Secure Your Torrent Downloading

Anti P2P are fighting back against in the war against piracy. Fake torrents, malicious IPs & arrests are a few things they are doing to try to prevent piracy. Because of this, downloaders are going to have to take a few precautions to prevent themselves from being caught. This tutorial will show you how to protect yourself.


Don’t use Limewire or Bearshare

It’s amazing how many of my friends still use this, despite the amount of crap they get through it. I know they are easy to use & they work great with multimedia files, but they still aren’t as secure as torrent clients like Utorrent. Gnutella based P2P file sharing clients aren’t as good as standard torrent clients in my experience.

Utorrent is rated by most people as the best & works under nearly all Windows OSs. It also works great under Wine as well. Here is the download link -
http://www.utorrent.com/download.php

Not using Bearshare or Limewire is a good start to protecting yourself.


Block bad IPs

NOTE - Whether PG2 actually works is very debatable. At time of writing, I had only heard positive things about it - now it's a different story. Use if you want, but be aware it may be inaffective.

For this I will show you how to use Peerguardian 2. This program will block blacklisted IPs, to stop them from connecting to you. This means that there is a reduced chance of connecting to a person who is going to log your IP address or give you faulty data.

So now I will show you how to install Peerguardian 2.

Firstly you must download it from this site -
http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/

If you want a smaller version of Peerguardian 2 that completely runs in your system tray instead, go to this download link -
http://phoenixlabs.org/pglite/

Then install it.

Once it is installed, it should block as many bad IPs as it can.

Be aware that it will also block your internet browser from accessing sites that have been blocked, so every now & then you might have to unblock a site & add it to the exceptions list.

Also, make sure that it is updated regularly to ensure that the latest found bad IPs are blocked.

It should just sit in your system tray & flash every now & then.

Through the settings, you can configure it to start at XP start up & hide itself.

Once you have set up Peerguardian properly, you will be quite a lot more secure.


Use private trackers

Private trackers are monitored a lot more than public ones, so bad torrents (Which could be made by anti P2P) are removed a lot quicker. It is a lot easier for your IP to get logged from a public tracker than a private one. Mininova & The Pirate Bay are all examples of public trackers. Demonoid is an example of a private tracker.

Some private trackers require invites, whereas others don’t. Browsing the net will probably result in you finding a private trackers.

I’m not saying don’t use public trackers, but always bias towards private ones if you can.

Secure your browser

Going on to torrent sites can be just as dangerous as downloading torrents. Secure your browser. No sane torrent downloader should use Internet Explorer. I recommend Firefox.

You can download the latest Firefox from here -
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/
Firefox is available for Windows, Linux & OSX.

With a array of addons like script blockers, intergrated proxies & adblockers, browsing torrent sites just got a little bit safer.


Hide your IP & MAC address

This may be difficult to explain due to the shear amount of software out there that can do this.

For IP hiding I use Hide IP Platinum. I have yet to use the new Hide IP NG.

For MAC hiding I use SMAC.

As all software is different, I can’t explain how to do it.

If you need assistance go onto the official site of the software you are using.


Use a proxy

Using a proxy is also a very efficiant step in guarding you. There are 2 ways to do this -

1st way - Install a intergrated proxy onto your computer.

I personally use FoxyProxy. It is a addon for Firefox. Here is a download link to FoxyProxy’s download page -
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2464

2nd way - Use a internet proxy.

Here is a good proxy site designed for downloading torrents -
http://mass-torrent.com/

Here is a proxy for normal web browsing -
http://w2.hidemyass.com/index.php?q=d3d3Lmdvb2dsZS5jby51aw%3D%3D&hl=3ed


Examine torrents before downloading

Check out a torrent before downloading.

Does it have good feedback? Is the uploader a regular user? Does it look genuine?

Ask yourself these questions before downloading.


Get a decent antivirus, antispyware & firewall.

This goes without saying really. Make sure you have a good fire wall & anti virus.

Also make sure you have a good anti spyware program.

As you download torrents, finding commercial software should be easy ;)

But just in case you want a free solid security solution, here are a few links….

Free Avast antivirus -
http://www.download.com/Avast-Home-Edition/3000-2239_4-10019223.html?part=dl-AvastHome&subj=dl&tag=button&cdlPid=10879477

Free Comodo firewall -
http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/download_firewall.html

Free Spybot S&D antispyware-
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Spybot_Search_and_Destroy/1043809773/1