I'm not disscussing warez, but I've heard some uncomfirmed stuff about the clients? (Such as other people can see stuff on your harddrive?)

I just want to know if its safe and worth it for getting large files, please let me know.

(again, this is not a thread about warez, so please don't close it! )

If you could, just clear up any myths you may have heard about it, or just make it clear how it works / what it does. Thanks.

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Signature.

*so original*

Bittorrent is good if a lot of people have the file you are looking for. If no one has it, finding a working download will be hard, and that's why old torrent files tend to die.

The feds are starting to watch torrent users more, so yeah, people could probably see what's on your drive or else the feds wouldn't know who to bust.




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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

interesting deduction...

some torrent clients display the IP of all the other clients that you're connected to, so it's very easy to track down the approximate location of all the users, and anyone with government resources could easily track down individual users. I don't think there's anything in the torrent protocol to allow hard disk browsing, so any security risks of that nature would be maliciously coded into the client program.

the "official" client is probably safe, likewise with any open-source client.

one interesting thing i found out the other day is that the tracker allows you to monitor how much someone has seeded or if they just finish and leave.
a particular site i was at has started using this to ban IPs of people who don't seed
very nice, hehe

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I seed as much as possible, but for some reason it takes about a week to get above a ratio of 0.5

I don't use bittorent it has the tendancy to be very slow and lag even high speed connections.

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Your soul will be mine!

try brturbo, which is even worse.

You have to edit your HOSTS file to get that to work b/c it reroutes through a proxy.



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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

Ahaha. BitTorrent is the fastest way of transferring large files. Sure it's slow for the first hour or so, but once it gets going it works great. I generally get speeds of 50kb/s and the fastest i get from websites is 70.. it's not that slow.

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WARNING: THIS POST MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF PEANUT!
----@%

50 kbs is slow for me-- I frequently get 170 kbs and up using flashget to download from http links or ftp servers.

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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

You need to follow certain instructions if you are behind a router/firewall

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"Music is the universal language and the
dialect we speak in is Hip Hop!" - King Solomon

Having used BitTorrent many times, I still love it.

First, if you are getting laggy connections, make sure ports 6661-6668 or the ports you specify are open. That greatly increases chances of connecting to all seeders.

Secondly, BT does start out slow usually, because it still looks for seeders and such, so you might be connecting to a slow one, and a faster one will pop-up sooner or later.

People who don't seed, don't use BitTorrent. It makes it worse for all of us.

Download speeds depend all on the seeder. Most of the time, you have a seeder who is on a Cable or DSL modem, only allowing 40KB/sec download speeds for the peers. Howerver, if you find the right seeder, you might get someone hosting on a College or T1 line. On a recent download of a Serious Sam 2 Engine Video, I got 350KB/sec constant (all 4 seeders were T3 speed)

And yes, it is quite easy to find an IP of someone in BitTorrent. If you are using it for...not suitable activities...there are some little helpful programs to help. These programs actually go for any kind of firewall. They are PeerGuardian, and ProtoWall. I recommend ProtoWall as it is very non-high usage service. Most of the time, these programs are pretty good at blocking spyware attempts, pop-up ads (sometimes too effectively), and sometimes even attempts to look in your computer from the RIAA.

All in all...

1. Open Your Ports
2. Use a better client for your benefit to check stats on seeds, peers, completions, seed ratios, etc.
3. SEED DARNIT!!!
4. Keep your window open for at least 45 minutes. Most likely your speed will get up to 50KB/sec.
5. If you are going to do this for illegal activity, and you don't wanna get caught, use the right protection.

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"His Will Was Set, And Only Death Would Break It"

"None knows what the new day shall bring him"

I'd be glad to seed, but is that such a good idea on a 56k? :\

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Signature.

*so original*

No we don't want you seeding... you'll lag us (PS: one more couldn't hurt but it might hit your connection pretty bad)

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Your soul will be mine!

I heard the FBI is closly watching BT, is it safe to use for downloading? ( I won't be distrubting anything) and they wouldn't come after me if I wasn't doing anything illegal anyways, ...right?

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Signature.

*so original*

They aren't watching BT the program, specifically. They are watching sites that distribute torrents that lead to copyrighted material being downloaded.

Many companies are actually adoption BT to transfer files over the network, because it becomes quite efficient.

And no, they won't come after you if you download anything illegal.

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"His Will Was Set, And Only Death Would Break It"

"None knows what the new day shall bring him"