TorrentPrivacy secures your BitTorrent traffic

TorrentPrivacy is a new product from the guys at Torrentreactor.net designed to keep your BitTorrent downloads and shares private. The product is a combination of an SSH tunnel tool, a pre-configured uTorrent client and remote privacy services. We'll take a quick sneak preview into how does it actually work.

Installation:
After registering yourself at TorrentPrivacy.com you'll be able to download the 1 Mb installation package. Installation directory cannot be changed from the default "c: orrentprivacy" but I'm sure there's a reason behind it. After couple of clicks through the installation you are presented with the one click setup. After few seconds of connecting with TorrentPrivacy servers a Launch button appears and you're ready to go.

TP and uTorrent:
With a quick look into the client's preferences, you can see that the default download folder has been set to "c: orrentprivacydownloads" and Connections tab is a bit simplified, but that's about it. No additional setup was required and the v1.7.7 uTorrent was just what I've been used to.

All traffic created by the privately configured uTorrent client are now being transferred through a secure SSH tunnel which encrypts all the data. You don't need to install any other BitTorrent clients and in fact TorrentPrivacy does not support any other clients. Additional proxies aren't required as TorrentPrivacy provides you with one to cloak your IP address. According to TorrentPrivacy they do not store traffic logs or other private information. The only sign of TorrentPrivacy running behind your uTorrent is the tray icon pictured below.

Conclusion:
Trying the software out myself it seems like a good, simple solution for ensuring your peer-to-peer privacy. Installation doesn't take more than half a minute and no configuration is required. With up to 100 Mb/s speeds it is also fast enough for pretty much everyone. Unfortunately it is currently only available for Windows users.

TorrentPrivacy is now offering 50% off from both one month ($9.95) and one year memberships ($99.95) registered during August. If you are not convinced, you can also get a one week trial for $2.95. If you have also tried the service or otherwise have opinions about it feel free to comment.

Written by: Matti Robinson @ 12 Aug 2008 7:45

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49 comments

NexGen76

Sounds great but im going to wait & heard some feed back before i get it....

12.8.2008 08:01 #1

Mik3h

Yeah, I'll wait before I buy it for feedback.

edit : I was too impatient and decided to order a week trial lol, but they don't take debit cards! Arg.
They ought to take paypal.

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12.8.2008 09:06 #2

spydah

Originally posted by Mik3h: Yeah, I'll wait before I buy it for feedback.

edit : I was too impatient and decided to order a week trial lol, but they don't take debit cards! Arg.
They ought to take paypal.
Get that Paypal plugin for your browser. I was told that it works even for places that don't except Paypal. It generates a credit number for and applies it to any purchase form. That's an option if you haven't tried that.

12.8.2008 10:27 #3

TPrivacy

Guys,

glad that Afterdawn found our service interesting for an article. Feel free to ask me about the Torrentprivacy service.

As for Paypal it's available for 99,95 payment at the moment. Micropayments 2,95 and 9,95 will be available through paypal by the end of August. Stay tuned!

Alex,
You're secured by
Torrentprivacy.com

12.8.2008 11:07 #4

susieqbbb

Ok sounds great minus one issue..

If you block your isp from looking at your network address on your computer the isp will automaticly ban your account this is true not only with comcast but even with qwest and others.

12.8.2008 11:08 #5

TPrivacy

Originally posted by susieqbbb: Ok sounds great minus one issue..

If you block your isp from looking at your network address on your computer the isp will automaticly ban your account this is true not only with comcast but even with qwest and others.Let me correct you - you don't block your ISP from looking at your network. You just encrypt the bittorrent traffic like VPN or SSH session. ISP sees the session, but he doesn't know what's happening inside.

12.8.2008 11:14 #6

Mik3h

Is it possible to use this on more than one computer without having to buy another rental period? I would like to think that If I buy a month, I can protect all the computers in my house with the software?

12.8.2008 11:47 #7

TPrivacy

Originally posted by Mik3h: Is it possible to use this on more than one computer without having to buy another rental period? I would like to think that If I buy a month, I can protect all the computers in my house with the software?You can use it on as much computers as you want, but there is a limit to one session per user. So if you like to use it on 2 computers at one time - you have to purchase one more account.

12.8.2008 11:51 #8

varnull

Originally posted by TPrivacy: Originally posted by susieqbbb: Ok sounds great minus one issue..

If you block your isp from looking at your network address on your computer the isp will automaticly ban your account this is true not only with comcast but even with qwest and others.Let me correct you - you don't block your ISP from looking at your network. You just encrypt the bittorrent traffic like VPN or SSH session. ISP sees the session, but he doesn't know what's happening inside.Azureus does that for free anyway.. never mind..

How does it block your IP from the tracker. Short tests have shown that our test IP is still appearing in the swarm. It does masquerade an IP as far as the modem, but outside ip remains the same.

Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. An engineer with a single tool in his toolbox is an idiot, not an engineer

12.8.2008 11:53 #9

TPrivacy

Quote:Originally posted by TPrivacy: Originally posted by susieqbbb: Ok sounds great minus one issue..

If you block your isp from looking at your network address on your computer the isp will automaticly ban your account this is true not only with comcast but even with qwest and others.Let me correct you - you don't block your ISP from looking at your network. You just encrypt the bittorrent traffic like VPN or SSH session. ISP sees the session, but he doesn't know what's happening inside.Azureus does that for free anyway.. never mind..

How does it block your IP from the tracker. Short tests have shown that our test IP is still appearing in the swarm. It does masquerade an IP as far as the modem, but outside ip remains the same.Please read more about Azureus features and about Torrentprivacy ones and you will realise that encryption which some bittorrent clients have is only to circumvent traffic throttling and not for security while SSH protocol has strong 128 bit encryption All data sent and received during the connection via secure SSH tunnel is extremely difficult to decrypt and read.

12.8.2008 12:06 #10

varnull

That may be.. but most isp's don't care about what you are doing. Minimal encryption is enough to deter them, you can add higher level encryption if you chose.. That wasn't actually my point anyway http://www.out-law.com/page-8515

The information about what you are downloading is sourced by spiders which scan the swarms on the trackers and collect IP's.. Those IP's are handed to the content owners who then contact the ISP to hand out the warning letters, or pass your information back leading to legal action.

We didn't see your software in any way preventing this from happening. Our IP was still displayed openly on the swarm details returned from the tracker.

Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. An engineer with a single tool in his toolbox is an idiot, not an engineer

12.8.2008 12:12 #11

TPrivacy

Let me explain you more - while you're going through SSH encrypted tunnel you're relayed through one of our server where you're getting new IP.

If you existing Torrentprivacy user you can test our software: we have a feature when you're getting test torrent and then download it without/with Torrentprivacy and we will tell you the IP from what torrent was downloaded. With torrentprivacy you have another IP address.

Also I would advice you to read latest news about lawsuits to see what's happening here and do providers care about it or not:

http://www.torrentprivacy.com/index.php?mod=news

Regards for interesting discussion,
Alex.

12.8.2008 12:20 #12

varnull

OK.. thanks.. will test that feature and then do another live test on a public tracker. Maybe we have something configured wrong.

Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. An engineer with a single tool in his toolbox is an idiot, not an engineer

12.8.2008 12:25 #13

Mik3h

If it cloaks your IP address, I can't see many private trackers being too happy with that.

edit : Saying that, I couldn't really care less what private trackers think, I share private tracker accounts with over 10+ people, so I'm not particularly bothered, and I'm sure it won't make a difference since trackers rarely enforce the account sharing rule.

[img][/img]

12.8.2008 13:42 #14

Jacques18

This looks like an awesome service but I just have one quick question: Any chance of this coming out for Macs?

In the meantime, can anyone suggest a comparable service or product that does work on Macs?

12.8.2008 13:52 #15

ikari

I wish the company luck with this idea.

I will be interested to see how this plays out in the courts once the recording companies start finding out about this. Since it will be their IPs that are logged as downloading the content, "illegal" or not. There has to be some loophole in the law that is being exploited for Torrentprivacy to risk being sued. That or they are in a country that is shielded from being sued, in which case is genius. :-)

Someone needs to read the EUA, to see if there is anything in the fine print.

12.8.2008 16:20 #16

7thsinger

Originally posted by NexGen76: Sounds great but im going to wait & heard some feed back before i get it....I'll probably do the same thing and wait until real feedback is available.

12.8.2008 17:20 #17

nonoitall

I'm curious what country this is based in?

12.8.2008 17:47 #18

borhan9

Im going to try this out and if its noo good ill just delete it :)

12.8.2008 18:26 #19

Mik3h

You should host it in some kind of remote island like torrentleech does, and like pirate bay (they have other servers apart from swedish.

I think torrentprivacy is only hosted in europe, US, and canada, I'll wait for TPrivacy to correct me though.

[img][/img]

12.8.2008 18:48 #20

varnull

Yup.. our config error was on our security software blocking proxy redirects. It works as advertised once we cleared that up.

Can't connect to certain private trackers that scan for proxy connections, and the ones we could seemed to suffer about a 60% reduction in speed.... Public tracker wise.. it seems to work fine. At a price of about 50% of a newsgroup account it seems like fair value for money, but I'm a little worried about the proxy server locations being open to seizure and containing all your details logged neatly.... just like happened to Oink.

Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. An engineer with a single tool in his toolbox is an idiot, not an engineer

12.8.2008 19:22 #21

NexGen76

Originally posted by varnull: seemed to suffer about a 60% reduction in speed....Thats alot of reduction in speed.I wonder does it linkup with Bitsoup? Thxs for the info Varnull.

12.8.2008 20:01 #22

Mik3h

The thing I'm worried about most is your servers being raided. I mean, fair enough you have them in 3 locations, but Europe - OinK was raided here. US - countless trackers raided here. Canada - Not much better.

[img][/img]

12.8.2008 21:10 #23

fgamer

I'm very interested in TorrentPrivacy, but I'm not sure if I completely believe them when they say they don't keep any logs of anything. It seems like another company that'll eventually get sued and have all their server records or whatever confiscated for the MPAA and OR RIAA which could put allot of people in even more trouble than if they never even used the program.

13.8.2008 01:04 #24

JOHNSTARR

10$ seems pretty steep when you can add the cost of a starbucks cup of coffee and head over to newsgroups.

Even if TorrentPrivacy doesn't store data, what's to keep the mpaa from raiding and logging current/future data of their own? This product would definitely make it easier for busting people in bulk and it will be on their radar if it becomes mainstream.

Just say NO to public trackers & limewire/kazzaa

Premium 360 Benq 1.3
XBOX 1.4- Zenium Chipped 300 Gb Maxtor

13.8.2008 05:26 #25

xtago

Quote:Quote:Originally posted by TPrivacy: Originally posted by susieqbbb: Ok sounds great minus one issue..

If you block your isp from looking at your network address on your computer the isp will automaticly ban your account this is true not only with comcast but even with qwest and others.Let me correct you - you don't block your ISP from looking at your network. You just encrypt the bittorrent traffic like VPN or SSH session. ISP sees the session, but he doesn't know what's happening inside.Azureus does that for free anyway.. never mind..

How does it block your IP from the tracker. Short tests have shown that our test IP is still appearing in the swarm. It does masquerade an IP as far as the modem, but outside ip remains the same.Please read more about Azureus features and about Torrentprivacy ones and you will realise that encryption which some bittorrent clients have is only to circumvent traffic throttling and not for security while SSH protocol has strong 128 bit encryption All data sent and received during the connection via secure SSH tunnel is extremely difficult to decrypt and read.This will be poor, SSH can be de-crypted easily.

You simply packet sniff the connection to grab the keys for the packets once you have that you simply de-crypt the packets, there's software you can get for free that will handle the sniffing the finding the keys then opening up the packets then placeing any info you want into a folder for going over at a later date.

Seeing as you have only have X amount of connections for the SSH connections it'd be quite easy to just sniff through the tunnels made.

SSH isn't intended for extended packet streams it's made so that the 1 packet that holds your credit card number etc will be harder to find and then grab from the packet, a check-out session works prefect for SSH connections because you'll have heaps of packets with usless info and only 1 encrypted packet will hold the right data.

but again you can get this data if you packet sniff the whole session, though using SSh for a check-outs with millions of streams and only 1 packet holding the data would be pointless for most people so they wouldn't bother going through the effort unless they are after that data.

Your idea is all tied to a central connection and then a bittorrent session can last for days so wouldn't be hard to pick up keys and then grab data and files out of a session.

At least with a current bittorrent session your some what protected in that your sending packets all over the place at the time so people can't get a good chuck of data where as SSH would allow for this to happen as your tunneling in and out the 1 tunnel.

The TOR network has the extact same problem it's all encrypted inside the network but the packets have to come out into the open and people simply packet sniff the entry/exit TOR servers to see what people are doing.

Everything is logged and can be tracked online, your clearly kidding yourself if you really think a SSH tunnel will stop media sentry from packet sniffing your connection they already do that on the other network and to an extend on the bit torrent trackers.

14.8.2008 09:52 #26

nonoitall

@xtago:
I think you underestimate the security of SSL. You can't just "grab the keys" and decrypt the stream. SSL uses a public key infrastructure that allows anyone to encrypt information to send to a party, but only allows that party (who has the private key that corresponds to the public key) to decrypt it.

But that's kind of a moot point for most people here, since the big issue is not concealing what's being transferred, but who's transferring it.

14.8.2008 16:56 #27

xtago

Originally posted by nonoitall: @xtago:
I think you underestimate the security of SSL. You can't just "grab the keys" and decrypt the stream. SSL uses a public key infrastructure that allows anyone to encrypt information to send to a party, but only allows that party (who has the private key that corresponds to the public key) to decrypt it.

But that's kind of a moot point for most people here, since the big issue is not concealing what's being transferred, but who's transferring it.Hate to break it to you, but yes you can crack it and you can get programs which will do it all for you.

See the Server key [secured digital certificate] for the server is produced by the server which ends up being the same for everyone and it can be verified but only by a seprate party.

A server trusted certificate will last for a few hours or a year or two, the server owner slects how long it will last for, these also need to be vilidated everytime a new one is produced other wise it won't be viliad anymore.

These 3rd parties are called trusted certificate authority, these are verisign etc.

The Server owner basicly pays money to these companies to simply say yep, the server's IP and web address and key are the correct at this time, as the server keys can be spoofed if they arn't checked and make any browser think it's at the correct server even though it's not.

In a browser this is simply the lock icon, people don't check the keys themselves, just assume the lock means everything is correct and safe and for big companies this would normally be correct but sometimes it's not the case for little companies nor phishing/spoof sites.

So for you to get the server key you have to have the trusted certificate in the first place to start SSL, and in the first or close to the first packet your browser will send your end user key to the server, if a trusted certificate authority doesn't check the server certificate, you'll be asked if you wish the accept the server key/trusted certificate before you can start a SSL session.

As I said before your credit card details won't be in the packet with your end user key but another packet that could be 10,000 packets after your end user key was sent to the server.

So basicly with SSL what your replying on is that someone hasn't grabbed the 2 keys( well your end user key at least as the server key is easy to get) at the start but if they did start sniffing packets that they have started after your keys were sent around the net, thus the packet with your credit card details is all encrypted and even if they got that packet hopefully they can't decrypt that 1 packet.

but if you packet sniffed for say 2 months straight trust me with the right programs you'll have plently of credit card numbers etc fairly easy you would need the data space to hold all that info though.

SSL is only basic protection for web shops basicly your SSL session should be only long enough to send your private data+credit card data, basicly say it's only 100 packets long not gigs and gigs of packets that you'd get using torrents also everyone would require your keys etc to get the data anyway.

As someone said before the encryption option in torrent client programs is somewhat based on SSL in that the encryption is the same across all programs bar a couple where you can select what encryption you want to use.

it's just doesn't use 128bit keys.

Though as you say all they need is the IP at the end of the day.

19.8.2008 03:31 #28

nonoitall

The key that one would need to decrypt the stream is never transferred, so how would a packet sniffer grab it? I'm not implying that SSL is the solution to anonymity problems at all, but I've written network and cryptography functions before and your approach to compromising an SSL stream doesn't make sense to me. (Anyway, I think we're getting a little off-topic here. :-P)

19.8.2008 05:20 #29

Killfly

I can't jump into the tech discussion, I don't know, but this discussion should be on fire.

Where'd the TPrivacy guy go?

Do you techies see the BTGuard service using 256bit AES as being a better solution? They really offer little info on thier service.

They are a small amount cheaper.

TPrivacy have you abandoned this discusion?

The private trackers I am member to would draw very little attention of law enforcement with thier very old and odd offerings in films so I'd just use an uncloaked utorrent for those.

Public trackers are indispensable though. I (we) can't all get those hot exclusive memberships and often hard to find software is only on the public trackers. I've been member to many of the best but if there's no Parking alowed I've long lost my membership never to regain it.

One off topic question, briefly, is Demonoid considered private at this time?

Feedback of users of the service appreciated greatly.

22.8.2008 12:30 #30

Mik3h

I'd use TorrentPrivacy even when downloading from private trackers. You can never be sure who's a member there. Even if the servers are raided your IP is still cloaked on their logs.

22.8.2008 15:04 #31

barry6521

OK after having read the comments ,can any one say if this really works like it says and is worth the money?

24.8.2008 14:42 #32

Mik3h

Originally posted by barry6521: OK after having read the comments ,can any one say if this really works like it says and is worth the money?When they start accepting paypal for "micro payments" I'll try it out.

24.8.2008 17:45 #33

varnull

I dunno Mike.. there seems to be a trust issue here which is larger than the matter of data security/encryption.

My associate paid a month just to test it out which we have. The speed hit we observed was worrying as these days you really want to hit and run on public trackers instead of hanging about for days with the way the ISP's are logging everything. You can bet they have the resources and software to crack simple public key encryption.. it just takes enough processing power (how big is virgin medias potential cluster?) thrown at it and there you have it... plus even through a proxy your IP (or it's hash) is still in the header so the proxy server knows where to send the packets ;) I have software to reverse engineer IP's from server hashes, and I'm sure the ISP's do too.

Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. An engineer with a single tool in his toolbox is an idiot, not an engineer

25.8.2008 01:25 #34

13.11.2008 17:53 #46

RoadRange

Yes, it takes longer to get the downloads started with DHT disabled, especially when there are few seeds and peers or the tracker(s) is(are) busy - have some patience, it will work eventually.

13.11.2008 20:20 #47

awdrifter

Is this a full on VPN or just a proxy service like BTGuard? Also do they still have the server in Netherland? Thanks.

14.5.2009 20:56 #48

linkswap

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28.9.2009 11:51 #49

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