5 Ways To Download Torrents Anonymously

With anti-piracy outfits and dubious law-firms policing BitTorrent swarms at an increasing rate, many Bittorrent users are looking for ways to hide their identities from the outside world. To accommodate this demand we'll give an overview of 5 widely used privacy services.

With an increasing number of BitTorrent users seeking solutions to hide their identities from the outside world, privacy services have seen a spike in customers recently. Below we’ve listed some of the most-used services that allow BitTorrent users to hide their IP-addresses from the public.
The services discussed in this post range from totally free to costing several dollars a month. The general rule is that free services are generally slower or have other restrictions, while paid ones can get you the same speeds as your regular connection would.

VPN

Hundreds and thousands of BitTorrent users have already discovered that a VPN is a good way to ensure privacy while using BitTorrent. For a few dollars a month VPNs route all your traffic through their servers, hiding your IP address from the public. Some VPNs also offer a free plan, but these are significantly slower and not really suited for more demanding BitTorrent users.
Unlike the other services listed in this article, VPNs are not limited to just BitTorrent traffic, they will also conceal the source of all the other traffic on your connection too. BTGuard, Torguard and PrivateInternetAccess are popular among BitTorrent users, but a Google search should find dozens more. It is recommended to ask beforehand if BitTorrent traffic is permitted on the service of your choice.

BTGuard

BTGuard is a proxy service that hides the IP-addresses of its users from the public. The service works on Windows, Mac, Linux and as the name already suggests, it is set up specifically with BitTorrent users in mind. Besides using the pre-configured client, users can also set up their own client to work with BTGuard. It works with all clients that support “Socks V5″ proxies including uTorrent and Vuze. In addition, BTGuard also includes encryption tunnel software for the real security purists.
After these words of praise we’re obligated to disclose that BTGuard is operated by friends of TorrentFreak, but we think that should be interpreted as a recommendation.

TorrentPrivacy

Torrentprivacy is another proxy service for BitTorrent users, very similar to that of BTGuard. It offers a modified uTorrent client that has all the necessary settings pre-configured. The downside to this approach is that it is limited to users on Windows platforms. TorrentPrivacy is operated by the TorrentReactor.net team and has been in business for more than two years.

Anomos

“Anomos is a pseudonymous, encrypted multi-peer-to-peer file distribution protocol. It is based on the peer/tracker concept of BitTorrent in combination with an onion routing anonymization layer, with the added benefit of end-to-end encryption,” is how the Anomos team describes its project.
Anomos is one of the few free multi-platform solutions for BitTorrent users to hide their IP-addresses. The downside is that it’s not fully compatible with regular torrent files as Anomos uses its own atorrent format. Another drawback is that the download speeds are generally lower than regular BitTorrent transfers.
On the uTorrent Idea Bank, more than 1,600 people have asked for the Anomos protocol to be built in to a future uTorrent build, making it the second most-popular suggestion overall.

Seedbox

A seedbox is BitTorrent jargon for a dedicated high-speed server, used exclusively for torrent transfers. With a seedbox users generally get very high download speeds while their IP-addresses are not shared with the public. Once a download is finished users can download the files to their PC through a fast http connection. FileShareFreak periodically reviews several good seedbox providers.

Shhht

And then there’s Usenet.
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Feel free to drop us a comment if you think we left something out, or if you have experiences or recommendations you want to share.

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Adobe Says Piracy is Down, But Photoshop Still Rules Pirate Bay

Last year Adobe announced a shift away from boxed products in favor of a cloud-based subscription model. Now the U.S.-based company says that not only does it have more than 2.3 million cloud subscribers, but it has also seen a drop in piracy. Exactly how much is "hard to measure" but Adobe products still lead the way with pirates.

There can be little doubt that Adobe products are a crowd pleaser among digital creatives. Designers love

them, photographers and videographers do too, and Adobe’s Photoshop, Flash and Acrobat brands are recognized worldwide.
But while millions of people use Adobe’s premium products, not everyone pays for that privilege. Unauthorized Photoshop releases have been appearing on computers worldwide for 25 years and other Adobe products are regularly pirated close to their launch. Over time this has led Adobe to invest substantial sums of money on anti-piracy measures including DRM and even legal action. But there are other ways to deal with the problem.
In May last year and much to the disappoint of Adobe’s millions of pirate ‘customers’, the company announcemend that it would be changing the way it does business. Boxed products, a hangover from the last decade and earlier, would be phased out and replaced with a cloud-based subscription model.
On the one hand, many pirates heard the word “cloud” and associated that with a lack of local machine control, something that can cause issues when trying to run unlicensed software. Adobe, on the other hand, appeared to be looking at product development and the piracy problem from a different angle.
While attempts at hacking its cloud service would present another technical barrier to piracy, with its new offering the tech giant also looked towards making its product more affordable. A few dollars a month rather than $700 in one go was aimed at providing an economic reason for even the most budget-restricted not to pirate. But has the strategy worked?
According to new comments from Fabio Sambugaro, VP of Enterprise Latin America at Adobe, unauthorized use of the company’s products is definitely down since the cloud switch.
“Piracy has fallen,” Sambugaro says. “It’s hard to measure, but we’ve seen many companies seeking partnerships that in the past wouldn’t have done so.”
According to information released to investors last month, Adobe exited quarter two this year with 2,308,000 subscribers of its Creative Cloud service, an increase of 464,000 over the first quarter of 2014. The company attributed 53% of the company’s quarter two revenue to “recurring sources” such as its Creative and Marketing Cloud services.
So have the pirates given up on Adobe? In a word, no.
One only has to scour the indexes of the world’s most popular torrent sites to see that Photoshop, Photoshop Lightroom, Illustrator, Premiere, Indesign, After Effects and Acrobat Pro all take prominent places in the charts of most-popular torrents. No surprise then that on The Pirate Bay, Photoshop CS6 – the last version of Photoshop before the cloud switch – is king of the software downloads by a long way.
Also, and contrary to fears aired by pirates alongside Adobe’s original strategy change announcement, the cloud has not made it impossible to run unauthorized versions of Photoshop CC 2014, for example. Expected functional restrictions aside, torrent sites have plenty of working copies of Creative Cloud releases, but is this necessarily a bad thing?
There are those who believe that some level of piracy is useful as a try-before-you-buy option on a traditionally expensive product such as Photoshop. But what makes this notion even more interesting today is that Adobe’s switch to the cloud – and its much lower price point for entry – may see people investing a few dollars a month for increased functionality and a simple life, instead of one spent jumping through hoops with an inferior and oftentimes awkward product.
And Adobe knows it.
“I do not think people who pirate our software do it because they are bad people, or because they like to steal things. I just think that they decided that they can not afford it,” said Adobe’s David Wadhwani previously.
“And now, with the switch to subscriptions and with the ability to offer software at a cheaper price, we see that the situation is beginning to change and we’re excited.”
Richard Atkinson, Corporate Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy, admitted last year that the company would move away from “enforcement-led anti piracy” to a “business-focused pirate-to-pay conversion program.”
If the company is to be believed, that is now paying off.

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Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2014

Continuing a long-standing New Year’s tradition, today we present an up-to-date list of the world’s most-visited BitTorrent sites. At the start of 2014 The Pirate Bay continues to pull in the most visitors, followed by KickassTorrents and Torrentz. Household name isoHunt.com disappears after settling with the MPAA, but its replacement isoHunt.to is one of this year's newcomers.
With 2013 now behind us, which torrent sites are pulling in the most visitors at the start of 2014?

Traditionally, BitTorrent users are very loyal, which is reflected in the top 10 where most sites have had a consistent listing for more than half a decade. But in common with every year, 2014 sees a few movers and shakers, as well as several newcomers.
The top three slots remain intact compared to last year, with The Pirate Bay in the lead despite several domain name changes.

The most notable absentee this year is isoHunt. The site has been featured in the top 10 since 2006, but went offline in 2013 after it settled its legal dispute with the MPAA for $110 million.
Last year’s newcomer H33t also fell out of the top 10 after it lost its domain name. The site relaunched after two months downtime at H33t.to but has lost most of its traffic.

The first newcomer in the top 10 this year is YIFY-Torrents, which is also one of the youngest torrent sites after being founded in 2011. The site has grown tremendously over recent months, and by focusing on popular movie releases YIFY has evolved into Hollywood’s new nemesis.
Isohunt clone/replacement isoHunt.to is the second newcomer, which is quite an achievement since the site only launched two months ago. RARBG is the last ‘new’ name, the site has been around for many years but is listed in the top 10 for the first time.

Below is the full list of the top 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language content sites are included. The list is based on various traffic reports and we display the Alexa and U.S. Compete rank for each. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites.
Did we miss anything? Feel free to join the discussion below. People who want to increase their privacy may wants to use a proxy or VPN service.

1. The Pirate Bay

To many people The Pirate Bay is synonymous with BitTorrent. The site was founded more than a decade ago and is still expanding, despite various legal troubles, domain hops and ISP blockades. The Pirate Bay currently has well over a billion page views a month.

Alexa Rank: 79 (est) / Compete Rank: NA / Last year #1

2. KickassTorrents

KickassTorrents was founded in 2009 and has quickly moved up in our top 10, settling into 2nd position this year. Responding to a looming domain seizure the site moved from its kat.ph domain to Kickass.to last August. Despite domain troubles and blockades by Internet providers in the UK and Italy, the site continues to grow.

Alexa Rank: 103 / Compete Rank: 452 / Last year #2

3. Torrentz

Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for many years. Unlike the other sites featured in the list Torrentz does not host any torrent files, it merely redirects visitors to other places on the web. The site uses several domain names with .eu being the most popular.

Alexa Rank: 153 / Compete Rank: 1.377 / Last year #3

4. ExtraTorrent

ExtraTorrent continues to gain more traffic and has moved up again in the top 10, now placed as the 4th most-visited torrent site. This success didn’t go unnoticed by rightsholders groups such as the MPAA who recently called out ExtraTorrent as one of the top pirate sites. The site was forced to trade in its .com domain for .cc this year, after it was suspended by its domain registrar.

Alexa Rank: 363 / Compete Rank: 2,286 / Last year #5

5. YIFY-Torrents

Roughly three years ago nobody had ever heard of YIFY but today the movie release group is one of the most recognizable movie piracy brands on the Internet. This reputation resulted in a court-ordered ISP blockade in the UK last year.

Alexa Rank: 809 / Compete Rank: 6,245 / Last year #NA

6. EZTV

Unlike the other sites in the top 10, TV-torrent distribution group EZTV is a niche site specializing in TV content only. Because of its focus, EZTV’s traffic varies in line with the TV seasons.

Alexa Rank: 1,050 / Compete Rank: 10,790 / Last year #7

7. 1337x

1337x focuses more on the community aspect than some competitors. The site’s owners say they launched 1337x to “fill an apparent void where it seemed there was a lack of quality conscience ad free torrent sites with public trackers.” In common with most other sites in the top 10, 1337x.org is currently blocked by the larger UK Internet providers.

Alexa Rank: 1,382 / Compete Rank: 11,445 / Last year #6

8. isoHunt.to

Isohunt.to was launched last October, less than two weeks after isoHunt.com shut down. The site is not affiliated with the old isoHunt crew but copied the site’s design. This has not been without success, as the site now has millions of pageviews a day.

Alexa Rank: 1,550 / Compete Rank: NA / Last year #NA

9. BitSnoop

BitSnoop is one of the largest BitTorrent indexes, claiming to index a massive 21,437,061 torrent files at the time of writing. The site’s torrents list continues to grow steadily, as do the number of DMCA notices that it receives.

Alexa Rank: 1,714 / Compete Rank: 5,633 / Last year #8

10. RARBG

RARBG, which started out as a Bulgarian tracker several years ago, is the third newcomer in the top 10. Together with isoHunt.to it is the only website in the list that hasn’t been blocked in the UK, which may in part explain its popularity.

Alexa Rank: 1,867 / Compete Rank: 13,238 / Last year #NA

Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche. The Alexa rank for The Pirate Bay is estimated based on the ranking of the .sx domain and isoHunt’s Alexa ranking is based on the past month only.

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