Dear Lifehacker, I’ve done lots of research about my Internet Service Provider’s relationship with my uTorrent activity, but I still don’t feel entirely confident in my knowledge about what they see. What does my ISP see when I’m torrenting? What if I’m encrypted, or under a VPN? Many of your articles talk about how to stay safe/secure/private, but don’t always go completely behind the scenes. Can you help clear this up? Thanks, Baffled By BitTorrent More »
Downloading a big file via BitTorrent can take a long time, and you don’t want to sit there and watch it all day. Here’s how to set up the remote web interface in your favourite torrent client, and monitor those torrents from any remote computer or mobile device. More »
Try as you might, there’s no foolproof way to be absolutely sure that your BitTorrent downloads are private and hidden from prying eyes. To prove it, one web site is posting your downloading habits out and in the open for all to see, and so we all understand how easy it can be to pin specific torrents to individual IP addresses. More »
uTorrent released a premium version of their BitTorrent client today, with some cool features like automatic virus scanning, video conversion for multiple devices and the ability to download torrents remotely. It does, however, come with a somewhat hefty $US25 price tag. Here’s how you can get and automate the best features of uTorrent Plus for free. More »
uTorrent, our favorite BitTorrent client for Windows, just updated with a few minor additions, including a $US25 premium client with built-in video encoding, virus scanning, and the ability to download torrents from anywhere. More »
One of the key reasons that torrented entertainment content is popular is because it gives us immediate access to shows or movies or music that might not see an official release in Australia for months or years, if ever. Staggering the release of new productions feels archaic in the internet age, but there are occasionally some good reasons it happens other than “we’ve always done it this way”. Here are five you might not have thought of. More »
We’ve spent a lot of time this week looking at proposals for how ISPs should deal with allegations of piracy via torrents and how those would work in practice. There’s broad agreement that the proposals aren’t perfect and that a dedicated downloader could easily work around them, but there’s also clearly some widely-held misunderstandings about the nature of the proposals and the alternative business models which might drive entertainment in the future. Let’s bust through a few of them. More »
If you’re using BitTorrent without taking special measures to hide your activity, it may be just a matter of time before your ISP throttles your connection, sends you an ominous letter, or you find yourself the target of a file-sharing lawsuit. Here’s how to set up a simple proxy to keep your torrenting safe and anonymous. More »
A coalition of ISPs has proposed new rules for dealing with Australians thought to have downloaded copyrighted material. It has already generated a lot of controversy and discussion, but just how will the process work? More »
Five major Australian internet service providers (ISPs) — iiNet, Internode, Primus, Optus and Telstra — have released a proposal for dealing with online piracy. It’s an education-based scheme that doesn’t force ISPs to cut off customers accused of piracy by movie studios, but there’s a way to go before it becomes reality. More »
