VPN services in addition to your ISP.

ISP >VPN1 >VPN2 >cyberlocker
or

Neighbor’s Open WIFI >VPN1 >VPN2 >cyberlocker

From a data retention perspective using a cyberlocker is more secure than peer-to-peer sharing, simply for the reason that the end user’s IP is only distributed to one possible point of failure.
vato76

Great. Now post what we really wanna see, the top 10 websites for file-sharing sites.
markie

What about Megashares?
markie

What about Megashares?
Universal Solider

There are virtually no options to search stuff on cyberlockers whereas you can search stuff on TPB and Torrentz. You need to know the URL of the file you want to download from a cyberlocker.

Hope TF publishes a list of best sites / forums from where we can grab stuff to download from cyberlocker. Long time back I used Katz, but now am totally into torrents.
- WhoMe
  
  I totally agree, seedboxes in BT swarms pretty much killed any incentive for the ordinary person with a 1 Mbps (and below) upload speed to seed. It now takes ages to seed to a 1:1 ratio. I mean, the intention is there to share but things are getting harder for really large files. You have to resort to either perpetual seeding, where you seed for ridiculously long periods to earn bonus seeding points (which can be converted to upload credit) or strategic seeding, where you seed a popular file, which you might not even be remotely interested in downloading in the first place, just to increase the probability of connecting to leechers. I mean at the end of the day, it would be nice to be able to turn off the PC (and help reduce your carbon footprint) than to keep it running for weeks to meet your ratio requirement. On top of this, is the ever increasing threat of being sued for filesharing. Filehosting sites easily address these concerns. Of course, not all filehosting sites are created equal. Sites like Mediafire allow free users to download multiple files simultaneously at their full line speed using DL managers. Rapidshare and Megaupload have invested heavily on their infrastructure and have good download speeds. Other filehosting sites like Fileserve and Depositfiles are there to cater to unscrupulous uploaders out to make money out of pirated files through their rewards program.
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http://twitter.com/GoAllMad AllMad.org Rants

4Shared? Seriously. That site is horrible, and ugly, and in all my life of downloading movies, music, TV shows, software, etc., by the hundreds per month, I’ve only seen a few 4Shared links. Most I see now are Filesonic and Fileserver it seems.
Pentrio

Binsearch<3
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http://www.downloadr.in Vishnu

What about filesonic and wupload ?
SCOTTW126

Watch out for fileserve they like to rip off their customers. I joined their “subscription plan” at the 45 days for the price of 30 days. 30 days later they billed my paypal account for another 30 days.NOT “45 days” later. I complained to paypal but they said I must work out the problem with Fileserve. True crudbrains they must have an under the table agreement with paypal. Buyer beware. Also filespart and filecrop work very as metasearch services when looking for your favorite stuff in the cyberlocker services. Having used both Fileserve & Filesonic I can truly say Filesonic is much better than Fileserve …..less dead links, higher quality product (by and large). Rapidshare has ALOT of stuff and I don’t think they respond all too urgently to Mafiaa takedown notices. good luck and by the way ….Jack Murdock sucks! HA-HA!
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Lotta

I feel proud to say that I knew about or have at least been to every of the listed Cyberlocker sites :)
Lotta

I feel proud to say that I knew about or have at least been to every of the listed Cyberlocker sites :)
Lotta

I feel proud to say that I knew about or have at least been to every of the listed Cyberlocker sites :)
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Mike Rod

vLooking for a seebox? or perhaps wanting to move to a new place cause your current provider is charging too much? Check out Pulsed media…

http://pulsedmedia.com/clients/aff.php?aff=006

They have a ton of different options. Both 100mbps and 1gbps servers. And, they dont get all their servers from OVH like a lot of resellers, they get servers from many different providers to always have the best and fastest speeds. Currently they have a 1TB HDD, 2GB ram server for only 21.95€/Mo, unmanaged! And with your choice of OS!

They also have a starter version with 70GB HDD, 250MB Ram unmetered for only 11USD a month as well as a 8TB hdd, 8gb ram server for 150 USD a month!

Check them out…

http://pulsedmedia.com/clients/aff.php?aff=006
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Tunnelforce1

this is a site which keeps track of Privat torrent trackers which are currently open for registration.
btracs.com
has quite a few good ones listed
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