Gaming Private Trackers

[Rowan]

Any reason to use a proxy whilst using private trackers?

 

[glitchcannon]

I don't use proxies anywhere be it private or public...
Just use peer block and you will be fine

 

[Rowan]

are you sure this is right.
I heard that peerblock doesn't do too much

 

[Originality]

Ultimately, the effect of PeerBlock or PeerGuardian or several other iterations of the same idea, do nothing to hide your virtual "footprint". It's just there to make some people feel better when they do things they shouldn't.

Do a lil research into how the internet actually works, and how information gets from any website to your computer. Then look at what PeerBlock claims to do.

 

[shamiko_]

besides, most proxy's either fail or are too slow

 

[Terminator02]

only proxy i've ever considered is BTGuard, it's been promoted by TorrentFreak and a few torrent sites

 

[Urza]

If you don't want to get caught, don't use p2p.

Bittorrent is a p2p protocol, and thus, insecure by design.

 

[Rydian]

Proxies hide your IP from the person or site you're connecting to. Your ISP (and theirs) can still see everything, and ISPs will hand over logs to law enforcement when told to.

The only real solution is encryption to stop sniffing, so even though connections can be seen, the data that passes through them cannot be. This restricts what you can do, as not all peers/seeds/whatevers support or enable encryption, so if you connect to them it won't be hidden, and if you force encrypted-only connections you won't be able to connect to them, so your pool of seeds/peers shrinks.

 

[Urza]

Proxies hide your IP from the person or site you're connecting to. Your ISP (and theirs) can still see everything, and ISPs will hand over logs to law enforcement when told to.

The only real solution is encryption to stop sniffing, so even though connections can be seen, the data that passes through them cannot be. This restricts what you can do, as not all peers/seeds/whatevers support or enable encryption, so if you connect to them it won't be hidden, and if you force encrypted-only connections you won't be able to connect to them, so your pool of seeds/peers shrinks.

Except the ISPs generally aren't where the suits originate. Its the watchdog agencies who own the clients you're leeching from. Encryption does absolutely nothing if you aren't leeching from a confirmed source.

This is why bittorrent is incapable of being secure.

 

[jefffisher]

using a proxy will get you banned from most if not all private torrent sites

 

[Originality]

There are some proxies which can scramble the usual "telltale" signs and traces to create anonymity in data transferal (making it difficult for people to sniff what data is going where, and track it back to you), however there's always a physical trail of connections that you can never completely cover up. You are connected to your phone relay, which itself is hooked up to a telephone exchange. From there, you go through a network of servers and relays to find the data/site you're looking for and send it, through the quickest available route, back to you. An official investigation can request records from each of these "nodes" to trace back to you. It's just a matter of connect the dots.

You cannot hide from the truth. You can only try to live righteously and make as few mistakes as you can. Or so it says in my fortune cookie of the day ;p

 

[FAST6191]

I should also mention many basic proxies forward origin/client data ( HTTP_FORWARDED packets among others)- you want an anonymizing proxy (US style wording is better for this sort of thing if you go searching) and there have been attacks on the torrent protocol/clients that can bypass proxies (I can not find a link right now but I can if you want).
High grade proxies do cost (or you have to set your own up which is still useless as you control endpoints and have responsibility for it) at which point you might as well buy either a VPN, a seedbox or better yet some usenet access.

Others seem to be being a bit coy about it but those "peer" blocking type things are useless mainly because as we are just discussing anyone can change an IP address (or more accurately an apparent one) at the drop of a hat. How having a list that is perpetually out of date and extremely ineffective by design as it were is supposed to protect anybody I will never know.

Other than that and ignoring most private trackers being extremely for want of a better phrase security concious the other main benefits of a proxy are bypassing blocking (given most ISPs that try to frustrate torrents use packet scanning/inspection that is useless without proper encryption that torrents lack, equally many proxies do not like torrents (big ones like onion certainly dislike it) you face the same problems there).

As Urza said torrents are inherently insecure, that is not to say all that risky (torrents vs hassle for them is in fractions of a percent). As for private trackers they might be slightly better than standard public but anybody can work their way into the vast majority of so called private trackers.

 

[easycrashing]

PROXIES DO NOT WORK ON BIT TORRENT.

You need a VPN, (vpn) seedbox, vpc -type service.

Problem is, you don't know if they record your data history, regardless if they say they don't.