How to make your BitTorrent downloads private

A HANDY GUIDE TO KEEPING BIT TORRENTING SECURE.

NATHAN TAYLOR

SO YOU’D LIKE to keep your BitTorrenting to yourself, without any ads or snoops getting in your business? en this is the guide for you.

AN AD FREE BITTORRENT CLIENT

Let’s start with getting a BitTorrent client that doesn’t bug you (and waste your bandwidth) by shoving ads constantly in your face. ere are plenty of options: μTorrent Ad-Free or Pro (www.utorrent.com).

μTorrent is the best BitTorrent client around, and it’s worth paying US$5 per year or US$20 per year for the commercial version of it. Paying also supports a creator whose product you probably use a lot. (As an aside, we should note that you should be careful if you do use the current free version of μTorrent, since it comes some truly awful ‘crapware’ that μTorrent bundles with it to generate revenue).

Older versions of μTorrent. Before μTorrent went commercial, there was a free version with no ads and no other ‘o ers’. Although the old versions don’t have the full feature set of current version (like plugins and remote), the BitTorrent protocol itself hasn’t changed much and they still download les just ne. e last free adless version of μTorrent was 2.2.1, and you can grab it from the previous versions sections of utorrent. en.uptodown.com

qBittorrent ( www.qbittorrent.org), a simple open-source app similar to the version 2 μTorrents. Deluge ( deluge-torrent.org), another app with a simple interface, using the same back-end as qBittorrent. It can also run as a service, meaning you can set it up on one device like a server and control it from others.

PROTOCOL ENCRYPTION

Now, security. Every major BitTorrent client supports protocol encryption, and we should start by talking about what protocol encryption does not do: it does not protect you from copyright agencies. Your IP address is still visible to everyone connected to a torrent you’re downloading, so it provides no anonymity on that front.

What it does do is obscure the fact that you’re using BitTorrent from your ISP, VPN provider or any other network monitors. If your ISP slows down (‘shapes’) BitTorrent tra c, as many have historically done, this is designed to prevent their systems from detecting that you’re using BitTorrent. It’s not foolproof, but there’s no real harm in it.

In μTorrent, you can do that by going to Preferences > BitTorrent and setting it to enabled, while leaving incoming legacy connections checked (you can also uncheck the latter, but it might slow down your downloads).

PRIVATE TRACKERS

Nominally, a private tracker is one that you need a subscription and a password to access. You create an account and register your IP address with a private BitTorrent site. en, when you download torrents from that site, you’ll only connect to other registered users of that site.

Using private trackers and BitTorrent sites, as opposed to public sites like e Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents, is seen by some as an important security tool. However, it’s really not — the copyright agencies have easily infiltrated many such private trackers and monitor them, as well as the public ones. You can sign up, but don’t expect it to be any safer than using a public site. It may even be less so,

USING PRIVATE TRACKERS AND BITTORRENT SITES, AS OPPOSED TO PUBLIC SITES LIKE THE PIRATE BAY AND KICKASS TORRENTS, IS SEEN BY SOME AS AN IMPORTANT SECURITY TOOL.

if you handed over personal details like your email address to create the account with the private tracker.

THE SOCKS PROXY

Before VPNs really became a thing, there was the Socks5 proxy, a protocol that BitTorrent can use to ensure anonymity when downloading. When set up properly, it provides the same kind of anonymity that a VPN does, obscuring your IP address from anybody monitoring the torrent.

ere aren’t many exclusive Socks5 proxy service providers anymore, but a number of VPN providers also provide Socks5 proxies as part of the package. In most cases, people will just use the VPN service, but a Socks5 proxy lets you set it up so that only specific applications go through the proxy. at is to say: connect to the VPN and all your internet tra c goes through it; use a Socks5 proxy instead and just your BitTorrent tra c goes through it, while all your other applications still work at full speed.

If your VPN provider does have a Socks5 proxy service, you’ll need to nd the server details on its website. Depending on the VPN provider, you may also need to get a unique password for it, distinct from your VPN password.

en head to your BitTorrent client and enter the details. In μTorrent, go to Preferences > Connection and set the proxy server type to ‘Socks5’. Check all the boxes, enabling authentication, peer-to-peer transfers, hostname lookups and all the privacy options. Enter the server URL, username and password and you’re good to go.

VPNS

VPNs are the general go-to strategy for keeping your BitTorrenting private. Once connected, your ISP doesn’t know what you’re doing, and nobody on the torrent can capture your IP address — they only see the IP address of the VPN provider.

BitTorrent support is o en what separates the good VPN providers from the bad. Even providers that do well on speedtest.net benchmarks may fall over on BitTorrent because a) they might shape BitTorrent tra c the way some ISPs do; and b) BitTorrent tends to make a huge number of connections very quickly and their routers can’t handle it.

To get decent BitTorrent speeds, you likely need to start by playing VPN server hopscotch until you nd one that delivers. Generally, the closer to you the better — this is not about foiling geoblockers, this is purely about speed. So if you’re in Sydney, choose a Sydney server to start with. en keep trying until you nd one that works well. (VPN providers that supply information on server load are a major plus here).

Depending on the provider, you may also have to jump through other hoops. In some cases, you might have to enable Port Forwarding within your VPN client, and then set the port in your BitTorrent client to that number provided (in μTorrent, go to Preferences > Connection and enter the port number in the eld for incoming connections). is prevents the VPN provider’s rewall from blocking the incoming tra c, and (hopefully) should speed up downloads. And when it comes to VPNs and BitTorrent, speed is what really differentiates the good from the bad.