It doesn’t make you anonymous. Torrent protocol wasn’t designed with anonymity in mind and there are a million ways you’re going to leak your actual IP address.
Tor is a TCP only network.
While this doesn’t give you the anonymity you wanted, it will hurt the network for other users.
I pay monthly for access to a SOCKS5 proxy service from a company called BTGuard, and tell my BT client to connect through that. It is not expensive and works great I’ve been using it for about 12 or 13 years, and found it after getting an email from my ISP saying they identified me downloading TV shows. In that time, I have only had issues a handful of times. More reliable than most other services I pay for and I’ve never seen another DMCA notice since.
I do not use their VPN, just the socks5 proxy, so I can’t comment. It’s $6.95 USD monthly. Costs less than a meal out. Do you have an alternative that is less expensive with no catches or limits? I’m all ears. Serious. I’m always willing to try other stuff. Any socks5 proxy service that costs less.
I just don’t get calling it expensive. It’s not really.
Correct. I’m a leech. I use a private tracker and whenever I need ratio, I pay for a month of seedbox on feralhosting and grab popular torrents for a month. I have a ton of surplus ratio.
Most providers have long-term plans for less - like $3/month for 2-3 years. That’s still the cost of eating a few meals out. Some of them even have port forwarding. Why spend double the money for less features?
Just found out about i2p, i2psnark worked with i2p torrent (I couldn’t make qbitorrent work). If I understood corectly, it should work with non i2p torrent if someone on the i2p network has it, but it’s still pretty niche so right now it doesn’t work mist of the time.
Currently BiglyBt supports I2P and it has been that way for quite some time.
If you use qBittorrent, I2P support will come in version 4.6. you can try it out now with the published release candidate version. Probably other clients are working on it too as the support is coming from the libtorrent programming library, which is used by other clients too.
Right now, I2P is quite slow in my experience, in terms of loading I2P websites. I hope that it’s just a misconfiguration on my part, or that these specific sites I tried are just overloaded.
Tor is about privacy (and is prone to being compromised but…). So long as the exit nodes are in “friendly” countries and are run by trustworthy individuals (…), you are “safe”. And that is why it is popular among journalists. The downside being that a lot of heinous shit is done on Tor and those exit nodes are potentially liable for them.
I2P is about avoiding censorship. Everyone is an exit node and cops kicking down doors doesn’t significantly hurt the network.
But… I would very much NOT use that for torrenting. Because the endpoints can still be detected and recorded. And “I wasn’t downloading that Tay Swizzle concert, I was just letting potentially thousands of other people use my computer to download it… Why did you suddenly start laughing and talking about The Pirate Bay?”.
And that also ignores the “darker” parts of the dark web. Where, rather than getting a letter from the MPAA you get a visit from Chris Hansen.
It is not true that every node is an exit node in I2P. The I2P protocol does not officially have exit nodes—all I2P communication terminates at some node within the I2P network, encrypted end-to-end. It is possible to run a local proxy server and make it accessible to other users as an I2P service, creating an “exit node” of sorts, but this is something that must be set up deliberately; it’s not the default or recommended configuration. Users would need to select a specific I2P proxy service (exit node) to forward non-I2P traffic through and configure their browser (or other network-based programs) to use it.
Maybe I am missing something but that just feels like you are arguing semantics.
Traffic exits the sub-WAN from basically any of the computers/nodes in it. So it might not be a Tor Exit Node ™ but it still has all the dangers of it.
First, let’s start with the basics. An exit node is a node which interfaces between the encrypted network (I2P or Tor) and the regular Internet. A user attempting to access a regular Internet site over I2P or Tor would route their traffic through the encrypted network to an exit node, which then sends the request over the Internet without the I2P/Tor encryption. Responses follow the reverse path back to the user. Nodes which only establish encrypted connections to other I2P or Tor nodes, including ones used for internal (onion) routing, are not exit nodes.
Both I2P and Tor support the creation of services hosted directly through the encrypted network. In Tor these are referred to as onion services and are accessed through .onion hostnames. In I2P these internal services (.i2p or *.b32) are the only kind of service the protocol directly supports—though you can configure a specific I2P service linked to a HTTP/HTTPS proxy to handle non-I2P URLs in the client configuration. There are only a few such proxy services as this is not how I2P is primarily intended to be used.
Tor, by contrast, has built-in support for exit nodes. Routing traffic anonymously from Tor users to the Internet is the original model for the Tor network; onion services were added later. There is no need to choose an exit node in Tor—the system maintains a list and picks one automatically. Becoming a Tor exit node is a simple matter of enabling an option in the settings, whereas in I2P you would need to manually configure a proxy server, inform others about it, and have them adjust their proxy configuration to use it.
If you set up an I2P node and do not go out of your way to expose a HTTP/HTTPS proxy as an I2P service then no traffic from the I2P network can be routed to non-I2P destinations via your node. This is equivalent to running a Tor internal, non-exit node, possibly hosting one or more onion services.
Fair enough. Then you have the exact same risks as far as torrenting (the point of this thread) are confirmed. But still increased risks as far as csam.
What “increased risks as far as csam”? You’re not hosting any yourself, encrypted or otherwise. You have no access to any data being routed through your node, as it’s encrypted end-to-end and your node is not one of the endpoints. If someone did use I2P or Tor to access CSAM and your node was randomly selected as one of the intermediate onion routers there is no reason for you to have any greater liability for it than any of the ISPs who are also carrying the same traffic without being able to inspect the contents. (Which would be equally true for CSAM shared over HTTPS—I2P & Tor grant anonymity but any standard password-protected web server with TLS would obscure the content itself from prying eyes.)
You are still possessing csam while being used as a node to transit it.
A compromised (or even honey pot) node can show all the people who were “just holding it for a friend”. And ignoring that ISPs have historically cooperated in investigations, they also have many more lawyers.
So regardless of your ethical/moral concerns over facilitating the transit of csam, you are opening yourself up to being caught in a semi-tech savvy investigation.
This is not how the law is applied to packet switching.
If it was store and forward then maybe just maybe law enforcement would care, but anybody smart enough to set up an I2P node to research it and who tried to track where packets from from would first see the packets originate from their own local node at 127.0.0.1, then in the I2P console they could see that packet came in via an active half-tunnel from their own end interfacing with the endpoint node of the other side’s half-tunnel, and they would know that node has no idea what it’s sending (just like their ISP)
You are assuming good faith on behalf of law enforcement
You are assuming any investigation would go beyond the equivalent of "Well, we see these twenty peers in the download queue. Look up to see if we can send a DMCA"
You are assuming “I was just trying to help people share material they don;t want law enforcement to know about. How was I supposed to know it was csam? I am the real victim here” will work, at all.
1: then they would go after literally anybody running a node
2: their client will not see peers on another IP. It will just see their own I2P node. Any I2P aware software will also not have any IP addresses as peers, only I2P specific internal addresses. They will not even be able to associate an incoming connection to any one node without understanding the I2P network statistics console.
3: by this argument all anonymization tools should be illegal, Signal too, etc, and nobody should help anybody maintain privacy. In the real world there’s plenty of reasons why anonymization tools are necessary. And there will be literally zero evidence tying you to a crime. Preexisting legal precedence says an IP address alone is not enough.
then they would go after literally anybody running a node
ACAB? Also, I’ll get back to this
their client will not see peers on another IP. It will just see their own I2P node. Any I2P aware software will also not have any IP addresses as peers, only I2P specific internal addresses. They will not even be able to associate an incoming connection to any one node without understanding the I2P network statistics console.
And only people with similar politics to you will ever gain that understanding? Again, more on this
by this argument all anonymization tools should be illegal, Signal too, etc, and nobody should help anybody maintain privacy. In the real world there’s plenty of reasons why anonymization tools are necessary. And there will be literally zero evidence tying you to a crime. Preexisting legal precedence says an IP address alone is not enough.
And countries around the world are increasingly pushing legislature to make “anonymization” and “encryption” tools illegal (or at least require backdoors).
Which gets back to the politics aspect. Even among those of us who care about personal security (which, again, has nothing to do with torrenting but here we are), the likelihood of others to use it for nefarious and evil purposes is a problem. I’ve taught a few journalist friends how to use tor but I personally do not because that, and tools like i2p, tend to also be used for csam and I have pretty strong morals and ethics about not facilitating the dissemination of that.
And, as we remember once or twice a year, there are “hacktivist” groups out there who like to have a field day. And compromising tools used for the distribution of csam is something that many groups do.
But also? Those piece of shit cops and governments trying to get their fascism on? It is a lot easier to push for “extreme measures” when it is going up against pedophiles and child abuse. We saw similar with how the US (and other western nations) cracked down on immigration under the guise of “stopping the Muslims from doing another 9-11”. And we are likely to see similar come out of the Israel/Palestine war.
MAYBE you get a really good lawyer so that you can get off on… Maybe you get a really good lawyer who cites the proper legal precedents AND a judge AND a jury who actually care about that. You have still had your reputation ruined for “being a pedophile” and laws are already being pushed to make using any of these tools illegal to begin with. And The People will generally support it because CSAM.
And getting back to “an IP address isn’t enough”: Yes, some judges have decided that. Was it Avatar that was the big case people like to cite? Been a minute. But that doesn’t stop other judges who just don’t give a shit about precedent still providing the subpoenas. And considering that getting the equivalent of a peer list requires “understanding the i2p network statistics console”: There are likely to be additional “fingerprints” involved. I’ve not spend much time looking at said console so am assuming there is nothing as stupid as a mac address, but it becomes a lot harder to say “Old Lady Withers across the street was using my wifi”.
Just because people are stupid and this is the inevitable drive by from the peanut gallery:
No, I am not saying that everyone who uses tor or i2p or whatever are pedophiles. What I am saying is that those are tools that are pretty notorious for being used to distribute and share csam. And while some people are okay with “Oh yeah, my private browsing of this website helped to mask child porn but I personally didn’t look at or share any”, I am not.
Your scenario would specifically require the cops to ask their techs for a detailed report and then deliberately lie about it’s conclusions to attack completely random people, and just FYI the last few rounds of this happened when public WiFi was new and the cops kept losing so badly in courts that this doesn’t really happen much anymore. You don’t even need a great lawyer, just an average one who can find the precedence.
There’s no “additional fingerprints” of relevance binding any node in a tunnel to the communications in the tunnel. It uses PFS and multiple layers of encryption (tunnels within tunnels). They need to run a debugger against their node to have any chance to really argue that a specific packet came from a specific node, which also would ironically simultaneously prove that node didn’t actually know and was just a blind relay (just like how mailmen aren’t liable for content of packages they deliver).
Your argument is literally being used to argue that nobody should have privacy because those who don’t break laws don’t need it, yet you yourself are arguing for why we still need privacy if we haven’t broken laws. The collateral damage when such tools aren’t available is so much greater than when privacy tools are available. One of the greatest successes of Signal is how its popularity makes each of its users part of a “haystack” (large anonymity set) and targeting individual users just for using it is infeasible, protecting endless numbers of minorities and other at-risk individuals.
In addition, it’s extremely rare that mass surveillance like spying on network traffic leads to prosecutions. It’s usually infiltration that works, so you running an I2P node will make zero difference.
I2P is a P2P darknet. on tor the network is run by volenteers (~6000 nodes) while on I2P everyone on the nerwork is a node, and their are no built in exit nodes (in i2p their called outproxies). the official I2P router has a built in torrent client as well. like torrents the more people on i2p the faster the network, while the opposite is true for tor.
I2P doesn’t behave like Tor by default, it’s designed around connecting to internal peers within its network so your browser won’t treat it as a proxy but default and you have to specifically configure it to route traffic to the I2P network
I2P is a truly anonymous darknet where every user is a node in the network, unlike TOR where everyone is leeching off of the 6000 nodes. I2P also works great for torrenting. I2P is only for accessing I2P sites and not for anonymous clearnet browsing.
I have never tried the mobile version, but here’s some info for desktop:
There is a java version simply called “I2P” and there is a C++ one called “I2Pd”. Start with the java one, it’s easier and has built-in torrent webclient.
Install I2P from geti2p.net and start it. You are now a node/router in the network. To access I2P darknet websites like http://planet.i2p you have to tell your browser to use I2P proxy. You should use a different browser profile for using I2P, on firefox you can create one at about:profiles .
Enable I2P on firefox: Settings -> General -> Network Settings. Set manual http and https proxy to 127.0.0.1 port 4444 . You should now be able to visit eepsites (sites ending with .i2p). Always put http:// manually at the beginning. If it tells you to use jump services because it can’t find the site, just click on one of the suggestions.
Torrents are on http://tracker2.postman.i2p . Find one, copy the magnet link and go to the torrent webclient: 127.0.0.1:7657/i2psnark . Add the torrent there. Done, you are now anonymously torrenting.
On a high level, I2P is an overlay internet on top of the regular web. Everyone has a router address that acts like a regular IP address, except that this one is purely inside the I2P software. So unlike IP addresses that go over your ISP to connect to the internet, on the I2P network your router can connect to other routers directly without the concept of ISP.
Your traffic makes multiple unidirectional hops over nodes in the network before it accesses the site/peer you want to connect with. Connection from your peer back to you goes back over another set of unidirectional nodes (unlike TOR where contacting and receiving uses the same set of nodes). The connection between the nodes uses the latest encryption methods of course.
For more details you would have to ask someone else.
Isn’t it dangerous to have every client also be a node? Sure, my torrents would come out someone else’s node, but someone else’s torrent could easily come out mine.
I don’t think my ISP cares whether it was actually me who used my IP to get a piracy complaint?
Unlike Tor, which is built around accessing the clearnet anonymously, I2P is primarily designed around keeping traffic in the darknet. When you join I2P, you route traffic for other nodes but only within the I2P network, it will never leave through your clearnet address.
The equivalent of Tor’s exit nodes are called “outproxies”, but they aren’t often used, there aren’t very many of them, and you have to specifically set them up manually as it isn’t the default behavior like it is for Tor.
I’d err on the side of caution. I always use a VPN for privacy reasons, my ISP doesn’t need to know what websites I’m visiting and which P2P protocols I use. Also, there’s no need to expose my approximate geographical location to every service I connect to.
The cost is reasonable, you can get 1tb of storage for around £10 a month. Most Seedboxes will let you install VPN servers on them as well, I’m not sure what you pay for specific VPN software nowadays. So you could theoretically replace Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu etc and have a VPN.
They’re basically required for building ratio on private trackers nowadays.
Specifically, it overloads the network. A single VPN server used for torrenting (proton, air, nord, etc) deals more traffic than the whole Tor network.
TCP is a protocol where all the data is verified when sent. There is extra back and forth communication along with the payload to check that the payload arrived safely. Its great for downloading files when you want to make sure nothing is missing or damaged. UDP is more like a constant data stream where the sender doesn’t care if it all gets to you. The advantage is that you send less data overall, useful if you don’t care if one frame of a video stream looks weird.
One protocol isn’t safer than another, its all about how much bandwidth you have/need. Torrenting over TOR uses up way more bandwidth than needed. Depending on the implementation, TCP can use 50% more bandwidth.
I’m definitely not an expert on Bittorrent, but I believe the person above was incorrect - I think there are some extensions to the protocol that enable UDP transport, but typically Bittorrent traffic occurs primarily via TCP.
What you said makes perfect sense in that hypothetical context, though!
Same here. Whilst torrent sites themselves are blocked, once you get the magnet link/torrent via a proxy/VPN, there is no issue. I do not think anyone has ever received a cease and desist letter from their ISPs here. But then, I think, this is the case for many countries outside of the developed world.
Canada? Idk the actual legality but I’ve been torrenting bare for nearly two decades and have only received two meaningless warnings from my ISP in that time.
Edit: I misread the statement. Thanks for pointing this out to all the repliers! My fault.
The first point of the answer is misleading. Tor is indeed designed with anonymity in mind. The leaks occur in different layers, like the for e.g. chosen BitTorrent client.
Depends. It’s definitely smaller than TOR because people don’t know of it. It’s slower, but if you don’t need things on demand, have a seedbox or some way to torrent 24/7, things are quite acceptable.
I didn’t think people torrented over TOR. Aside from the security issues (which I didn’t know about in the first place), I would think it’s gotta be insanely slow. Is it not?
I keeps getting brought up because TOR is the most popular anonymizing network. It’s not far-fetched to think “how can I make myself anonymous while torrenting?” search for “how to be anonymous online”, find TOR and put two and two together. It happens all the time, which is why the blog post by TOR was made about it.
Gotcha, yeah that checks out. I guess I never made that connection, even though I use TOR and torrent here and there. Probably also because I’m more concerned about download speeds over privacy when torrenting. And regular web traffic over TOR is often insanely slow compared to the clearnet.
Ever since getting a copyright strike several years ago, I’ve switched to using a commercial VPN while torrenting. I don’t know if that’s the all-in-one solution for hiding from my ISP, but it seems to work. But I also rarely torrent these days, too, so not as many opportunities for them to catch me, I suppose.
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