Because of this reality, it is important for torrent file sharers to find ways to protect themselves from litigation, prosecution, bandwidth shaping, and malware. The following tips should help you make your torrent experience safer, private, and more secure.

Disclaimer: Downloading copyrighted media without the owner’s permission is illegal is some countries. Under no circumstances is this article intended to encourage illegal activity, and there are no guarantees that this information will protect you from any legal action.

1. Port Forwarding

Every modern router has some form of port forwarding that you can use for your bittorrent client. With it, you can circumvent ISPs that may block common torrent ports or limit their bandwidth usage. Using port forwarding, you could, for example, forward your BitTorrent traffic through the standard web port (80). Some torrent clients also support randomizing of ports so that they will use a different one every time you start them.

2. Limit Downloads and Uploads

Since many ISPs now limit the amount of bandwidth you can consume within a month (or even at certain times of the day), it is important to not let your torrent downloading and uploading go unchecked. Torrent clients like qBittorrent have features that allow you to limit the number, speed, and even time of day that downloads are allowed.

3. Encryption

Encryption is all about privacy. There is no reason for anyone, even your ISP to know exactly what sites you are visiting or what files you are downloading. Most torrent clients support some type of encryption for the data and/or header information. It is important to note that encryption will not mask your IP address, so anyone spying on the torrent (i.e. actively connected to the tracker) will still know you are downloading it, but anyone trying to spy on your Internet traffic in general will not be able to see what you are doing.

4. Filter Lists

There are plenty of organizations that are known for their snooping or malicious intent. With an IP filter list, you can completely block them from connecting to you as peers, thereby eliminating any chance of them monitoring you and catching you in the act of downloading something. This may also help reduce the chance that you will connect to a peer that sends out harmful data or malware.

5. Proxy or VPN

Of all of the security measures on the list, this is by far the most effective. By routing your torrent traffic through a proxy or VPN, you can completely hide yourself from the outside world. Used in combination with the other tools on this list, your torrent downloading will be virtually covert. Proxy providers usually charge a subscription fee, and they will require you to either download a specially configured bittorrent client or reconfigure yours to use their proxy (often utilizing a SOCKS5 protocol).

Your privacy, however, is only as secure as the company offering the service. If they are under investigation or are willing to sell your information, using their services may not help you at all. Therefore, it is a good idea to ask around and do your research before using a proxy or VPN service.

Privacy and Security

The media often associates BitTorrent with illegal file sharing, but there are numerous legitimate organizations, from Linux distribution developers to content delivery networks (CDN), that make use of bittorrent technology. Furthermore, many free media distributors who use open licenses, such as Creative Commons, use bittorrent to help reduce their bandwidth costs.

With a little effort, you can use the above-mentioned tools to help you take back your right to download and share legitimate content and software, while also maintaining your privacy and security.

Installation and Setup

Most Linux distributions that ship KDE as an option or as the default desktop also distribute packages for KTorrent. For example, to install KTorrent on Kubuntu or other Ubuntu variants, just use the graphical installation program or open a terminal and run:

sudo apt-get install ktorrent

Once installed, start KTorrent on the machine where you want it to run. You will need to configure it before you start using it remotely. First, in the main menu, click “Settings” and “Configure KTorrent”.

Set the default save location to the place where you want your torrent files to be saved. The web interface will not allow you to access this setting remotely. Click “OK” to finish the configuration.

Next, click the “Plugins” tab on the left. Check the “Web Interface” box to enable remote management. Now, go back into “Settings” -> “Configure KTorrent” and click the “Web Interface” tab. You should probably use a login and password, but it is optional. Make sure the default web server port is not used by another application. If it is, change it to something else.

Click “OK”, and you should now have a KTorrent web server running on the computer. To verify that it is running, open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080/. Replace 8080 with the port number you used.

Starting KTorrent Remotely

If you are not completely obsessed with convenience, you can always start KTorrent directly from the host machine and keep it running in the system tray. If, however, you need to start it remotely, you can use SSH.

Before you go any further, you need to make sure your computer’s firewall will permit the port you will use for remote connection.

Next, login to the remote machine via SSH:

ssh -l username ipaddress

Replace “username” with the computer’s currently logged-in username and “ipaddress” with the local IP of the computer. You may also be able to use the computer’s host name. It will prompt you for a password and should give you access to the remote command line.

Finally, start ktorrent so that it opens on the user’s current X display rather than yours:

ktorrent --display :0 &

If the user is not logged in on :0 X display, change it to the appropriate number. If you are unsure that it worked, you can check to see if it is running:

ps aux | grep ktorrent

You now have the option of adding torrent URLs directly through SSH:

ktorrent /path/to/torrent/file/filename.torrent --silent

Alternatively, you can exit SSH and access KTorrent from the web interface.

Web Interface

The KTorrent web interface is very basic but gets the job done. First, open your web browser, go to the IP address or hostname of the computer running KTorrent, and add the port number to the end. For example:

http://192.168.1.1:8080

If it connects correctly, you will see the KTorrent header and login form. Enter the username and password you created during the initial setup. If did not make one, it should pass you straight through to the interface.

The first page you see will be the Torrents tab. To add a new torrent, click “Load Torrent”. There are two ways to load a torrent:

1) with the direct URL to a torrent file from a website or
2) from a downloaded file.

Once you have entered the URL or file, click “Upload Torrent”.

Click back on the Torrents tab to make any individual configuration changes to downloading or seeding torrents. The buttons to the left of each torrent allow you to start, stop, or remove them, and the page will continuously update to show you current download information.

For torrents with multiple files, the title will be displayed as a hyperlink. Click on it to configure individual files. Using the icons to the left of each file, you can set the download priority for each.

The third tab is “Settings”, but this only contains a fraction of the settings available in the actual KTorrent application. It allows you to configure upload/download speeds and also gives you some control over the web interface, such as automatic refresh.

When you are finished with your torrents, click “Logout”. Alternatively, if you are completely finished with KTorrent and all of your torrents are completed, you can click “Shutdown” to end the program completely.

1. Transmission

As a baseline for comparison, we’ll start with Transmission, the default client in Ubuntu. It’s reasonably fast and powerful, but it does not include some of the fancier features like web content browsing or support for non-torrent filesharing. If you don’t need anything fancy, Transmission gets the job done.

• DHT Support: Yes
• Magnet Support: Yes
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: Yes
• CLI Client: Yes
• Web Content: No

2. KTorrent

As the name implies, KTorrent is a Bittorrent client for KDE. We’ve covered it in detail previously, as it’s a very capable client, and one of the few that include browseable web content. In this case, there’s a small browser window inside the program and a search box to go with it. A particular useful feature of KTorrent is that instead of manually prioritizing files as High, Medium, Low, you can put them in a simple list of the order you’d like them to download.

• DHT Support: Yes
• Magnet Support: Yes
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: Yes
• CLI Client: Yes
• Web Content: Yes

3. BitTornado

While apparently no longer under active development, BitTornado is a very simple, lightweight client for CLI and GUI that can still get your files fast. It’s missing some of the fancier features of newer clients, but its speed and small footprint keep it a good option for many.

• DHT Support: No
• Magnet Support: No
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: No
• CLI Client: No
• Web Content: No

4. OneSwarm

OneSwarm fills a particular niche in the world of torrent clients. It emphasizes the use of the OneSwarm network of peers instead of the standard torrent model. With it, you can create encrypted connections to people of your choice to browse and share files securely. It’s built on Azureus so it remains a perfectly capable torrent client as well. We’ve covered this useful application before and it remains a favorite.

• DHT Support: Yes
• Magnet Support: Yes
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: Yes
• Web Content: No

5. Deluge

Deluge is a very lightweight and flexible torrent client. It’s intended to blend in with any desktop scheme and generally stay out of your way. Deluge makes a great option for those who want all the power of a full-featured torrent client without unnecessary bells & whistles.

• DHT Support: Yes
• Magnet Support: Yes
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: Yes
• CLI Client: Yes
• Web Content: No

6. FrostWire

To add in a little bit of Gnutella P2P with our torrents, we’ve got Frostwire. It’s open source and built on Limewire so you have access to Gnutella search as well as torrents. This is another one that we’ve checked out in detail previously and it still stands out as a great tool to handle two of the most popular sharing mediums simultaneously and seamlessly.

• DHT Support: Yes
• Magnet Support: Yes
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: No
• CLI Client: No
• Web Content: Yes

7. Vuze

Vuze is a powerful bittorent client cum media player that allows you to search, browse, download, share torrents and playback media files. It has a great library of HD stuffs that you can download for free. We have also covered it previously in great detail. Feature-wise, it is one of the powerhouse, but it does take up lot of memory and system resources which doesn’t make it suitable for old machine.

These examples are some of the best among the dozens of clients out there. If there’s a quality client you’d like to see on the list, let us know in the comments.

Getting FrostWire

Windows, Mac, and Linux packages are available from the FrostWire download page. Depending on your platform, the package may include the Java runtime as well.

Linux users can run the package by double-clicking the .deb file from within your file manager.

Configuring FrostWire

Once installed, FrostWire should show up in the appropriate menu location. On first run, you’ll be asked to set the locations for incoming files and outgoing shares.

Downloaded files do not necessarily need to be shared to everyone else, and incoming files are often in an incomplete state, so it’s recommended to use two separate locations.

Next we have a few additional settings to get things tweaked just right.

Most people should be fine leaving the connection type at Broadband. The nickname section near the bottom will come into play if you decide to participate in the community chat feature.

Next, we choose exactly which type of files FrostWire will include and which to ignore when creating shares. This is an important feature, as it allows you to only share things like audio and video files while keeping documents, programs, and other potentially sensitive files private.

After a checkbox agreement that you will not use FrostWire for copyright infringement, you’ll get the main screen.

Getting Content

Chances are, the first thing you’ll want to do is get some files. The Search tab will perform a standard Gnutella network search, and results will trickle in as they’re found.

You can search for specific types of files (including torrents) and you’ve got plenty of filtering and sorting options to choose from. The panes on the left side will allow you to filter the results by different sets of criteria, based on what you’re searching for.

If you’re not in to the Gnutella side of things, Bittorrent is fully supported in FrostWire. While LimeWire may be the Gnutella backend, Azureus is the core of FrostWire’s torrent capabilities. The program itself shows little difference between the two download methods as they show up more or less identically in searches and the download pane.

FrostClick

FrostWire’s content site, FrostClick.com, doesn’t so much host content as collect it. Of the multiple categories available (audio, video, software, e-books, etc) you’ll find the most content in Audio. That’s not to say there’s a whole lot there, but the current count of 287 legal, DRM-free music torrents could make for a nice treasure for those who like to experiment with their music.

The software section is full of a fair amount of games, as well as a lot of free (open and closed source) applications like Hydrogen, GNU Solfege, and Paint.NET. All of which are, of course, available elsewhere. All this seems to make FrostClick less about providing something unique and more about having a single place to browse for interesting content. This would be better if there was more content overall, but as the popularity grows, the content usually comes along with it.

Have you ever used FrostWire? How does it stack up to LimeWire or other GNutella or Bittorrent clients? Let us know in the comments below.

A Little About RivetTracker

RivetTracker is a Bittorrent tracker written in PHP. It’s based on PHPBTTracker and includes detailed statistics, user management, browser-based configuration “wizard”, and plenty more. Since it’s PHP, RivetTracker isn’t necessarily dependent on any specific platform. This is the full list of requirements as stated by the RivetTracker website:

• A webserver, Apache is a great one.
• A recent version of PHP.
• The MySQL Database.

In short, it needs a LAMP server to operate (WAMP or MAMP server will also work). In this guide, we will be using Ubuntu 9.10, Apache 2.2.12, and PHP 5.2.10 as a reference.

Prerequisites

If you intend to run this tracker on a professionally hosted server, it should have all the necessary software installed.

If you intend to run this on your own server, you have to follow the article here to install a LAMP server in your system first before proceed.

During the installation of LAMP server, it will prompt you to create a root user, take note of the name and password you choose as we’ll need it later.

Note: Make sure you have installed the LAMP server successfully and verified that it is working before you proceed.

Installing RivetTracker

You can download the tarball from the RivetCode website and save it in your home directory. Extract the tarball (simply right-click on the tarball and select “Extract here“). You should now have a folder full of RivetTracker’s files, mostly in PHP form.

Rename the folder to “tracker” (without the quote)

Next, we are going to copy the tracker folder to your Apache web server. In your terminal:

sudo cp -R ~/tracker /var/www/

Setting Up RivetTracker

To begin the setup, open a web browser and point the URL to http://127.0.0.1/tracker/install.php.

We’ll be proceeding with the second option, letting RivetTracker create the needed database automatically.

In the field where it asks you for your admin username and password, enter the one that you have created earlier while setting up the LAMP server.

If you’re running RivetTracker on a commercial server, you may be able to use your usual login for that host. If not, you will need to contact your web host regarding MySQL access before you can proceed.

Main Configuration

If all went well in the last step (it should have clearly indicated the problem if not), you’ll get a message indicating the database was created successfully, and you’ll see the main configuration page.

Many can be left at the defaults, but there are a few that you’ll want to make sure to check:

• Make tracker hidden: Will force a login to view torrent list
• Persistent MySQL connections: Probably a good idea if you’re running this on your own server
• Upload and Admin user accounts
• Title on index.php statistics page: This will be the main header text on the front page
• Enable RSS feed: RivetTracker can send out feeds about new torrents
• Main website url
• HTTP seeding rate: In short, the amount of bandwidth to sacrifice to HTTP seeding
• HTTP seeding count: How many files to seed at a time
• Timezone

When ready, save the configuration. If the installer throws an error saying that it can’t save the config file, don’t panic. Just save the config.php file with the handy button, and manually copy it to the /var/www/tracker folder (you will need to have root permission).

Delete the install.php file

Now that you are done with the installation, you will need to remove the installer file to prevent someone from accessing it and use it to reconfigure your tracker.

sudo rm /var/www/tracker/install.php

Setting Permissions

To add new torrents and RSS feed, we need to change the permissions on the torrents and RSS directory:

sudo chmod 777 /var/www/tracker/torrents
sudo chmod 777 /var/www/tracker/rss

Note: Setting the permissions to 777 is a TEMPORARY solution. Securely setting permissions for writeable data on web servers is beyond the scope of this guide, and it is highly recommended that you look into that before deploying your tracker live.

You are good to go

Until this stage, if everything go smoothly, you should be able to access your tracker site now. Point your browser to your tracker’s address (http://127.0.0.1/tracker/)

Now’s a great time to test out those users you set up. The first has the capacity to upload but not delete, so let’s upload. Click Add Torrent to Tracker Database and you’ll be asked for a login. Enter the credentials of the uploading user and you’ll be knocked back to the main page where you can go back and get upload screen.

Note: Your tracker URL when creating torrents will be your tracker’s full address, ending with announce.php, such as http://127.0.0.1/tracker/announce.php

Once you’ve got the torrent file entered, the other options can normally be left at defaults. As long as you’ve got the permissions set on the torrents directory in your site’s root, and the torrent file has your tracker URL, you should be all set.

If you need to remove a torrent, you can do so by logging in as the administrative user and clicking Admin on the main page. You’ll find many other useful things there as well, such as additional statistics and configuration settings.

Now, you can go brag to your friends that yeah, you run your own torrent tracker, but really it’s no big deal.

In order to download the files associated with torrents, you need a BitTorrent client.  KTorrent, a KDE project, is a feature-rich client that is completely self-contained from the moment you start searching for torrents until the last chunk finishes downloading. Ktorrent is available for download in most Linux repositories and requires minimal KDE dependencies to run.

Searching for torrents

There are two ways to search for torrents:

1. the traditional way, using your web browser and opening the torrent file in KTorrent, or

2. searching directly within KTorrent. By default, there is a search bar in the top toolbar. From there you can select the engine you want to use.

For example, if you select bitjunkie.org and then type some keywords into the search bar, pressing enter will automatically switch to the search panel and bring up a new tab. This panel behaves like a web browser, giving you the ability to navigate backward and forward. Once you find the torrent you want, click the link, and a dialog will appear asking if you want to download it or save it. Click “download”, and it will bring up another dialog asking you where to download.

To add or remove search engines, click “Settings” and select the “Search” icon in the left column. From this dialog, you can also clear search history and open searches in an external browser like Firefox.

Downloading torrents

One thing to love about KTorrent is the flexibility it offers you. In the download dialog, you can select exactly which files within the torrent you want to get, rather than being forced to download multiple files you might not even need. This is particularly useful if the person who created the torrent added his own advertisements or useless images, or if you want a particular episode of a TV series.

In the “Torrents” panel, you will see information about your download, such as the current status, amount of data downloaded, seeders, leachers, etc. At the bottom of this panel are several buttons that will give you more information in the bottom pane. “Status” gives you a visual representation of the chunks available and downloaded. “Files” gives you a detailed list of each file and how much of it has completed. “Peers” shows you current seeders/leechers and their location. “Chunks” shows you which chunks are downloading, from which peer, and the download speed. “Trackers” provides critical information about the torrent’s trackers. From here you can add trackers, remove then, or update ones that might have failed to connect.

Plugins

KTorrent offers a plethora of plugins that add to its rich collection of features. From RSS syndication to a built-in media player that supports KDE’s Phonon backend, most users will be able to find something, if not everything they need. Some plugins I found extremely useful are:

1. Download Order – decide the order in which files in a torrent download.
2. Search – the previously mentioned search feature.
3. Web Interface – to control Ktorrent remotely from a web browser.

The amount of tweaking you can do in Ktorrent’s configuration is extensive. You can specify default ports, maximum download speeds, connection limits, proxies, seeding settings, specify file and disk settings, and select a default save location for your files. The interface is quick and easy to use, while users who expect a powerful file-sharing application will not be disappointed. Ktorrent is free software released under the GNU General Public License and is available for download for Linux, versions of BSD, Windows, and Mac OS X.

What does it do?

There are two aspects to OneSwarm – the private, secure, friend-based OneSwarm network, and the standard P2P. The developers took an existing Bittorrent client (Azureus) and heavily modified it to include support for their private network. They added a web client (you can control your file transfers through a web browser, even remotely) and included software for finding and inviting friends into your swarm.

Even if you have no interest in the secure swarm aspect, OneSwarm makes a great torrent client. It’s built on the Azureus classic UI which is a high quality mature torrent client. All the P2P benefits of Azureus matched with the extra functionality of the web client gives OneSwarm a very powerful feature base.

How does it work?

There are two methods of using OneSwarm, a web client and a desktop client. Both are usable immediately after installation, but the developers seem to encourage use of the web client. That’s where I’ve found most of OneSwarm’s unique features. The desktop client is more or less a standard Bittorrent client. So far, I’ve found the web client to be the way to go when working with OneSwarm friend-based transfers, but the classic desktop client gives more options for standard torrent downloads.

Windows users who’d like to use the desktop client instead of web can do so by right-clicking the OneSwarm icon in their system tray and choosing Show Classic UI. Linux users – access to the desktop client could vary widely based on your choice of desktop environment. Because of this, and to highlight the unique features of OneSwarm, this article will focus on the web client.

Getting Started

If your system didn’t take you to the web client automatically, you should be able to access it by opening your browser of choice to http://127.0.0.1:29615/. There you’ll find the opening screen for the OneSwarm web client.

For those who aren’t networking geeks – 127.0.0.1 is the address a computer uses to identify itself. By putting that into your browser you’re telling it “open the web page running on this computer”. The OneSwarm web client runs a small webserver on your machine so you can access the web client.

Finding Friends

The main concept behind OneSwarm is Friend-To-Friend transfers. When you first connect to OneSwarm, you’ll be asked to add friends. The first, and easiest way to do that is to choose “Use Default Settings”. This will connect you to the OneSwarm community server. Within a minute or two, you’ll see names pop into your Friends list. Users of the community server can all see each other, but cannot, by default, see each other’s files. Everyone on the community server is a “limited” friend by default and cannot trade files.

There are multiple other ways to add friends, all of which can be found by using the Add friends button below your contacts list on the left. For me, the GMail/Google Talk option would normally be a great way to add my friends, but as of the time of this writing, that feature does not appear to be working correctly. I have settled for using email invites through the Redeem/Create/View Invitations option.

When my friends get the invitation in their email, they can install OneSwarm and click the link included in the invite to become a OneSwarm friend. For example, I sent an invite to Tara, who has named her computer “Hank”. She downloaded the OneSwarm client, clicked the link in the invite, and now OneSwarm sees us as friends. She shows up on my Friends list as well as the community server with which she’s registered.

Friend Access

As noted earlier, friends by default are set to “limited” status. They cannot see each other’s files or initiate any transfers. Fortunately, removing that limitation is quick and painless. You simply choose Friends from the navigation panel on the left, and you will have the full list of friends. Click the one you want to share with, and remove the check for “Limited”.

From now on, Tara can browse through all the files that I have shared and choose whatever she’d like to download. Speaking of sharing…

Sharing Files

At the heart of any P2P app is the sharing of files. There’s not much point otherwise. To allow certain files to be shared over OneSwarm, you just add those files or directories to your Shared list. On any section of the OneSwarm web client you’ll find the Share button near the top of the screen. This will let you choose what to share. Here, for example, is one user’s files that they’ve chosen to open to the OneSwarm network.

I can download whichever of these files I like and choose where to save them. In addition, OneSwarm appears to have read the ID3 tag information for the music files, and added the album art to the thumbnail view. A nice touch.

I’ve found OneSwarm to be a very elegant, well-designed system. I’ve often looked for (and written about) ways to securely transfer files over the Internet. Some of them are simpler than OneSwarm, but not nearly as friendly and versatile. I’ll be sticking with OneSwarm for a while.

What about you?