Anonymous browsing

[safn1949]

A question for all of the computer gurus,what is the best way to surf anonymously? I turned a friend of mine on to torrents and they got an email from their ISP about downloading movies from the internet.I have no idea why they would care,but they do.

[jaynw]

A question for all of the computer gurus,what is the best way to surf anonymously? I turned a friend of mine on to torrents and they got an email from their ISP about downloading movies from the internet.I have no idea why they would care,but they do.

For ISP's its not necessarily a matter of what you're downloading, just how much of it. Some top tier ISP's let you have whatever you can fit through the pipe they give you.... others advertise a certain bandwidth, but as soon as you start maxing it out 24/7 they get ticked.

There's nothing you can do to hide it from your ISP, and no legal work around unless your community has free wi-fi or something.

[alkie]

I believe the movie companies especially are having a big push on the ISP's and are threatening them to bring their users into line or they will get tough on them. This seems to be just another plan from them to try and curb the movie torrents (some hope) so much so that a few of the ISP's are taking the threats of law suits seriously and sh#tting themselves.
I know of at least 5 ISP's in the UK who have been recently sending out letters like the one you have mentioned to some of their customers just to prove that they were taking it seriously.
As jay has said the only real thing they are bothered about is bandwidth hogs. There are some ISP's who try to block or limit your speed if they are aware that you are downloading from torrent sites but some torrent apps have ways to encounter that.
uTorrent for example has a facility that you can enable encryption on it to mask it from them.
I do not know how effective it is though.

[The Shape]

That's interesting, are we talking more main stream movies or porn, or both? When talking about encryption does that mean your isp can't see you or the torrent provider? If isp providers are sending emails and letters and such, I think we might start to see some of these torrent sites closing up shop.


The Shape

[alkie]

It's mainly the big motion pictures companies Shape.
Porn sites will never die, only a few torrent sites ever get caught out, most of them are usually always one step ahead.

[safn1949]

That's the problem I have,my ISP lets me download 5 Gigs a month and then they crank my speed back.After that I can download all I want,but at 25kbs or so.They are getting a letter because of copyright issues,I hesitated to mention that before,downloading mainstream movies.They,like me,are using utorrent and I thought there was a way to mask it somehow but I am not familiar with it so any info would be fabulous.

[The Shape]

Good to know Alkie, I just checked my email and have not received any dreaded emails from my isp

The Shape

[jaynw]

I just want to point out that this is generally an issue specific to cable ISP's rather than telco based providers. They have a stronger tie to the entertainment industry.

Also, based on the way cable or FTTN works, your high usage affects nearby users - unlike DSL or FTTP where you have a ton of bandwidth dedicated to you and only you all the way back to the central office.

[alkie]

That's the problem I have,my ISP lets me download 5 Gigs a month and then they crank my speed back.After that I can download all I want,but at 25kbs or so.They are getting a letter because of copyright issues,I hesitated to mention that before,downloading mainstream movies.They,like me,are using utorrent and I thought there was a way to mask it somehow but I am not familiar with it so any info would be fabulous.

This is slightly different mate, you sound like you have a capped service with your ISP, (which means you are allowed to download only 5 gigs and after that you are stuffed), many of them are like this now, unlimited downloading is really a thing of the past unless you are prepared to fork out a little more for it.
Are they trying to throttle your speed when you are still within your 5 gig limit?

If you want more info look here:

Does µTorrent support Protocol Encryption (PE)?

Yes, as of version 1.4.1 beta build 407. It is compatible with Azureus 2.4.0.0 and BitComet 0.63.
Protocol Encryption is a joint specification between Azureus and µTorrent. It is designed to bypass throttling and/or blocking of BitTorrent traffic by an ISP.
You can choose Protocol Encryption's mode of operation in BitTorrent. Here is an explanation of the various options you can choose:

• Disabled: Does not encrypt outgoing connections, but will accept encrypted incoming connections.
• Enabled: Attempts to encrypt outgoing connections, but will fall back to an unencrypted mode if the connection fails.
• Force: Attempts to encrypt outgoing connections, and will NOT fall back to an unencrypted mode if the connection fails.
• Allow legacy incoming connections enables or disables incoming legacy (non-encrypted) connections.

All modes will accept incoming encrypted connections (and the encryption is 2-way)!
It is NOT recommended to turn off "Allow legacy incoming connections", unless you cannot have any non-encrypted connections (typically in conjunction with Forced), in which case turning off "Allow legacy incoming connections" is acceptable.



For more info go here:
hxxp://www.utorrent.com/faq.php

[safn1949]

No,I can download at full speed for 5+ gigs and then it's automatically cranked back,not that big of a deal for me,I just let the computer run and download 24/7 as I drive down the road.

Thanks for the info on uTorrent ,I have forwarded it to my friends.