The system can also identify each unique user that has downloaded the content title in the list. It then pretends to be a torrent client and contacts the user's own client to request a download. Can Comcast still track my torrent downloading even if I use a VPN? Why would I use torrent download if I can simply download things faster with a downloader. When you download a torrent, you'll automatically become a peer for others that are downloading. Also the tracker lists all the ip addresses of the 'peers' that are uploading and downloading the files. They can filter all the ip address by location, then ask your Internet Service provider who used the ip address they found. Jan 1, 2017 - While torrents might feel secret, unless they are protected they are. To find a download can be identified by others doing so at the same time. Dec 26, 2016 - If you deleted the download history from you the torrent client, you could cross-check the names on 'I Know What You Download.' On the website, click Track Downloads button at the top and follow the procedure.
When it comes to torrents, one of the most commonly asked questions is “Is downloading torrents legal or illegal?” Torrent clients, such as uTorrent Vuze and the official BitTorrent client, are used to download immense amounts of data on the Web, and there’s no question that much of it is illegal. Here we’ll talk about how torrent downloads work, when they’re illegal, and how to protect your privacy when you’re using them.
So What Is Legal and What Is Illegal?
The short answer: as long as the item is copyrighted and you don’t own it, then downloading it (for free) via torrent is illegal. Using a torrent client and downloading torrents in itself isn’t illegal, as you could be downloading things that aren’t protected by copyright.
The long answer: This varies from case to case. Most countries have basic common laws against intellectual property theft. If a piece of music is copyrighted and you don’t own it, you can’t download it legally. The same goes for a movie, a game, or anything else you may want (unless the copyright-holder decides to make it free either temporarily or permanently, as is often the case with video games). The line gets kind of fuzzy here, since people ask themselves many different questions about their own country’s laws.
In general, a copyright is registered to an individual or organization that creates something. This copyright has a time limit, usually equivalent to the lifetime of the creator and a set amount of additional years. Some copyrights are for life plus fifty years. Others are for life plus seventy years. Look up your country in the previous link if you’re unsure of your laws. Of course, your mileage may vary, as some things may not be protected by the law where you live, or copyright law may not be enforced at all.
So if you’re downloading a free Linux distribution through your torrent client, you don’t need to worry. But if you’re getting John Lennon’s “Imagine” from The Pirate Bay, you’re doing something that in all likelihood is breaking a law.
Related: How to Download Torrents onto Your iOS Device Without Jailbreaking
Torrent Privacy
Whatever it is you’re doing is not any of my business. But it is my business to make sure you know just how “anonymous” you are in the torrent network. The short answer is: you totally aren’t!
It’s handy to have a basic knowledge of how the torrent protocol works. Theoretically you should have some level of privacy since you’re not downloading any data from one particular server (in contrast to downloading something from a central server like you’d find on Microsoft’s website, where they’ll know exactly who it is that’s downloading their products).
But through the torrent system you download directions to a file. That means that the torrent file is actually just a list of trackers and some hash codes. It doesn’t really prove that you downloaded the torrent file. What you do inside your torrent client is more important, and that’s all managed by a decentralized list of servers. Once you start the download of the actual file you want to get to, you end up downloading little pieces of the file from a bunch of people.
Can You Get Caught?
Government agents and copyright trolls tend to snoop around the Torrent networks, and some of the more popular sites hosting Torrent files, downloading files and listing all the IP addresses they find under the Peers (downloaders) and Seeders (uploaders) lists. This will, of course, compromise your address eventually.
The actual number of people who get caught is miniscule, but if you want to secure yourself and don’t care much to contribute to the Torrent community, then you can disable seeding which stops your PC uploading files to the torrent network. Avid torrenters would call this selfish, and maybe they’re right, but you’re also covering yourself.
Another good option is to use a proxy or VPN, then set your torrent client to connect to peers through that. This essentially makes you anonymous by routing your connection through a different IP address.
Then there’s the onion routing network (Tor) that you can configure as a proxy for your torrent client. However, since the Snowden revelations it’s become known that even Tor has been targeted by the NSA and GCHQ for illegal activity. While the network is mostly secure, there have been incidents of these spy bodies attacking individual computers, so it’s not as anonymous as it once was.
Can They Track Download Torrent 2017
Conclusion
Rest assured that torrenting does not equate to piracy. It does, however, provide a very convenient way to do it! The torrent protocol is just a clever transmission method for users to download files more easily. If you’re worried that you may be downloading something that’s against the laws in your country, ask below.
This article was first published in Jun 2013 and was updated in Nov 2017.
Image credit: Pirate Bay main page
Dear Lifehacker,
I've done lots of research about my Internet Service Provider's relationship with my uTorrent activity, but I still don't feel entirely confident in my knowledge about what they see. What does my ISP see when I'm torrenting? What if I'm encrypted, or under a VPN? Many of your articles talk about how to stay safe/secure/private, but don't always go completely behind the scenes. Can you help clear this up?
I've done lots of research about my Internet Service Provider's relationship with my uTorrent activity, but I still don't feel entirely confident in my knowledge about what they see. What does my ISP see when I'm torrenting? What if I'm encrypted, or under a VPN? Many of your articles talk about how to stay safe/secure/private, but don't always go completely behind the scenes. Can you help clear this up?
Baffled by BitTorrent
Image remixed from an original by Nomad_Soul/Shutterstock.
Dear Baffled,
You're right; we've written a lot of articles about how to protect yourself over the years, but sometimes it can be confusing as to exactly what's happening behind the scenes. And while it's difficult to know, since every ISP is different, you generally have two different entities to worry about: your ISP, and the media companies looking to quash illegal downloading. Here's what each of them monitors for and how you can keep yourself anonymous.
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Your ISP Sees That You're Using BitTorrent, and Might Throttle Your Connection
In general, ISPs these days aren't so interested in what you're downloading. They leave that to the folks being stolen from. Instead, ISPs are more concerned with how much bandwidth you're sucking up, and whether that's slowing everyone else down. As such, many ISPs will throttle your connection—that is, slow it down—if they see you're using BitTorrent. They don't usually look at what you're downloading (even though they could, if they wanted to), but they will check what kind of traffic is coming from your machine. That is, they'll see how much of it is email, web browsing, video chat, online gaming, and so on. If they see any BitTorrent traffic, they'll slow it down—it doesn't matter whether you're downloading a legal Linux ISO or Batman Begins. All they care about is that you're slowing down their network.
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To see if your ISP is looking for BitTorrent traffic, check out this list of the worst offenders, or try the previously mentionedGlasnost tool. If your ISP isn't throttling BitTorrent, then you don't have much to worry about, though they still could see anything they wanted.
Find Out Which ISPs Are the Biggest BitTorrent Throttlers
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Read more ReadThe Media Companies Sees What You're Downloading (and Will Tell Your ISP)
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The real problem, if you're downloading illegal media, is the company from whom you're stealing. They (or lawyers or companies on their behalf) actually go online and seek out torrents of their material, whether it be movies, music, TV shows, or anything else, and will download the torrent themselves. From there, they can see a lot of information about the other users connected—including their IP address. You can even check this for yourself at home. Start downloading a torrent and click on the 'More Info' section of your torrent client. You'll see the IP address of everyone you're downloading from and uploading to, plain as day.
Once they find your IP address (which they can do just by clicking 'more info' in their torrent client), they'll find out who your ISP is and send them a letter. Your ISP then, in turn, will forward you a notice that you've been caught pirating media. Usually the first offense is just a proverbial slap on the wrist, though if you're a repeat offender it could mean having your internet service terminated. If you're very unlucky it could even mean paying a lot of money in a settlement.
So What Should You Do to Stay Anonymous?
It's a dark time for BitTorrent. A lot of the old methods aren't very useful anymore. Applications like PeerBlock claim to block the MPAA and RIAA from connecting to you, but they're not very reliable, and you can still easily get caught when using PeerBlock. Similarly, while your BitTorrent client's encryption can be helpful against throttling, it doesn't always protect you, since some ISPs use more powerful methods of seeing what you're downloading that can get past basic BitTorrent encryption.
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These days, the only way to truly keep your downloading anonymous is to take more drastic measures. If you're worried about getting caught downloading illegal materials, use a proxy like BTGuard. It funnels all your BitTorrent traffic through another server, thus keeping your IP address hidden from anyone connecting to your BitTorrent swarm. Even if you're downloading a torrent that's being tracked, they'll see BTGuard's IP, not yours, and BTGuard doesn't keep any logs of their service, meaning they won't trace that IP address back to you.
How to Completely Anonymize Your BitTorrent Traffic with a Proxy
BitTorrent isn’t the quiet haven it once was. These days, everyone’s looking to throttle your…
Read more ReadIf you want to keep your traffic from being throttled, you can try enabling encryption in your BitTorrent client. if this doesn't work, BTGuard provides an encryption program along with its proxy service that can hide your traffic better than uTorrent and other clients, to ensure you don't get throttled.
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How to Boost Your BitTorrent Speed and Privacy
BitTorrent's been around for a whopping ten years, but it continues to evolve and remains one…
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