Using uTorrent 2.0 with It's Hidden VPN

[radium]

I've been using uTorrent for some time now but I'm a VPN newbie. I've started using It's Hidden (itshidden.com) VPN servers to anonymize my web surfing. As instructed at the It's Hidden web site, I set up a VPN in Windows XP Home SP3 and connected. Checks at various DNS info sites indicated that the IP address they were seeing was one assigned by It's Hidden, not by my ISP.

Without any changes to uTorrent 2's or my router's configuration including port forwarding, uTorrent appears to be operating normally.

My question is, under these circumstances, is uTorrent using the VPN? Is my torrenting as anonymous as my web surfing?

[severedsolo]

simple answer yes, i too use itshidden, mainly because its not software based so no hidden agendas there, and basically what it does is all connections from your PC will be diverted to the itshidden servers before being sent to their intended destination

[moogly]

UDP packets can leak your real IP, like DHT, PEX, etc...

[DreadWingKnight]

not so much with vpns moogly

[moogly]

With OpenVPN or PPTP clients?

[DreadWingKnight]

VPNs handle ALL traffic as if they were a network adapter.

They aren't the same as proxies.

[radium]

severedsolo, moogly & DreadWingKnight - thanks for your replies.

You have given me confidence to use Its Hidden. However, I've run into an issue using it. For some reason, while using it for torrent downloads, either Its Hidden or more likely my ISP provider is resetting the WAN connection. The result is that at some point, unless I'm careful and notice, the PC will revert back to the standard non-VPN network connection.

This is not a uTorrent issue, but I thought I'd include it here for those uTorrent users that might be considering Its Hidden. Note: I purchased a one month premium Its Hidden membership so this issue is not just a consequence of using a free membership.

[pirlengo]

Hi,

I do have the same problem. I use relakks to anonymize my downloads but from time to time I get disconnected from VPN and never reconnected. At this point I am visible and traceable.

Does anyone know if I can tell utorrent to download only if the vpn is on? Alternatively, is there a windows power shell guru able to give me a script to kill utorrent when the vpn goes down?

I can only program under linux shell

[moogly]

Use a better VPN provider with more servers, relakks is not stable (too much success) and it's only PPTP.

Some VPN providers offer remote port forwarding with the OpenVPN client (like https://blog.perfect-privacy.com/2009/06/30/perfect-privacy-remote-port-forwarding/), it's the best way.

[gnuBgone]

I have been experimenting with an ItsHidden free account for a few days now. I think that the free accounts are automatically disconnected after about 20 or so minutes of activity. I think that this is something that ItsHidden is doing and not an ISP.

My experimentation has shown that once ItsHidden VPN is disconnected, my regular internet connection resumes and uTorrent will pickup right where it left off. Only now all the downloads and uploads are fully visible and trackable back to my IP address assigned by my ISP. Not good.

I don't see any way that uTorrent can be configured to just use the ItsHidden VPN connection. If I am wrong about that, then let me know.

So my solution... I programmed an AutoHotKey script to monitor my IP addresses. When the IP assigned by ItsHidden gets disconnected, I have the script stop all torrent activity in uTorrent. Then the script reconnects to ItsHidden. Once the script sees the new IP from ItsHidden, it then starts the torrent activity again. And the cycle (Monitor IP, Stop torrents, Re-connect, Start torrents) continues....

One comment. I got FIOS to download real fast. But the free ItsHidden account has very limited bandwidth allocations. It is like dialup modem all over again....

[radium]

I started using VPNetMon to exit uTorrent when the VPN connection is terminated. It will also automatically re-start uTorrent when the connection is re-established. Since in Windows a VPN connection can be configured to "redial" automatically when the connection is lost, VPNetMon will stop and start uTorrent as required. As a security precaution, I never run uTorrent directly anymore, I let VPNetMon manage it.

I finally gave up on ItsHidden. The VPN was only stable at very slow speeds. I think it's a function of how much hardware they have to throw at the problem. As the new kid on the block, apparently ItsHidden doesn't have that much. With time they should improve.

Since I last posted here I tried different proxy servers and VPN providers. As others have posted, proxy servers don't handle incoming connections and therefore aren't really a solution to bittorrent with anonymous IP. I finally settled on Ipredator. It bothers me a little bit that they're located in Sweden which allows law enforcement to monitor Internet traffic. Still, that's better than ISPs handing data over to other companies without a legal requirement to do so. And sometimes, it's sufficient just to get the other end of your VPN pipe into a different country.

So far Ipredator has been absolutely stable with only a 5-10% slowdown in transfer rates. True, I only have a very slow DSL connection: 1.5Mb/sec down - 840Kb/sec up. It would be interesting to hear from other Ipredator users on their experience.

[Alancashirelad]

Hi Guys,

I know this is a bit off topic.

Has anybody setup a router with VPN to work with Itshidden or similar. I setup my Draytek 2820

and it connected to itshidden and show the links as active but but when I check my ip address is still my ISP. if I set up as per itshiddens faqs then it works ok ie setting up a new connection.

[radium]

I'm not familiar with that brand of router, however, your local network must still be assigned a WAN IP address by the ISP no matter if you're using a VPN or not. In the case of a VPN aware router, it will log-on to the VPN's server and handle encryption/decryption between itself and the server. You're still using the ISP's pipe and assigned address, however all the ISP can see are encrypted packets going between the router and VPN server.

[Lingus]

Hey ive recently started using the version of "itshidden" with my utorrent but it says the port isnt open and I cant find on itshidden if they have an open port number for torrents. Does anyone here know if itshidden have a open port for utorrent or am i gonna have to accept not having an open port on this VPN or find a new one ?

Any help on this would be good since im new to this vpn stuff

Thanks

[paintball9]

You shouldn't need an open port with a VPN, they should allow all ports. It bypasses all routers and hardware in between and acts like a direct internet connection for you, kind of like dmz on a router. Make sure your firewall rules apply to all internet connections.

[Switeck]

Having an open port might create more of a problem if/when the VPN goes down.