However, since this weekend the number of installs must have dropped quite a bit after Google Chrome began warning users away from the software. According to Chrome the BitTorrent client poses a serious risk.

“uTorrent.exe is malicious and Chrome has blocked it,” the browser informs those who attempt to download the latest stable release.

Chrome does give users the option to restore the file but not without another warning. The browser is convinced that the file is harmful and suggests that the uTorrent website may have been hacked.

“This file will harm your computer. Even if you have downloaded files from this website before, the website may have been hacked. Instead of recovering this file you can retry the download later.”

The first reports of Chrome’s block came in three days ago and at the time of writing the problems persist. The warnings appear for the latest stable release (3.4.2.32354) and no other releases appear to be affected.

Currently there is no indication why the software has been flagged, but a scan by more than 50 of the most popular anti-virus services reveals no active threats.

Google’s safe browsing diagnostic page claims that the uTorrent website was involved in malware distribution in recent months, but no further details on the nature of the supposed malware are provided.

“This site has hosted malicious software over the past 90 days. It infected 4 domain(s), including kioskea.net/, ziggi.uol.com.br/, majorgeeks.com/,” the diagnostics page reads.

This isn’t the first time that uTorrent has reported problems with Chrome. The same happened late last year when the malware blocking feature was still in beta. At the time uTorrent parent company BitTorrent Inc. managed to resolve the issues after several days.

Thus far, none of the developers have responded to user complaints in the uTorrent forums.

Update We discovered that uTorrent occasionally serves other versions as well, these are not blocked. The vast majority of the downloads are still blocked though.

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

This dazzling number is a dream for most advertising agencies, but not all uTorrent users appreciate an ad-filled application.

When the makers of uTorrent made the client ad-supported two years ago there was a small user revolt. As a result, parent company BitTorrent Inc. chose to make the ads optional.

However, earlier this month the company appeared to have changed this position. Without public notice the banner position in the lower left corner was made permanent.

Previously, users had the option to turn the ad off through the options dropdown menu but this option was removed. The advanced setting that allowed users to disable the banner ad disappeared as well.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and the uTorrent team now appears to have reconsidered its position. The latest stable release, which came out just before the weekend, reinstated the advanced setting.

“Added back: Feature gui_plus_upsell in advanced settings,” the changelog reads.

BitTorrent Inc. hasn’t commented publicly on the forced advertisement issue, but it seems plausible that the company reconsidered its earlier decision after users voiced their complaints. However, since the ad can only be disabled through the advanced settings, it’s expected that most users will never turn it off anyway.

In addition to the toolbars and other software bundled with uTorrent, ads are an important source of revenue for BitTorrent Inc. Last year the company said that uTorrent is good for five billion ad impressions a month.

Judging from these numbers the revenue potential is enormous, as long as you don’t alienate the users.

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

One of the biggest backlashes in recent history happened two years ago when BitTorrent Inc. announced its plan to make uTorrent ad-supported. This announcement led to a small user revolt.

The people complaining were mostly annoyed that there was be no option to disable the ads. Luckily for them, BitTorrent Inc. listened to the feedback and quickly decided that users would indeed get a chance to opt-out.

At the time BitTorrent Inc. CEO Eric Klinker said that the backlash made it clear that users should be given the choice.

“We’ve long contemplated an opt-out mechanism for the new offers and advertisements we will be experimenting with. Given all that’s been said here, we’ve decided to release the initial version with an opt-out mechanism, and we will provide them with ways to do so,” said BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker.

From that moment uTorrent’s ads became optional, but turned on by default. Still, the company managed to generate billions of ad impressions per month. Five billion to be precise, according to information released last year.

The optional advertisements were a situation most users could live with, but right before the weekend uTorrent pushed through an unexpected and unannounced change. The latest stable release version 3.4.2, no longer gives users the opportunity to opt out from the banner ad in the lower left corner.

As can be seen below, the option “show plus information” has been removed from the context menu. In addition the advanced setting “gui.show_plus_upsell,” which had the same functionality, has disappeared as well.

At this point it’s unclear why BitTorrent Inc. removed the opt-out. The change is not documented in the release notes, but several users were quick to pick it up and began asking questions.

The uTorrent development team hasn’t responded to the comments yet. Some users are nonetheless quick to draw their conclusions, much like two years ago.

“Just like the coming of the video killing the radio star, ads will kill uTorrent’s popularity,” one user comments in the forums.

While there is no longer an option to hide the uTorrent Plus house ad, people can prevent other ads from showing up there by going into the advanced settings. Setting offers.left_rail_offer_enabled to false should restrict the ads to the uTorrent Plus upsell.

There is no denying that the advertisements, in addition to the toolbars and other software that’s bundled with uTorrent, generate the majority of the revenue for BitTorrent Inc. Perhaps this latest change is an attempt to increase the revenue coming from the banner ads, which eventually goes to paying the company’s bills.

Whether this will be a wise decision in the long run remains to be seen.

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

In a recent interview with “That Was Me”, BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen explained this challenge, as well as the general benefits BitTorrent has to offer.

The interview got some coverage here and there, including at Upstart, where it drew the attention of Robert Steele, Chief Technology Officer at anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp, a company that has made quite a few headlines this year.

Steele was not happy with the positive press coverage BitTorrent received from the media outlets, to say the least. Through Facebook (which uses BitTorrent) he wrote two responses to the article, which are worth repeating for a variety of reasons.

The comments appear to have been made late at night, possibly under influence, so we have left them intact and unedited for authenticity’s sake. Steele starts off by claiming that BitTorrent was designed for only one reason – to distribute pirated content.

“Absolutely ridiculous. Bram Cohen said in 2012 that ‘my goal is to destroy television’. BitTorrent’s architecture and features are designed for one reason only – to assist people in avoiding legitimate law enforcement efforts when they illgally consume other people’s intellectual property,” Steele begins.

It may not come as a surprise that Steele is quoting Cohen out of context. At the time, BitTorrent’s founder was actually referring to his new streaming technology, that would make it possible for anyone to stream video content to a large audience at virtually no cost.

Also, BitTorrent isn’t in any way helping people to avoid law enforcement, quite the contrary. People who use BitTorrent are easy to track down, which is in fact something that Rightscorp is banking its entire business model on.

In the second comment Steele brings in Accel, the venture capital firm that invested millions of dollars in BitTorrent Inc. According to the Rightscorp CTO Accel is also guilty of encouraging piracy, and he suggests that uTorrent should have been equipped with a blacklist of pirate torrent hashes.

“If Accell Partner’s BitTorrent was actually a legitimate business not directly involved in driving and facilitating piracy, they would have a blacklist of copyrighted hashes that the BT client won’t ‘share’. Dropbox does this. Why does Dropbox do this? Because they actually obey the law and respect content creators,” Steele says.

Steele touches on a sensitive subject here, as BitTorrent could indeed implement a blacklist to prevent some pirated content from being shared. TorrentFreak has raised this issue with BitTorrent Inc in the past, but we have never received a response on the matter.

Moving on from this sidetrack, Steele’s tirade in the first comment evolves into something that’s scarily incomprehensible.

“BTTracker software is not needed unless the goal is to enable other people outside of BitTorrent, Inc. to operate the systems that log the ip addresses of infringing computers. Why do they do it that way? Not becuase it is needed to move big files. Dropbox doesnt need trackers. They do it that way because Limewire got sued for hosting those lists.” Steele notes.

From what we understand, Steele doesn’t get why BitTorrent is decentralized, which is the entire basis of the technology. The comment is wrong on so many points that we almost doubt that Steele has any idea how BitTorrent works, or Limewire for that matter.

We surely hope that the investors in Rightscorp, which is a publicly traded company now, aren’t reading along.

Finally, Rightscorp’s CTO suggests that BitTorrent and its backers should be taken to court, to pay back the damage they cause to the entertainment industries.

“Bram Cohen and Accell Partner’s BitTorrent should be held accountable for the wages and income they have helped take from hundreds of thousands of creative workers just like Limewire, Grokster, Aimster, Kazaa and Napster were.”

Right.

From the incoherent reasoning and the many grammar and spelling mistakes we have to assume that Steele wasn’t fully accountable when he wrote the comments. Perhaps the end of a busy week, or the end of an eventful night.

In any case, we’ve saved a copy of the comments below, just in case they are accidentally deleted.

Photo: Michael Theis

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

The popular application began as a minimalist and no-nonsense client targeted at a BitTorrent-savvy crowd, but evolved into a feature-rich download tool during the years that followed.

This week the uTorrent development team released uTorrent version 3.4. Aside from the standard bug fixes, new features and aesthetic upgrades, the latest release includes one of the most significant changes in years.

Spearheaded by BitTorrent developer Arvid Norberg, the new release includes a new method of connecting people who are sharing the same file. This change is welcome, since the traditional way of choosing peers has some major drawbacks.

“If [a BitTorrent client] chooses poorly, or if there are malicious actors in the swarm, the connections between clients are not well distributed through the swarm, leading to a large number of hops from node to node. That slows down the ability to each client to pass data on to the next,” BitTorrent’s Adam Kelly explains.

With Canonical Peer Priority, as it’s called, peers will no longer be selected on a first come first serve basis.

The new peer selection method will now give priority to peers who are close in the network (fewer hops away). This means that when uTorrent has reached the maximum number of connections for a torrent, it will still accept incoming peers with a higher priority.

Instead of refusing the connection of the new peer, it will accept it and kick out a lower priority peer. This will help peers to connect to each other faster, and also reduce the distance between peers, which ultimately results in faster downloads.

In addition to increased connection times and faster downloads, the new peer selection method also prevents DDoS attacks against larger swarms.

With the old method malicious parties could flood a swarm with download requests, pretending to offer a piece of the file. By doing so, they could lock up dozens of connection slots, seriously degrading download performance by taking up space of legitimate peers.

“There’s an opportunity to DDoS a swarm by filling up everyone’s connections slots, and continuously making incoming connections at such rate that peers won’t have an opportunity to connect to anyone else,” Norberg explained.

With the new selection method this problem is solved, as low priority peers will be swapped out for newcomers who have real data to offer.

uTorrent users are not expected to notice a difference right away. The effectiveness depends on how many other peers in the swarm use uTorrent 3.4, which will be relatively low for now. However, as time changes this is expected to pick up. Whether other BitTorrent clients plan to implement the same technology has yet to be seen.

In addition to the new peer selection method and other improvements, the uTorrent team also announced that it will release newer versions of the software more quickly. In recent month there have been some complaints in the forums from users about a lack of updates and fixes.

BitTorrent Inc. has put more developers on uTorrent, so fixes and new features are expected to come out faster in the months to come. This is expected to include a paywall to unlock premium bundles from artists.

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

The Windows application was released a short while ago by Freddi, a 32-year-old coder from Germany who currently works as a Java developer in the tourism industry. Freddi recently switched from a proxy service to a VPN, bringing up the privacy challenge we outlined above.

“I realized that from now on I would have to be more careful using uTorrent. Since I do not have the socks5 proxy settings configured any longer, uTorrent would continue to run whether I’m connected to my VPN or not,” Freddi explains to TorrentFreak.

The software developer searched for an application to shut uTorrent down when the VPN disconnects but was unable to find one that matches his needs. The existing options were often too complicated or charged users for access, and none of them was open source. So Freddi decided to code his own solution.

“The main reason to code VPNWatcher was that the other programs I found are closed source, and I’m just an open source guy, especially when it has anything to do with privacy and security,” Freddi says.

After a few days of work he had a workable solution, a small piece of software that will shut down any application when a VPN connection is lost.

VPN Watcher

VPNWatcher is pretty straightforward. It monitors whether a VPN connection is active, and when it’s not it shuts down uTorrent or any other application it is configured to kill.

When users first start the application they can pick the network interface that matches the VPN (it appears when the VPN connects) and list the applications it has to shut down. The settings can then be saved and the user has the option to run VPNWatcher minimized.

TorrentFreak tested VPNWatcher and it works as advertised and was setup in just a few seconds. On PPTP connections users will have to tick the “strict mode” box – this was not needed with OpenVPN but people are encouraged to test this themselves.

VPNWatcher is open source and the complete Visual Studio 2010 project is included in the download, as well as a readme with frequently asked questions. The latest version can be downloaded from Freddi’s website and a copy of version 1.1 is available here.

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

The people complaining were mostly annoyed that there would be no option to disable the ads. Luckily, BitTorrent listened to the feedback and quickly decided that users would indeed get a chance to opt-out.

However, new stats revealed by the San Francisco company show that there are plenty of users who do not disable the ads displayed in the top bar. In fact, billions of ad impressions have been served since the change was introduced late last year.

According to BitTorrent Inc. the uTorrent and BitTorrent mainline clients are currently good for six billion ad displays a month. Most of these come from uTorrent, which has by far the largest user base of the two.

Based on the stats reported by BitTorrent, the uTorrent client serves more than five billion ads every month. This is quite an impressive figure and more than most smaller advertising companies serve on their entire network.

A quick inspection of the type of ads run on the network reveals that poker software and PC performance ‘enhancing’ apps are the most advertised products. This may of course differ based on the country people download from.

Some of the advertised products are downloaded by thousands of people a day. A product called “SpeedUpMyComputer” has more than 45,000 seeders and hundreds of active downloaders at the time of writing.

Thus far we haven’t been able to spot any ads for premium brands, or plugs for entertainment industry companies. This might be the next challenge for BitTorrent, because there’s certainly an audience to cater to.

As we reported earlier not all ads are allowed on the network. For example, BitTorrent does not accept ads for torrent-friendly VPN providers as these are considered to be “high risk” for some reason.

All in all, it is safe to assume that the ads are providing a healthy new revenue stream for the company. Over the past years the bulk of the revenue came from toolbar installs but with the current numbers the ads have the potential to add a few million to that each year.

TorrentFreak asked BitTorrent to comment on the dazzling numbers and the company’s outlook for the future, but we received no response.

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

The vast majority of these BitTorrent users download video files, but despite these staggering statistics it can still be quite cumbersome to play downloaded files on the old-fashioned TV.

The first ever certified Android-powered BitTorrent box aims to change this. After the initial December launch was delayed, the BBK BitTorrent box officially goes up for sale today.

While we have seen devices that support BitTorrent downloads before, this is the first one that can can also stream content downloaded through uTorrent and BitTorrent clients on the local network.

This means that users can play content downloaded by uTorrent and BitTorrent directly on their TV. Below is a screenshot of the user interface, displaying the various BitTorrent clients the device can connect to wirelessly.

Since the device supports DLNA, users can also access other media libraries including the one from rival BitTorrent client Vuze and Apple’s iTunes.

In addition to playing content downloaded by other clients, the BitTorrent box itself also comes with BitTorrent support. Users are able to add torrent files through the built-in web browser or load torrent files from a USB drive.

The BitTorrent box then takes care of the downloading and the file can be played instantly when the download is finished.

Another upside of the BitTorrent box is that it’s running on Android, giving users access to thousands of applications in the Android market. This includes various VPN applications for those who value their privacy.

The BBK BitTorrent box is up for sale now at just under 90 euros and ships to European countries only.

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

The people complaining were mostly annoyed that there would be no option to disable the ads. Luckily, BitTorrent listened to the feedback and quickly decided that users would indeed get a chance to opt-out.

After BitTorrent Inc. tested the new platform for a while, this week the “offer platform” was officially announced in the release highlights of uTorrent 3.2.2.

As can be seen below, the ads come in the form of sponsored torrents through which advertisers can reach uTorrent’s worldwide active user base of 125 million. The ads are prominently featured in a yellow bar that sits on top of the torrent list.

BitTorrent Inc. tells TorrentFreak that they will continue to closely monitor feedback from the community. Thus far users have been largely accepting of the new ads, they say.

“We’re very mindful of that feedback and of our core values as a company, and as such we’ve been adamant that we maintain the same levels of privacy as always and that we do not interrupt the user experience with our ads,” BitTorrent’s Matt Mason says.

“In online conversations and live walk-throughs, users are largely accepting and in many cases interested in the offers we put forward, which include artist content and our own new technologies, betas and product news.”

A direct outcome of user feedback is the decision to allow uTorrent users to opt-out from the advertisements. Understandably the feature isn’t being promoted widely, but users who go to Options > Preferences > Advanced will see the following entry:

sponsored_torrent_offer_enabled.

When this value is set to false the yellow advertisement bar will disappear the next time uTorrent is started. The opt-out feature isn’t mentioned in the uTorrent help file yet, but the unofficial and updated version maintained by Rafi lists it (see N for more).

For BitTorrent Inc. the advertisements are part of a series of new test cases designed to bring in additional revenue to support the development and innovation of file-sharing software. However, the company says that it’s not blindly accepting all advertisers.

Since the announcement in August the company has received many inquiries from prospective partners, but the company is very choosy.

“Our approach has been to selectively work with partners who understand that BitTorrent users are among the most sophisticated online, and thus have a high bar when it comes to engaging with advertising,” Mason tells TorrentFreak.

“We believe that delivering a quality advertising experience that resonates with a highly influential, tech-savvy audience requires careful diligence, and have had to turn away some of the demand at this time.”

BitTorrent say that their initial partners are very positive about the new advertisement possibilities, and that many users are clicking on the torrent offers. At the moment BitTorrent is also experimenting with other types of advertising in addition to sponsored downloads.

“In terms of performance, it’s still early in our experimentation, but we’ve seen strong sustained download rates for partner offers. We are also experimenting with taking users to partner websites to see how that experience compares,” Mason says.

It is no surprise that BitTorrent Inc. is looking for alternative means to increase revenue. The company employs around 100 employees and is backed by venture capitalists who eventually want to see a return on their investments.

BitTorrent’s current annual revenue is estimated at somewhere between $15 and $20 million and with the new in-client advertising this can grow further still.

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

New business models must be found, the tide is way too strong to hold back, the genie is out of the bottle. It’s reportedly get real or get out time, or so the sound bites go.

BitTorrent users, in one form or another, have been held to blame for much of the above scenario, along with their main weapon of choice, uTorrent. But market forces are interesting beasts and ones that don’t exist in a vacuum.

BitTorrent Inc., the company behind the completely legal uTorrent, has worked hard to develop both itself and its software, but as it grows so do its costs. Somehow revenue has to be generated and these days, when you’re a company employing around 80 staff, that has to be a significant amount.

So, just like the entertainment companies who struggle to make money against free, BitTorrent Inc. has to employ techniques to give away their free product, in this instance uTorrent, and bring in the bucks at the same time.

In part this is achieved by selling uTorrent Plus, which is essentially the regular uTorrent with anti-virus, media playing and conversion functions built in. Revenue is also generated by bundling optional addons, such as a toolbar, with the free uTorrent, but a new method of offering these extras has managed to irritate a bunch of Reddit users.

The complaint centers around a single but very important button on the uTorrent site – the “Free Download” button, as illustrated below.

The problem is that the button isn’t a simple one-click download. Once a user hovers over it ready to click, the button and surrounding areas quickly change to include extra information.

The very eager user will simply see “Download” directly under their mouse pointer and will just click away, but the more cautious will notice that there are three options – all preselected – which relate to extra features and bundled revenue-generating software. You can test for yourself here.

Obviously BitTorrent Inc. need to make money, but the main complaints seem to center around the way this download page has been configured to encourage a skipping over the details (and therefore the installation of potentially unwanted software) in order to obtain a quick download.

While critics might argue that people should read what they’re agreeing to before clicking, BitTorrent Inc. say that the changes are recent and were implemented to streamline the uTorrent installation experience.

“We’ve been offering the toolbar for years as a way to support the development of our software so users can get it free,” a spokesman told TorrentFreak.

“We recently moved the toolbar to the download page so we could have more flexibility in how we describe the toolbar’s torrent-specific features and also shorten and clean up our installer, an ongoing process.”

But what is clear from the posts on Reddit and elsewhere is that the changes aren’t popular. With that in mind, BitTorrent Inc., which has a record of listening to its users, says it will do some restructuring.

“We have read feedback including the Reddit posts, and are planning adjustments to improve the experience,” their spokesperson concludes.

While we wait for the changes to be confirmed (they will apparently arrive tomorrow), what is interesting to observe is how relatively easily some BitTorrent users, despite getting a free product in return, are upset by tactics they perceive as being less than upfront.

The Reddit thread is full of threats to switch to different clients and as always there is a tendency to suggest clients with less intrusive revenue generating mechanisms, fewer adverts, then ultimately ones that offer a plain client with nothing added at all.

It seems that having to compete with free is a reality even for BitTorrent clients these days. How times change.

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