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uTorrent ‘Web’ Opens Up to the Public

BitTorrent Inc. has opened up the ‘web’ feature of uTorrent Falcon to the public today after having tested it for several months in invite only mode. The Falcon release is one of uTorrent’s new projects that allow users to stream torrents and access their downloads from anywhere through a simple web interface.

falconThis year, the uTorrent development team has made more visible improvements than ever before. In an attempt to be more than just a standard BitTorrent client several new projects were started.

Together with Griffin and Pheon, the Falcon project is part of the recently announced uTorrent Labs. With Labs the development team is giving users early access to their latest projects, hoping to get useful feedback from the community.

The Falcon release is one of the main pillars for uTorrent’s future. Among other things, it allows users to access their downloads from anywhere through a secure web interface. Another new feature is that it allows users to stream videos so they can start watching before the download has fully finished,

The web interface of the Falcon project has been invite only since the start of the year, but today BitTorrent Inc. decided that the time was right to open it up to the public. Users can create an account and try it out, privacy and security guaranteed by BitTorrent Inc.

Aside from the features that are currently implemented, uTorrent has other big plans still in the pipeline for the new client and the web interface. Among other things, the Falcon release is expected to make it easier for users to find torrents.

The uTorrent team didn’t want to comment on how such torrent search capabilities will be integrated, but Simon Morris has stated that they are working on “better ability for torrent sites to promote content or search within the client.”

When we asked if this means that uTorrent will come with a built-in torrent search engine, Morris said that they are more interested in “APIs rather than bloating the uTorrent user experience.” We’ll see what this means in the months to come.

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  • Man

    I think this is a very good thing.

  • e m ule

    kudos

  • Carl

    This is what we’ve all been waiting for thank you utorrent u rock our world, u give us awesome download speedS and everything we could wish for, the future of bittorent will soon evolve into something spectacular!

  • anonymous

    good work utorrent. just hope that this doesn’t increase the interest shown by unwanted parties. be a shame if the next step from the copyright industries was to start shutting down or restricting the capabilities and/or use of certain pieces of software. they are getting away with doing everything they want atm. dont see why software cant go on to their ‘to do’ list for court actions.

  • Soro

    I don’t trust people that guarantee your security.

  • Caliburn

    Something tells me this will be in the cross hairs of the tyrants soon.

  • piggy buni

    “better ability for torrent sites to promote content or search within the client.”

    aka Ads!

  • Anonymous

    “privacy and security guaranteed by BitTorrent Inc.”

    haha, yeh, of course i’d trust them

  • WLS

    Computers, routers, switches, operating systems, apps, and the Internet all facilitate copyright infringement and should be outlawed.

    JK ;)

  • your son

    bitch to get goin on iphone. any secrets?

  • regular joe

    “The uTorrent team didn’t want to comment on how such torrent search capabilities will be integrated”

    Any ‘integrated’ search feature could be used for tracking

  • this section is Null and void

    “The Falcon release is one of the main pillars for uTorrent’s future. Among other things, it allows users to access their downloads from anywhere through a secure web interface. Another new feature is that it allows users to stream videos so they can start watching before the download has fully finished”

    Great so were’s the falcon page to set-up and use one to many multicast streaming torrents and viewing , Now that’s real innovation, Oh wait falcon doesn’t Do that.

  • micoz

    utorrent is and will be the new leading power in matter of downloading

    from all peoples on the earth aprox 30% of them are using torrent files instead ~5% of rapidshare,hotfile,etc crap

  • Whatever

    So you cannot even connect to your own uTorrent client directly (via IP adres and secure connection) but it must go via the Bittorrent inc website who guarantees security ?

    It’s just a matter of time until the MAFIAA buys Bittorrent inc but the higher staff only receives a huge bag of money if the negotiations stay secret (when TF finds out it will be too late).

    (Well, i can be wrong but not going to investigate now, don’t need it at the moment)

  • gnusay
  • gnusay

    oops!

    what? isn’t it already available with Transmission?!
    http://www.transmissionbt.com/

    sreen-shot: http://www.transmissionbt.com/images/screenshots/Clutch-Large.jpg

    ???

  • Taylor

    I like uTorrent but I hope its not becoming the next Vuze, that thing is slow and resource heavy. Hopefully when these features come to full release uTorrent will offer a lite version that doesn’t have the bells and whistles.

  • Lucky Man

    @5
    i agreed

  • Nate

    If you don’t want to use the falcon site, you can still connect directly to your computer through the Web UI. They’re not removing any functionality through alpha.

    Of course, lots of us couldn’t use the Web UI due to not having access to our routers (no port fowarding), so for us this update is an extremely welcome relief.

  • Torin050

    @5 Okay then you don’t trust many, eh? Such as CNET(pretty much all legit download sites), Adobe(and many software distributers), tons of security program)… Etc. The list just goes on, funny thing is I’m almost 100% certain you’re using Adobe products right now. :) If you don’t trust BitTorrent/uTorrent then don’t use their products, and if you don’t, then you’re really missing out. lol

    @15/16 uTorrent is better. I’d rather use Vuze/Azures >.>

    At any rate, I’m glad BitTorrent has finally got this out of Beta, and now that it is Falcon can move on to do even more in the future hopefully. :)

  • RIAAtarded

    The current webui is fine trust your security to a 3rd party has all kinds of bad implications. This just allows the not tech savvy to be instantly connected. Take the time to set up a DDNS and control your own setup rather then letting utorrent do it for you. You have no idea what info is being collect or stored for how long. No idea who can access it or lord forbid get turned over to.

  • znix

    No way I would trust them to keep my data private. All it takes is a warrant.

  • Ninja

    This torrent search capability thing might be the beginning of decentralized torrent search? If by any chance bittorrent goes completely “DHT” using trackers and indexers only as means to give better stability to the cloud then MAFIAA will be completely utterly screwed.

    But then again, they dug their own graves – as said ad nauseam the more they tightened the grip on file sharing the more it developed to get away from it.

    We are yet to see MAFIAA’s greatest failure =)

  • abel629

    @21 – I understand your caution, and agree to a point, but the security on offer does seem to be pretty solid – see https://falcon.utorrent.com/srp/privacy – they encrypt everything in your browser and it only gets unencrypted at your client – there’s nothing interesting for the server to collect – you can confirm this pretty easily with wireshark

  • anonymous

    dont really understand this stuff. so does this mean that no one can see who is downloading what torrent from where? is it going to do away with the need for VPNs or similar? will IFPI, MAFIAA etc be well and truely scuppered by this, keeping torrent users safe or not? if successful, how long for? if it works, in no way will any of the copyright groups allow this to go unchallenged in court and away we go again! lack of knowledge on the part of the judges coupled with the deep pockets of the copyright groups, being partially emptied in certain directions, will result in the situations seen already, where it is ok to run sites like rapidshare, host files and make money, but not alright to run torrent sites, when not hosting files and not making money. how weird is that?

  • Anonymous

    subluksacije zglobova vilice

  • Anon

    Everything should be encrypted even the URL, password. The only thing uTorrent can se is that a torrentfile has been added, they can´t see anything else. Password and URL are encrypted and sent back to your uTorrent client as far as I understand it.

    Though glitches and stuff may occur since it is still in alpha, let´s wait a few months when it´s stable.

  • dncholas

    I’m a little hesitant about giving the largest torrent client company my exact information so they control my privacy and security and personal info. I say stick with using a VPN service and possibly try this out as a 2nd line of defense but not if it requires my real details. Going to check into it.

  • hms-one

    So the most popular closed source client is finally getting a webUI, and it requires you to set up an account with the company. *snicker

  • seedbox hoster

    I tried posting a detailed review and explanation about this but torrentfreak seems to reject my post because it’s too long.

  • seedbox hoster

    http://pastebay.com/100098

    There is a link to what I tried to say.

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  • Lothor The Evil

    Off topic: Woot.
    On topic: Double Woot.

  • lksd

    All the best to people using this feature. The more of you the better, MPAA will have target group to focus on.

  • Harold Feit, Depthstrike Entertainment

    “So the most popular closed source client is finally getting a webUI, and it requires you to set up an account with the company. *snicker
    ”

    Ok, so what cave have you just crawled out of? uTorrent has had a webui that doesn’t require an account with the company FOR OVER FOUR YEARS!

    Seriously. Get your facts straight before you attempt to troll.

  • Jesus with shaved balls

    Seems kinda useless to me. They should invent a free torrent application that is 100% anonymous. That’s what we need right now!

  • Anonymous

    @35: Sure it’s needed, but its impossible. The peers in the swarm need to know your IP to connect to you/you to them.

  • Sean.

    I could already check my uTorrent downloads(and have full access of my computer by using LogMeIn.

    It says its a trial, but it doesnt do anything when the trial expires and you can keep using it.
    Alternatively, you can probably torrent it.

    Basicly it gives you full access to your computer as if you were there, including bring it out of standby.
    I belive it’s encrypted as well.

    And doesn’t uTorrent already have a torrent search feature?
    You know… the one that’s been with uTorrent since the beggining of man?
    You can configure it to use any search engine online. I remember when it used to have Mininova and TPB as defaults.

    Or is this a torrent search of torrents in your local swarm?

  • Firon

    The feature is designed to make it impossible for us to capture traffic on the servers and hand it over to the authorities (or decrypt it for our own purposes).
    Password handshaking is done between your browser and the client with the secure remote password protocol ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_remote_password_protocol ) and all data is encrypted with AES-128. Furthermore, the URLs are encrypted, with almost every parameter that leaks user-identifiable info moved into the POST body (get parameters can’t be encrypted).

    And to stop a passive sniffer, the actual http connection between you and the server is SSL, so it’ll prevent someone from modifying or sniffing even that. The server itself is basically a dumb proxy, it just shuffles data from your browser to the client, and it has no way of decrypting anything (it has no passwords, no hashes, nada).

    Seriously, read the privacy page. https://falcon.utorrent.com/srp/privacy
    The browser side is all JS, so you can see exactly what is being done.

  • Firon

    And if you still don’t trust it, the old WebUI is still available, and has been for years. Y’know, the one served up by µTorrent directly.
    It’s not going to be removed.

  • shell

    Sorry uTorrent team, your amazing but i still don’t trust you >_>.
    We are, after all, pirates.

  • anonymous

    so the bottom line is, will it stop people from being spyed on by the RIAA, MAFIAA, BPI etc and prevent them from being taken to court or being disconnected? if so, great. if not, then what is the point? i assume that vpn is still basically the only way to gain privacy atm?

  • Anonymous

    ah, they say it’s safe so yeh, i’ll believe that

    think i’ll stick with the perfectly good webui that’s been there for years

  • GODFREY BROWNPANTS

    IT’S A TRAP !!!

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  • nothx

    Sorry but we all know that BitTorrent Inc was bought a while back by some copyright enforcers company. I wouldn’t trust them at all. Whoever said blabla don’t trust adobe or Cnet is BS. It’s irrevelant. Adobe is not bittorrentINC. Why you think people are still on utorrent v1.8 and under? Because they sniff your packets. Is utorrent opensource? No. uTP might be but that’s about it.

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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