Video: How People Are Tracked Using BitTorrent
Written by enigmax on January 14, 2008Being tracked by anti-piracy organizations and receiving infringement notices on file-sharing networks is becoming more common. A security project manager has just released a short video showing how it’s done.
A common question from BitTorrent users is how anti-p2p outfits trace and trace file-sharers in order to send infringement notices. We’ve reported on one technique in the past and now, thanks to Dan Morrill, a Security Project Manager with VMC Consulting in Redmond Washington, we have a short video illustrating another basic technique which is easy to understand.
Dan’s example involves him downloading a large file with the popular Azureus client, while giving a commentary on the various types of information offered by the client, a brief overview of how BitTorrent works, how it’s possible to be tracked and how the gathered information could be processed. He also touches on anonymity and the use of blocklists.
A popular piece of IP blocking software is Peerguardian, which can be downloaded at Phoenix Labs, with the blocklists available from Bluetack. Users seeking anonymity can achieve this by using a free proxy server but in reality, most don’t offer performance anywhere near good enough for BitTorrent. VPN services such as VPNTunnel aren’t free but they’re reliable and generally protect users from the techniques shown in the video.
Just one criticism; Dan states towards the end of the video that if you don’t use blocklists you are almost guaranteed to be ‘nabbed’. The majority of people don’t use blocklists and the majority of those are not getting ‘nabbed’.
Indeed, most of the cases we hear of from the United States are people who don’t use BitTorrent at all. On the other hand, blocklists mostly offer pseudo-security, since there’s no guarantee that you are not tracked while using them.
Previously: TorrentFreak Interviews a Lawyer Defending 500 File-Sharers
Next: MediaDefender Hacker Speaks Out
89 Responses
Where is my chocolate?
Peer Guardian II is a bag o’ shite……its a placebo and does as much harm as good.
Anyone that thinks otherwise is a complete Gimp and commonly known as a gullible plonker!
so to track people downloading a torrent, you need a bittorrent client and then look at the console to see the list IPs downloading the file. NO FREAKING WAY?!
Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop Woop
VMC is an absolute JOKE of a company in the IT sector
I don’t get why this is news? I mean, you look at your peers, you see their IPs, you right them down on a piece of paper and you go hunt them down. It’s like looking for a house burglar, when you know he is staying at his momma’s house and you know the address.
We all know that we rely on odds, to escape the federales while we download to our heart’s content! Like buying weed! “They just want the big guys’, lil’ guys like me get left alone, and if not we just get warned…”
At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
:)
Whats the difference between a dead baby and a Cadillac? There isn’t a Cadillac in my garage.
yarrrr!!! bring it on MAfIAA lackeys!!!
#2 Although PG2 is not the holy grail of p2p protection, it is protection none the less. Of course if you want maximum protectio, rip out your lan cable, but as thats not an option, using PG2 or ipfilter.dat or safepeer, or nipfilter is better than doing nothing at all. Theres an article right here on TF that shows using a blocklist of some sort is indeed of benefit.
last time i checked peerguardian didnt work on vista 64… any change?… alternatives to peerguardian?
I use vista 64, heres what i do: download a blocklist from bluetack, rename the rar file to ipfilter and insert it into your client. for utorrent you place the file in by opening run command and typing %appdata%\uTorrent. put the ipfilter file in there and its done. (utorrent has “use ipfilter=true” set as default). hope this helps.
use peerguardian under linux with ipblock (iplist)
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=198679
My IP is f*ck MPA.AIF.PIR.IAA
Blocklists aren’t for protection (not so for a long time anyway).
They are for keeping out malicious clients, trying to send bad data or slow down the spreading of files.
As a SIDE EFFECT on occasion you also block access to/from snooping anti-p2p companies.
But thats it.
Snooping doesn’t require high bandwidth connections. You could even use an analog modem.
Better rely on some thoughts on what you are downloading and where to get it from BEFORE you start doing it.
indeed qm. private trackers anyone?
Private trackers are not a guarentee of safety. They too have thier share of anti p2p lurkers. Perhaps less in the way of bad peers, but not immune to the **aa’s and their ilk.
what about TOR?
The database they create, they cant use. What about dynamic IP-adress ;)
An I use Relakks, so I can Relaxx :D
[quote]Better rely on some thoughts on what you are downloading and where to get it from BEFORE you start doing it.[/quote] By #14 qm2003
You’re right.
block lists are a joke… if they want to trace you why dont they just hire a temp broadband with a new IP, or get dialup, or use VPN them self… to think that all their attacks on downloaders are done on their corporate IP is naive surely?
No way to know 4 sure there aren’t copyright guys is there ?
Or do you have a system? Last I checked anti-p2p organizations use private ip’s.
Well I guess he haven’t thought about shared IPs :-D
I dont think companies and anti-p2p can use information that you gather from the logger.
I mean if they can track me down because of this method than who is to say that i can’t do the same to them.
if i charged for downloading the file because my ip is registered there than anti-p2p companies are doing it ilegal as well.
Doesn’t this mean they have to download illegal stuff themselves? :)
I’m attempting to log all traffic in and out of the RIAA offices. Anyone else want to help in this project?
I need a log of all traffic, ip addresses etc. Just incase there’s any thing illegal going on.
They shouldn’t mind me doing this now should they, since they do this to us all?
@24, yep, they are breaking the law too, but some companies use clients that don’t download or upload any real data. This is one of the least informative videos I have ever seen, throwing in a bunch of computer vocab to act smart lol.
Most of the anti p2p company’s have “intellectual rights” to the items there spying on so you cant technically steal which you already own.
I use PG2 even though i know it makes hardly any difference, but it still offers than bit of protection in a naive way.
As people are saying they can use the same ways we use to hide to try and find us, they will go for the easy targets, and to the guy that said they go after the big guys not the little people, just look at case history, there all just normal people with no computer knowledge downloading music and movies or public trackers.
@24:
[quote comment="263336"]Doesn’t this mean they have to download illegal stuff themselves? :)[/quote]
They already own their own material.
I’m pretty sure that they can download their own stuff without going to court.
Are you going to sue them for downloading their own movie/music?
What are your charges?
Them downloading their infringed copyrighted material from you?
that is the gayest voice i’ve ever heard
That video sucked. Anyone who uses a bit torrent client knows the IP addresses of the peers connected to it. So what else is new?
This is what Media-defender offers to their clients (from website):
MediaDefender uses a range of non-invasive technological countermeasures employed on P2P networks to frustrate users’ attempts to steal/trade copyrighted content. We have a proven track record of adapting to challenges and successfully protecting our customers as new technologies and networks arise.
Decoying and Spoofing are the most commonly known techniques that we employ. We send blank files and data noise that look exactly like a real response to an initiated search requests for a particular title. Pirated files will no doubt be on the networks, but with our protection applied it would be easier to find a needle in a hay stack than a real file amongst our countermeasures.
In addition to anti-piracy solutions, MediaDefender also offers a Leak Alert service. Our industry leading Leak Team scours Newsgroups, Usenet, and BitTorrent sites to see what cracked/pirated content has most recently leaked. Upon discovery, MediaDefender will download the leak and either send it or provide a secure ftp login for customers to sample the pirated material.
Here we go again.
1) Blocklists do not offer protection.
So what MD can’t use their corporate IP to track you, they just rent blocks of IPs from ISPs around the world.
All blocklists do is block legitimate IPs from joining swarms.
2) There is nothing illegal about downloading or uploading anything to which you have been given the right to do so by the copyright holder.
Although MD and others do not own the material, they are given these rights as part of their service contract.
3) There is nothing illegal about reading your IP from a tracker. You published your IP when you decided to download the torrent.
If you put up a billboard ad to sell crack, you can’t complain if the police read it.
4) A truly private tracker can offer protection. “Private” trackers with 100K members and open signups once a week are not private at all, but semi public.
If you know everybody on the tracker, it makes it real hard for the mafiaa to get in. A lot of people are starting to run their own private places just for friends.
5) @#25, logging all traffic in and out is not anything like what they are doing.
When you download, you connect to other peers and tell them things like how much you have downloaded, what pieces you have, what pieces you have just been given etc.
Each and every client then logs this information to be able to do its job. If they didn’t, bittorrent would become very inefficient.
In short, the information they log is part of their “conversation” with you and can be legally recorded. Logging all data flowing in and out of someone elses machine would involve electronic eavesdropping, and would be illegal.
@ #2- STFU moron. You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about. PG and the blocklists from Bluetack work just fine. Anyone not using them is just asking for trouble. Is it perfect and guaranteed? No, of course not. But to not use a simple tool that removes 95% of the problem just because it’s not 100% perfect in all ways is stupid, as is telling other noobs not to use it.
@ #33- “1) Blocklists do not offer protection.
So what MD can’t use their corporate IP to track you, they just rent blocks of IPs from ISPs around the world.
All blocklists do is block legitimate IPs from joining swarms.”
Here we go again, with the blind leading the blind. Or more accurately, the clueless and misinformed.
“Blocklists do not offer protection”
Bullshit. They offer quite wide-ranging protection from known bad apples.
“So what MD can’t use their corporate IP to track you, they just rent blocks of IPs from ISPs around the world.”
They could, but they generally DON’T.
Why? Because they already have a target rich environment where the majority do not use IP blocking. Why jump through extra hoops when they already have more fish in the barrel than they can shoot?
“All blocklists do is block legitimate IPs from joining swarms.”
LMAO! How legitimate can they be if they’re on a blocklist? 99.9999% of the time, there is a very good reason why a certain IP has been added to the blocklist.
And finally, any thinking person would have to ponder just who would benefit the most by7 posting on forums about how blocklists don’t work, blocklists are useless, blocklists won’t protect you, etc.
Hmm, who could these naysayers be? Why are they so-o-o intent on dissuading people from using PG and blocklists? Perhaps, just perhaps, these asshats have the best interests of a certain industry on their agenda rather than the best interests of filesharers.
(*Cough*MPAA*Cough*. *Cough*RIAA*Cough,Cough*) :P
peerguardian ?
l can see the peers
country,ip,%,upspeed/downspeed lalalalalala in youtorrent. so it isnt guarding peers in the swarm is it.
why it has to show this feature is crazy ! why can’t they hide or scramble that shit !
hell l can even go to http://webtools.live2support.com/misc_locate_ip_address.php
Location of User Country, State & City by IP address
and find what city those guys in the swarm are in.
l used my ip to see if it could find me and it can’t find my town/city.
maybe because l always used pg ? maybe not ? l dunno !
there are or must be soon ultra secret sites on the net that bin files,iso etc are dumped, where none of us know where yet.maybe oneday l will start a site like this .but maybe you might never find it ever !
The Media companies are breaking the law and should be punished.
If several computers network together, whatever they do , illegal or not, is still subject to privacy laws and should be protected from the illegal eavesdropping from these companies.
The government should be protecting it’s citizens from these criminal companies.
Going without a blocklist is akin to going without your pants on buddy!
The problems with blocklists is that they do not work on BitTorrent. The only thing the blocklist will do is to make you protected from direct connections from the IP’s in question. However since your Ip and your presence as a leecher/seeder will be reported to all the others in the swarm by the other peers involved. They will be able to see you just fine.
In order for blocklists to work they need to be implemented at tracker level or used by 100% of teh peers in a swarm and that aint gonna happen.
Blocklists are useless!
So they can see my ip in the swarm? So what, with the blocklist they get no response on what I have, all the file / part of / requesting it or seeding .
Peerguardian works just fine. They can still see you, but wouldn’t have enough to charge you with anything.
someone should use that pg list for more than blocking if you get my drift.
Ive always supported using PG2… I consider it essential… Good Job TorrentFreak.. Im glad I visually get to see how\what is going on etc..
[quote]
Just one criticism; Dan states towards the end of the video that if you don’t use blocklists you are almost guaranteed to be ‘nabbed’. The majority of people don’t use blocklists and the majority of those are not getting ‘nabbed’.
[/quote]
True. I think there is a fundamental flaw in blocklists like Peer Guardian. Basically these organizations track you down by IP Address, that’s how they identify you. When one is making a connection, one has to know WHO to connect to in the first place. Now, the flaw lies in that blocklists block the connection after it has tried to take place, so by then, both computers already have each other’s IP Addresses, and are simply blocking the connection, but the IP Address is already known. I don’t know if that makes any sense. It will help in that you aren’t having any interaction (Sharing with) these organizations, but they know your IP regardless.
I use Peer Guardian to TRY and get an idea of the volume of anti-P2P traffic on a specific torrent, but in no way to I see it as any type of protection. Who knows, maybe if the connection keeps being refused to these organizations, they just ignore them, but we can’t be sure of this. So whenever I start up a torrent, I run Peer Guardian to see just how many people are ’snitching’ on the torrent, and if there are too many then I look elsewhere. And even this isn’t 100% accurate, as these lists don’t possibly contain every single IP address available to these organizations. For example, what is stopping them from just using a house connection with a dynamic IP which isn’t known by these block lists?
i thought that the purpose of blocklists like pg2 wasn’t to prevent anti-p2p groups from seeing you, but to prevent them from being able to directly connect and download the material in question, necessary evidence for criminal charges?
PeerGaurdian and the like aren’t really protecting you. MD will see your IP in the list anyway, it’s connecting directly to PG users that fails. But they don’t need more ‘proof’ than that. They will just make stuff up so you’re ‘guilty’.
And that movie told me a lot of new things. [/sarcasm]
I’m more interested in how they get the list of all peers in the swarm.
I download from 40.000 peer torrents almost every week, my client however only connects to, like, 200 peers(?). That’s a 0.5% chance that I’m in that swarm…
So unless you get the list of all the peers in the swarm, I’m not likely to get ‘nabbed’.
People stop being paranoid
They maybe able to track a few people but if billions of people
It is a complete waste of precious time.
;)
Remember it is just scare tactics
The paper tiger is as harmless as a bug if you ignore it…
its fear that they are preying on.
bullies = bark but no bite
get it???
The video is already gone, don’t we have a better video hosting service? http://www.snotr.com from mininova maybe?
I had a horrible dream last night, it was all about file sharing and possible consequences of it. I think the media industry will not stop until we’re either in a complete surveillance society or they’re bankrupt. We cannot expect any insight from them.
I too kinda expected more from the video , there was nothing there i hadn`t already known . There`ve been some valid points insofar , but the key issue here imo is to bear in mind copyright enforcers are corporate entities through and through . Their primary aim goes along the maximum output minimum input lines , they`re only interested in exchanging a certain amount of data with the offender precisely to turn peers into one . If your blocklist staves them off , you`re off the hook . It`s as simple as that . Of course they`ll log your ip as being part of the swarm , but that`s of little legal relevance , if any . My point is blocklists are truly useful to the extent to which they can filter out every malicious ip on the swarm , which is highly unlikely in case of , say , zero day thousands-of-peers blockbuster releases . And then should you get zeroed in on , it becomes a case of your ISP either playing along or standing their ground , that`s what makes it or breaks it for p2p infringers ultimately .
[quote comment="263192"]Peer Guardian II is a bag o’ shite……its a placebo and does as much harm as good.
Anyone that thinks otherwise is a complete Gimp and commonly known as a gullible plonker![/quote]
Noob
whats news in the video?
would guess this is the way…
what kills me about this whole file sharing topic is that there does not seem to be an agreement on anything when it comes to technical questions.
is there really no reliable,understandable source anywhere,book or website,to look these things up?
this insecurity is probably the strongest weapon of the mds.
[quote comment="263313"]I dont think companies and anti-p2p can use information that you gather from the logger.
I mean if they can track me down because of this method than who is to say that i can’t do the same to them.
if i charged for downloading the file because my ip is registered there than anti-p2p companies are doing it ilegal as well.[/quote]
not true. anti-P2P companies get the owners consent to download said material. one only infringes copyright when they neither own nor have proper consent to acquire said product(IIRC :-) )
[quote comment="263352"]@24, yep, they are breaking the law too, but some companies use clients that don’t download or upload any real data. This is one of the least informative videos I have ever seen, throwing in a bunch of computer vocab to act smart lol.[/quote]
ah i didn’t think of the fact that if they’re downloading, they’re also seeding which in turn means they’re distributing copyrighted material
[quote comment="263480"]peerguardian ?
l can see the peers
country,ip,%,upspeed/downspeed lalalalalala in youtorrent. so it isnt guarding peers in the swarm is it.
why it has to show this feature is crazy ! why can’t they hide or scramble that shit !
hell l can even go to http://webtools.live2support.com/misc_locate_ip_address.php
Location of User Country, State & City by IP address
and find what city those guys in the swarm are in.
l used my ip to see if it could find me and it can’t find my town/city.
maybe because l always used pg ? maybe not ? l dunno !
there are or must be soon ultra secret sites on the net that bin files,iso etc are dumped, where none of us know where yet.maybe oneday l will start a site like this .but maybe you might never find it ever ![/quote]
your website link is B.S i went to:
http://whatismyip.com
found my IP and entered it and it said i lived in ohio. now i don’t fucking live in ohio. but maybe it tracks where the company that gives you your IP is located?
[quote comment="263239"]what about TOR?[/quote]
a lot of people block bittorrent traffic over tor. I don’t think anyone likes people that BT over tor.
[quote comment="263459"]
Here we go again, with the blind leading the blind. Or more accurately, the clueless and misinformed.[/quote]
Well let’s see. I’ve been running a private site for 3 years, and torrenting for a hell of a lot longer. I happen to know a lot of people who’ve been torrenting for years, and none of them seriously believe PG has any real value.
If calling us clueless is the best you can do, come back when you’re ready for an adult discussion.
[quote comment="263459"]“Blocklists do not offer protection”
Bullshit. They offer quite wide-ranging protection from known bad apples.[/quote]
Oh, that would be the wide ranging protection of blocking an entire /16 or /24 range because of a single IP then?
Anyone blocking that amount of IPs would stand a good chance of hitting something.
Perhaps if Bush invades another 10 countries, he can find Bin Laden the PG way.
[quote comment="263459"]They could, but they generally DON’T.
Why? Because they already have a target rich environment where the majority do not use IP blocking. Why jump through extra hoops when they already have more fish in the barrel than they can shoot?[/quote]
Did you even read the leaked emails?
The one where they are discussing buying blocks in south america perhaps? It’s not like they’re on a tight budget or anything.
[quote comment="263459"]“All blocklists do is block legitimate IPs from joining swarms.”
LMAO! How legitimate can they be if they’re on a blocklist? 99.9999% of the time, there is a very good reason why a certain IP has been added to the blocklist.[/quote]
Because an IP has been added to a blocklist that is known for its over-paranoid nature, it must be a bad IP?
I personally have had seedboxes added because they happened to be in an IP range owned by, gasp, a colo provider. Friends have had their IPs blocked. One guy I know who runs a colo had his entire range blocked. He’s a sysop of a well known major site, and he provides hosting to other torrent sites. Every one of them is on the blocked because blocklist authors love to do block entire ranges.
Getting yourself removed from the list is a lot harder than getting yourself on it. If you’re lucky, it might happen within 3-4 months.
You should also check your 99.9999% figure. Blocklists are well known for taking out all neighbouring IPs.
In the cases where they block entire /16 or /24 ranges, their hit rate is one in 256 or one in 65536. That’s either 0.0015% or 0.4% hit rate. In other words, 99.6% – 99.9985% of IPs blocked for no good reason at all.
Unlike your figure that’s grabbed out of thin air, this one actually has some basis in mathematics.
[quote comment="263459"]And finally, any thinking person would have to ponder just who would benefit the most by7 posting on forums about how blocklists don’t work, blocklists are useless, blocklists won’t protect you, etc.
Hmm, who could these naysayers be? Why are they so-o-o intent on dissuading people from using PG and blocklists? Perhaps, just perhaps, these asshats have the best interests of a certain industry on their agenda rather than the best interests of filesharers.[/quote]
Oooh, more insults. What a great way to make a point.
I don’t personally give 2 hoots if you run PG or any other blocklist. I am not trying to force you to stop using it, nor am I resorting to insults to spread a message.
Fact is, you and others like you would have us all believe we are screwed without PG. In all the years that I have not been running PG, you know how many C+D letters I have received? Zero. I have on the other hand seen plenty of complaints from PG users that they received letters.
If you can spare a couple of minutes in your hectic schedule of being professionally angry, perhaps you can figure out how blocklists work. They rely on people finding out what IPs are being used by various monitoring companies. I wonder how they find that out? It couldn’t possibly be a case of waiting for someone to be caught could it?
If you want to use PG, go ahead. Just stop the BS about it providing protection, or how we’ll all be sued if we don’t use it. Pulling figures out of your ass and calling people asshats will not win any kind of debate.
P.S. I’ve never worked for any media industry or any of the tracking companies. Who do you work for? Are you linked to PG in any way, do you perhaps supply fictional bad IPs to add to their lists? You’ve got way more anger than a regular fanboi.
Any peer blocking program like PG2 for macs? thx.
btw n0ice reply @ system, lol. That was one of the biggest fanboi beatdowns i have seen in a long time, really made my day.
Anywho…
0MGZ JooZ H4XXX0RzZZ wrokinngz 4 teh c0rpr4tions!!
lol…
So instead of fighting amongst everyone for stupid crap. Why dont you smart heads instead of arguing back at people that are trying to help and provide information, give us tips and tricks to stay protected. The ones that sound like angry fanbois are the ones arguing back. So you say PG is useless? … ok so what do you do to stay protected and not get caught. Nothing? well then maybe you are a Corporate ASSHAT. Make your point by providing better help not contradicting the people who actually try and provide the correct info.
this video sucks, guy sounds like a pillow biter.
,.msb cx ;l. j .z . z. zjh;e
Will something like ANts help if enough people use it?
Likewise is TOR any good? I rmemeber reading recently that the exit nodes were a problem or something like that.
http://antsp2p.sourceforge.net/
that guy spoke like there was someone next to him sleeping…
so my new private site will require my own designed client that uses a id and your ip is only seen via admins and not normal users as htey dont get a client that can see it. You could turn on firewall i suppose and see it but hey do that and we ban yah unless you prove it was a problem.
as to seeing what others share all you’ll see is there user name ( a nickname unles syour right ass stupid and use a real name )
you can also move to canada where it looks like legality comes our way for a couple a bucks tapped onto net accounts
SAY NO TO WATERMARKING HOWEVER ITS DRM
SAY NO TO WATERMARKING HOWEVER ITS DRM
SAY NO TO WATERMARKING HOWEVER ITS DRM
also you could make it so any use of said screen shot key results in a virus being losed on said noobs computer that looks for all images and
deletes them
hehe dont worry the real pirates are 7 years ahead a these people and prolly arent even using bittorrent.
well… that was interesting.
Not using a blocklist is like screwing a hooker without a condom. I would rather take my chances with a condom than without.
PG2 ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Says who?
What evidence is there to support such a claim?
Unless those products have had their names hijacked recently by a far more intelligent crew, then they still consist of a bunch of know-nothing-idiots making guesses as to which netblocks to ban, based solely on such idiotic crap as whether the name of a website hosted there sounds “suspicious”.
I don’t know how many levels that is retarded on, but it’s a fkn lot.
The last time I bothered to look at it, there was a netblock banned because it hosted the website for the Nevada Gaming Commission.
You could take the next 5 years off work and you still wouldn’t be able to come up with a scenario where that provides you any useful service AT ALL, so why would you assume it is useful for avoiding anti-piracy efforts?
Never has the concept of a placebo been so hard to grasp apparently.
I’ve been filesharing since 1999 without problems. I’ve been using a defragmenter since about 2000. Clearly this is solution, and with just as much supporting evidence as any of these filters and far less ignorant BS claims to boot.
Would you care to explain that moronic formula Sinista ?
Everyone here who doesn’t use Head and Shoulders and doesn’t have dandruff is a corporate arsehat.
Yeah ?
And how’d you feel about using a condom a bunch of kids constructed based on guesswork, a complete lack of knowledge of what they were trying to prevent and completely absent of any quality control methods ?
anyone with some technical savvy would know this already..
talk is cheap ..
actions speak louder then words.
So we should be all caught by now then ?
but we ain’t
would’nt they have to find out what we we are d/l ?
meaning they would have to capture packets ?
I was arrested in UK last year, for all british, BE CAREFULL!
Arrest Motive: Sell piracy DVD
=*((((((((((((((((((((
[quote comment="264355"]so my new private site will require my own designed client that uses a id and your ip is only seen via admins and not normal users as htey dont get a client that can see it. You could turn on firewall i suppose and see it but hey do that and we ban yah unless you prove it was a problem.
[/quote]
Awesome. Let me know when the IPv4/TCP stack starts to accept your IDz yo!
Thank god this is illegal in the EU.
According to EG its illegal for any company to put you in a database without your approval
[quote]Thank god this is illegal in the EU.
According to EG its illegal for any company to put you in a database without your approval[/quote]
they do it anyway.
A program that blocks millions of connections or allows you to block additional IP addresses has to offer some security then not blocking any IP addresses at all.
The video is useless, your comments push it ahead.
@ skyforce (38) : You are right PG blocks direct connection, but they already know my IP from the peer.
Maybe that they have an advantange from that. They not contribute the -maybe- illegal act but only watching it. But wait: without them in the swarm it would not be the same… Any idea?
@ system (32) : you say: “In short, the information they log is part of their “conversation” with you and can be legally recorded. Logging all data flowing in and out of someone elses machine would involve electronic eavesdropping, and would be illegal.”
So they do NOT know in real what is inside the package I am sharing.
The name of a torrent does not prove for its content.
– All torrents should be named away from the files it stands for, all files in the package should get different labels too.
– The real filenames should be shared with a second torrent. A clever software should assemble files and real file names on my computer.
OK… first of all… this guy is a total n00b and knows fuck all about BitTorrent and obviously just installed Azureus 5 minutes before he started to make that video.
Next, total anonymity is the holy grail of piracy… a fantasy that is impossible to acheive without utter chaos and disorder and on top of that a global network that doesn’t function properly a mile away from where you are.
And finally… PeerGuardian 2 is just about the best protection you can get for free… sure it’s not foolproof, but it helps and with all the enemies P2P filesharing has made over the years, we need as much helps as we can get. If you don’t use PG2, don’t come out and spout shit about something you don’t know enough about, and if you use PG2 and think that you are totally protected, you are just as much of a n00b as that retarded video guy.
In short, use PG2, know you’re never going to be fully protected.
For those who are saying PG (and similar) is a complete waste of time because “I haven’t been sued”: this is a non-argument. The number of people sued just by the RIAA in the US is currently over 25,000. In Germany it’s over 200,000. I don’t know the numbers for the UK, but it’s definitely in four figures. HOWEVER, the more important stat is the number of people file-sharing: millions of people every single day. So yes, sure, you can not use PG and your chances of getting sued are already statistically minute. However, PG provides an extra layer of protection and makes it even less likely that you’ll be sued.
To those saying that PG is a waste of time because it’s amateur, blocks arbitrary domains, etc. So what? If it does not negatively effect the use of your computer it’s still better protection than no protection, even if it’s nowhere close to perfect.
And finally, to those saying that copyright owners have to download data from you in order to sue you, this is incorrect: in the US, for example, the RIAA has *never* had to prove that what you are sharing is actually the copyrighted material that their client owns. Courts all over the country have been satisfied with the RIAA simply showing that the defendant was a) using a P2P app, and b) making available a file with a name and filesize that makes it likely to be the copyrighted file in question. They’ve never had to prove that an actual transfer of copyrighted work occurred. In all but a very few of their 25,000+ cases, the “making available for sharing” argument has won the day and the defendant has been hit with a hefty judgment.
I hope they won’t find me in my Saddam Hussein Spiderholeâ„¢ now with air conditioning. LONG LIVE THE TUESDAY NIGHT TECH DOT COM SHOW!
HAY GUYZ BIG NEWZ THEY IS TRACKING YUO BY LOGGING CONNECTIONZ LULZ
#78, you’re absolutely right about media companies not needing to prove that you’re actually hosting the file in order to slap a lawsuit on you.
In other words, all they really need is to see your IP address associated with the torrent.
In other words, they don’t need to connect to your IP address directly, they only need to connect to the tracker, read your IP address from there, and add you to the list of “get affidavits about the following IP addresses.”
In other words, PG and its ilk are useless, *if* your goal in running them is to prevent being sued by the *IAA. None of these blockers prevent your IP addresses from being recorded on the tracker, and the companies don’t need to connect to you to sue you.
(In other words, what system and Cain have been saying.)
Total privacy is not obtained correct, but one thing for sure is when I receive a complaint to my home address I know that Comcast has given up my personal information.
I am now with outside vpn providers, and have not had this happened. It’s maybe too much work for them.
Currently I am with StrongVPN since they have no bandwidth limits.
http://www.strongvpn.com
http://www.vpnaccounts.com
http://www.findnot.com
there are others, just google
just officially notified today of my copyright infringements, for everyone that doesn’t think it can happen to the casual user, you’re wrong, i torrent about one file a week tops.
total piracy can never be nullified
http://www.classicarcadegames.us
Only best free news! :
http://american-citysearch.com
Thank you ! Good info…..
I’ve been sent a DMCA violation take down notice when I used to be a Comcast customer. Was a few years ago.
The guy can’t even say the word, ‘queries’ right. There’s no ‘a’ in ‘queries’…
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