uTorrent, ToR, Privoxy

before i even start:

no, i don't intend on forwarding my P2P through ToR servers. just in case someone was going to hop on the flame wagon.

anyway. my point.

i've set up ToR and Privoxy with Firefox a while ago but only recently with uT. i just wanted to make sure that i've directed uT properly.

uT proxy:

localhost:8118 | HTTP

localhost being privoxy.

that's correct?

That is correct configuration, however you are basically discarding all possibility of getting incoming connections by proxying your tracker communications like that.

so is there anyway to proxy without disturbing incoming connections? (doubt it)

what would be the ideal setup to have uT function as normal as possible while being as anonymous as i can.

so is there anyway to proxy without disturbing incoming connections? (doubt it)

Nope. The way proxy servers work kind of prevent it without a LOT of fancyness.

what would be the ideal setup to have uT function as normal as possible while being as anonymous as i can.

Not downloading content that would get you in trouble with the law.

After that there isn't really anything.

Acctualy, "so is there anyway to proxy without disturbing incoming connections? (doubt it)"

uTorrent (if it works anything like other clients with proxys) will only use the proxy for HTTP requests, it won't really all data though the proxy..

To check, set uTorrent to go though Privoxy, and look in the status window, you'll only see requests to trackers, and if you use something like TorCP, the bandwidth usage will be low..

Theres really no way to be anonymous while downloading, you have to have your IP in the other clients, otherwise it wont work.. There are a few less-than-legal ways of downloading stuff without getting caught, but like DeadWingKnight said, the easiest way is just to download legal stuff

- Ben

I just setup utorrent to use tor/privoxy and while utorrent is downloading at 120k/s, tor is using about 1k/s. So far so good. If this means I'm not able to get incoming connections, what exactly does that mean? Is there any benefit to using tor in utorrent?

mrhogan

YOU CANNOT USE TOR FOR TORRENTS, ONLY FOR TALKING TO THE TRACKER.

Sorry Firon, but you probably meant ...

"You SHOULDN'T use tor for torrents [...]"

It's not recommended, since Tor doesn't have the bandwidth to handle stuff like BitTorrent traffic, not to mention you could screw up everything for everyone if the onions go down. Don't be a jerk and ruin things for people. :/

It's a matter of cannot, the Tor network explicitly forbids it. :/

i tried tor for the trackers but the connection was so bad most of the time that i disabled it again.

Yep, I Tor was too slow for me when I tried it. Of course, I would have stopped using it anyway, since I was only testing it because of all the hype =P

I guess i should have explained more. I never wanted to send all torrent data through tor. I realize tor isn't intended for that and its bad for the tor network. I thought that using it in utorrent would only make tracker information anonymous. I just wanted to know what this actually accomplished. I wasn't trying to find a way to download illegal torrents. I just wanted to be anonymous.

Sorry for the confusion, but I'd still appreciate an explanation.

Thanks

mrhogan

Well, you can use it for tracker communication, but be warned that you won't be able to receive incoming connections (except maybe on public torrents, with DHT enabled).

I'm glad that TOR explicitly forbids actual P2P data transfer, as it would kill the network faster than any other mechanism I could imagine. I trust uTorrent will watch TOR's back, in respect of this. I run a TOR node because I think it's the right thing to do. I'm sure there are various people in China and Saudi Arabia, etc., that are damned glad I do so. But if I thought for a moment that my bandwidth and CPU was going toward some Western punk downloading the latest Transformers movie, I'd be pissed. That's NOT what TOR was created to help with. 'Nuff said, I hope.

I should add, that I'm not flaming, I understand that your original post explicitly states that you are not intending to DL torrent-acquired data via Tor. But your original post is also a non-starter, if you think about it, so it LEADS in that direction. Let's say, for instance, that you used TOR with Firefox to gain access to a Tracker/List site so that you could comment anonymously because, for instance, you were banned under your actual IP. You still couldn't initiate a DL using TOR, since the moment you did so, your torrent client would give up your real IP and port. Clear? So the answer is NO there is no place for TOR in the torrent downloading scene, period. Magnet is as close as you'll get to tracker-free activity, and that won't really help with your anonymity...it will merely make the torrent scene more resilient to any situation in which trackers are being shut down by the authorities. Hope this is clear.

In summary, using Tor only hides your IP address from the tracker. As has already been mentioned this will mean you will only be able to receive incoming connections through DHT, Peer exchange and local peer discovery.

The Tor network forbids P2P data traffic. The only anonymising system that actively encourages P2P traffic is I2P (http://www.i2p2.de/), however uTorrent does not currently support I2P. Also, using I2P for torrents is very slow. (The only client that I have found reliably works for I2P torrents is the built in client I2PSnark).

The painfully slow speed of torrent downloading is in part due to the very small number of peers using I2P for torrents, but also due to the overheads the encryption and anonymisation process involves...

Anyway, TOR does not provide the sort of anonymisation that people are looking for - so you have to ask yourself, why bother ?