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Protecting yourself when downloading using BitTorrent

Posted By Raymond In Category: Computer // Torrent

May
26
2006

If you’ve been using BitTorrent to download any of the more popular files, such as the latest episode of some major TV show, you may have found yourself receiving lots of “Wasted” data. This is data that has been discarded after being deemed corrupt or invalid by your BitTorrent client. Every so often, you will have received more wasted data than the size of the files you are downloading!

This is happening because Anti-P2P organizations are actively polluting P2P networks with fake peers, which send out fake or corrupt data in order to waste bandwidth and slow down file transfers. At its worst, when downloading major copyrighted torrents, as much as a fourth of the peers you are connected to can be attributed to various Anti-P2P agencies. There is also a much more serious side to this. Once you’ve established a connection to one of these fake “peers”, your IP has been logged and will most likely be sent to the RIAA/MPAA!

But there is a way to fight back! If you are using the latest µTorrent (1.5), you can employ a little known feature called IP filtering. The author of µTorrent has gone out of his way to hide it, but it’s there nonetheless. But before we can activate this filter, we need to retrieve a list of currently known Anti-P2P organization IPs.


This is most easily done by downloading the latest blacklist from Bluetack (the same people who wrote SafePeer for the Azureus BT client) at http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/nipfilter.dat.gz. This list is updated daily, and contains all known Anti-P2P organizations, trackers and peers, aswell as all known Goverment/Military IP addresses as collected by the Bluetack team. Once downloaded, extract and rename the file original filename “ipfilter.dat” to “ipfilter.dat” in preparation for the final step.

To make the list available to µTorrent, you need to place the renamed ipfilter.dat file in %AppData%\uTorrent. Go to Start -> Run and type %AppData%\uTorrent at the box. Click Ok button and a folder will appear.
utorrent appdata

After placing the ipfilter.dat in this folder, start µTorrent and go into preferences (Ctrl+P), then click on “Advanced”. In the right hand pane, make sure that “ipfilter.enable” is set to true, and then close the dialog. That’s it for the configuration.
utorrent ip filter

You can verify that the list has been loaded by looking under the “Logging” tab of µTorrent, where you should see the line “Loaded ipfilter.dat (X entries)”.
utorrent Loaded IP Filter

Congratulations! You are now protected against most of the garbage-distributing peers; and the likelyhood of the RIAA or MPAA knocking at your door has been substantially reduced! I’d go as far as to say that you shouldn’t be using µTorrent at all without this feature turned on! And even if the law enforcement side of it doesn’t bother you, you should still be interested in reducing the amount of garbage data that gets sent your way, which in turn leads to quicker downloads, and isn’t that something everybody should strive for? ;)

Note: It’s advised that you update the list at least once a month, to keep you updated on the movement of the Anti-P2P organizations. One tool that will aid you getting these updates is the “Blocklist Manager” from the same people who made the list; go to http://www.bluetack.co.uk/ and download it. On a related note, this note from the µTorrent FAQ should come in handy: “To reload ipfilter.dat without restarting µTorrent, simply open the preferences (ctrl+p), and press enter to close it again.”

Thanks to jesusisapervert for this tip!


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    • filipina wrestling fan

      thanks from the philippines!:D

      useful stuff!;)

    • kai

      Is there a Mac version of any BT client with similar IP filter lists?

    • http://www.nowhereinparticular.com ano nymous

      Possibly the most useful page I’ve found on the web in ages. Thank you for this.

    • Pingback: Sp4ngo! » µtorrent ipfilter

    • http://www.span2.com Freak

      Nice add to torrent protection. One problem I can’t seem to unrar the file??? When I use winrar to unzip the file I get an error message???

      Anyone help on this?

      Freak

    • daniel

      you dont ur rar it you just rename it thats all

    • flobert

      Something to note though
      The only people that promote these blocklists are those who, frankly, have no clue about how anti p2p companies do things.

      The entries on these blocklists are either so obvious, that they’re never really used to do anything but harrasment (and your torrent client automatically deals with clients that repeatedly send bada data,) whilst your list contains ips that have done it in the past. Could be a bad client, could have been mediasentry and they probably moved on. So, you’re blocking legitimate peers.

      The other entries on the lists are those that look to the list adders ‘a bit suspicious’ (their words). Every peer can look suspicious, especially on a busy torrent.

      Maybe the fact that I’ve yet to find a torrent site admin that advocates these lists either (and you know, if they did, they’d enable them on the tracker)

      You want to waste time, go ahead. Sow down your torrents, be my guest. Just don’t feel any safer, because you’re not. That AOL, COX, BT-internet, or bbb peer on your torrent connection, can you be sure they’re not the likes of websherrif, or media sentry, or even the MPAA anti-piracy dept. working frm home? Didn’t think so.

    • http://notworking not working

      not working ..

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    • dyani

      dude ya rock. this is need to know stuff. kudos

    • http://nowebsite hackzor

      how do i modify this file… i’ve found files named similarly around the net… some over twice the size of this one which means…. at least twice the number of blocked ips or servers/clients which provides more security… i’ve been using one of those provided by a user @ some other forum… that file is about 20 mb instead of 9 or 10 and so far so good… im gettin sh1t loada mainly chinese gov ip ranges blocked but also some anti p2ps like mdiasentry or or safenet inc

      how can i combine these w files together for better protection or is there a way to use two separate ipfilter.dat files @ the same time? btw usin UTorrent 1.7

      and propz for this post!

    • Clifford

      Good Stuff.

      I just searched around Ktorrent for a bit and found that not only can I use IP filtering but that it downloads this same list for me. Pretty sweet. Great for any KDE users out there.

    • Craig

      Use PeerGuardian 2 instead – automatic and works with any client!

      http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/

    • R3

      Great info! I threw together a little batch file to do this automatically. You’ll need wget.exe and gunzip.exe for this to work. You should be able to find both pretty easy via Google.
      Also, the new uTorrent (1.7.5) will let you reload on the fly. Click on the “Peers” tab, right click in the bottom window and select “Reload IPFilter”

      Save this file as ipfilter_updater.bat
      ________________________________________
      del c:\nipfilter.dat.gz c:\ipfilter.dat
      wget http://www.btack.info/nipfilter.dat.gz -O c:\nipfilter.dat.gz
      gunzip -d c:\nipfilter.dat.gz
      ren c:\nipfilter.dat ipfilter.dat
      copy “%AppData%\uTorrent\ipfilter.dat” “%AppData%\uTorrent\ipfilter.bak”
      move c:\ipfilter.dat “%AppData%\uTorrent\ipfilter.dat”

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    • goodzfinder1337

      Thanks, this is a MUST HAVE

      Very easy instructions

    • Kiran

      Thanks You very much.I like this little tool a lot.

    • seth

      thanks a lot!

    • Vitaliy Romanyuk

      Unfortunately this decision is wrong nowadays:

      the p2p (anti-p2p) list ARE DEAD and can’t b obtained any way.

      All tries to get this list redirects to so called “level1″ list which includes tooo many “normal” IP ranges (cable and dsl pools, city-area nets etc.)

      And using this (level1) list blocks a lot of “fair peers” (read: potential sources).

    • joaor

      tem muitos usuarios chineses q gostam somente de sugar (leechers) e nao gostam de semear(seed). se todo mundo os banisse tambem, teriamos muito mais banda para os downloads
      quem quiser a lista com estes ips tem aqui:
      w16.easy-share.com/1700236774.html

    • Amr

      if you please (Vitaliy Romanyuk ) if u can provide us to a direct link to further explanation of what u said it would be nice , coz there’s nothing about (potential sources) on this page

    • mehrshad

      hi
      last week i received a warning from my isp for downloading simcity societies on utorrent. amazing part was that I didn’t complete the 3gb download and deleted the file and link all together. but anyways I was caught the moment i clicked on the link……I have been searching all over the internet pages to find a solution and there is none. it is in the nature of the torrents to giveaway your Ips and other relevant info to the ones who are hunting downloaders. there is no effective way to avoid it. its like diving to a water pool naked and expect not to get wet.Its just a matter of time. you do it, you will receive on of those warnings.It is f*** privacy breaching but they are doing it and it is getting even worse. prosecuting offenders is not a strong law yet but they will pass one ASAP if it continues like this. they will crucify one to set an example for others. just be careful and try to avoid obvious copyrighted peers. goodluck.

    • M@r$#@1
    • m00t

      FYI Bluetack’s blocklists are notoriously came from as superficially (if not uninvestigated) investiga source.

      There is also a small ipfilter that wouldn’t block around 50% of all IP in the world (doh!)

      IpfilterX, Google is your friend.

    • Dude

      The file is zipped with GNU zip (.gz suffix).

      You must have your head up your ass not to know this.

      WinRAR handles the format. The easiest thing is to simply hit “Ctrl-C” on the file in WinRAR’s view (which presents the uncompressed file, with the .gz suffix removed), and then “Ctrl-V” to paste it into the Windows folder where you want it.

    • Dudu

      Is this really working ? Do I really block 50% of the potential sources or is it better ?
      Thanks for your answer!

    • Scott Decan

      How does BitTorrent measure the average network throughput? I know you can use Ping latency but Ping latency is not average network throughput, even though the two may be correlated.

      Do they measure average network throughput between the user and the tracker, and not between the user and any other device?

      Does the tracker route requests to the peers/media servers and does it do so based, at least in part, on the average network latency between the user and itself?

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