8 ms·

I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

120 points by d33 9y ago

sli 9y ago
Seems IP-based, and so completely ineffective at identifying VPN users, then. And it promotes sending your friends shady links so you can spy on them.
- d33 9y ago
  I hadn't submitted this because I approve it, but because I believe it should be used as a warning. BitTorrent seems to be the most popular P2P network right now and I believe that this kind of websites pose a real threat to it.
mimsee 9y ago
Shady practice or not I find this interesting. Following is a link for North Korean BitTorrent activity. https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/KP/daily https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/KP/daily
thisisit 9y ago
IP based, so if your ISP doesn't provide a static IP it will show incorrect results.
- paganel 9y ago
  As it does for me. I’m writing this from my phone (using my phone’s data plan) and apparently someone else downloaded a couple of movies yesterday from this very IP. It wasn’t me, that’s for sure.
lev99 9y ago
I'm not on this list so something is clearly wrong.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
teilo 9y ago
Well, it lets me know I have to remind my users that attempting to download porn on the company network is NOT ok. I only wish I could put the title of the video in the all-company email. Even the title is NSFW. But it would scare whoever did it.
- hartator 9y ago
  Glad you get your priorities right.
jrochkind1 9y ago
That's how BT works, of course, what IP is downloading what torrent is not private information (and kind of can't be, from others participating in the torrent. you can blacklist known snoop IPs). The RIAA already knows too. But yeah, good to remind people.
zlynx 9y ago
I guess I'm doing something right because even though I use a static IP and no VPN, and I've been continuously seeding some torrents since 2012 that site does not list any of my downloads. It probably only looks at popular movie download sites and I don't use those. But anyway, the domain name is a lie.
- geekamongus 9y ago
  "You" is subjective.
  - tritium 9y ago
    This intimidation tactic fails to intimidate. Many of the subjective “us” remain recalcitrant.
gfredtech 9y ago
I rarely download torrents, however it shows just a list of a bunch of movies I haven't even heard of before
erikb 9y ago
Nice attempt, but I haven't downloaded anything and it shows two downloads. Not so reliable I suppose.
hbt 9y ago
A good reminder to Dockerize + VPN https://github.com/haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn https://github.com/haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn put that on any cloud vm and you have peace of mind + good internet speed.
- captainmuon 9y ago
  Wouldn't a cloud provider hand out your data just as fast as an ISP, if someone comes with a court order? Or is it not so easy for the content industry's lawyers to get that data in the US?
  - hbt 9y ago
    All traffic is encrypted + goes through the VPN in a docker image with firewall configured to shutdown the moment the VPN disconnects. The IP of the cloud VM is never exposed. Only the VPN's. If you're worried about dropbox type surveillance, you store the data in an encrypted drive.
    - halter73 9y ago
      But couldn't ask the same question of the VPN that the grandparent post asked of the cloud provider? Namely, won't they turn your info over just as fast as an ISP?
      - hbt 9y ago
        1) The VPN's IP will be used by more than one person. (i.e a pool) 2) use a VPN that has a reputation for not keeping logs and turning people over. https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/
    - hartator 9y ago
      Why not just use a VPN then? A cloud VM does seem overkill.
      - 9y ago
niftich 9y ago
It was never private. In BitTorrent, IP addresses are public. Trackers help peers match with each other, but trackerless mechanisms have been introduced not long after, and this keeps a distributed datastore "in the cloud", distributed among participating peers. Any peer, whether a real downloader, or purposedly written to just crawl the DHT, can obtain IP addresses for peers who have relevant pieces, and aggregate this information over a long time.
Canada 9y ago
This sham site can't reliably say anything. It returns results of things I didn't touch and fails to show anything I did download and seed. You'd think it would be technically easy to get this right.
emidln 9y ago
As a happy Put.io customer, no you don't.
- alexmat 9y ago
  Make that two of us. And since they take Bitcoin payments, Put.io has no idea who I am.
  - koolba 9y ago
    Do you also access their website over Tor? If not then they have your home IP address. According to their about page[1] the company is based in Turkey which isn't exactly a paragon of consumer privacy protection. [1]: https://put.io/aboutus https://put.io/aboutus
    - alexmat 9y ago
      I access them over a public library wifi or starbucks connection and tunnel that through a vpn, and randomize my mac each time I connect.
  - plopz 9y ago
    Bitcoin isn't anonymous unless you're putting it through a tumbler or transferring it to monero/zcash.
    - woolvalley 9y ago
      But it isn't one-click non-anonymous like normal payment methods either ;)
    - alexmat 9y ago
      You don't have to swim faster than a shark, just faster than the guy next to you. It's harder to trace a bitcoin transaction then a credit card payment, even without a tumbler.
smcl 9y ago
Nothing showed for me, I opened up dev tools to see if some requests were failing and ... wow the page makes a LOT of requests to mc.yandex.ru
Simon_says 9y ago
Apparently somebody at my IP is downloading Category: "Child porn" Title: "Massive Porn-Torrent" That's lovely.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Jesus Christ... at least they’re not bright or subtle, or they’d never get caught.
- zodPod 9y ago
  Yeah. "Someone" ;-( No it's pretty awful how this thing works. It showed 4 videos for me that I had never heard of before and would've been downloaded on a torrent on my phone while I was sitting at my parents' house last week chatting with them. Definitely was me....? lol
ramshanker 9y ago
I share my IP with N number of people, thanks to IPv4 shortage led CGN-NAT I get. It would offer some anonymity I guess. Edit: I see 50+ downloads by my IP-neighbours. That's interesting.
korethr 9y ago
I'll have to take a look at this later when I get home. (I forget what my residential IP is, so I can't easily check this from work.) I've not been on any torrents for some years, so unless my roommate is downloading things, my IP should be clean. If my roommate is pirating things via torrent, then I think a smack upside the head for doing so without protection is in order. If he's on any legit torrents, I don't particularly care, though I should probably throttle it a bit so it doesn't step on traffic that needs to be more responsive, like our video games.
betterunix2 9y ago
I have not downloaded any of the movies this claims I downloaded, and it lists none of the torrents I actually have downloaded. How should I interpret that?
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  It means your ISP doesn't always give you the same IP. Some other customer of your ISP must have downloaded those movies. If a copyright holder gets really serious about protecting their IP, they could ask your ISP who was holding that IP address at the time of the download.
r721 9y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13249578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13249578 TorrentFreak story: https://torrentfreak.com/i-know-what-you-downloaded-on-bittorrent-161223/ https://torrentfreak.com/i-know-what-you-downloaded-on-bitto... Interesting quote: "The company informed us that the site helps to showcase their abilities to the various outfits they work with, including copyright holders. “We’ve set up the site for promotional purposes and as a demonstration of our capabilities,” Marketing director Andrey Rogov says. “We are engaged in the distribution of information relating to torrent downloading activity to rightsholders, advertising platforms, law-enforcement and international organizations.” The company offers API access to its data for interested parties and can also provide TCP dumps as extra proof that downloaded content is linked to a certain IP-address."
mythrwy 9y ago
Echoing the many here who say "No, apparently you _don't_ know what I download on BitTorrent". And I'm not surprised either.
toxican 9y ago
You may know what the countless other users of my VPN download, crafty website, but certainly not what I download.
kbvk 9y ago
They also appear to be tracking child porn torrents. IP is from the vpn I use. https://i.imgur.com/e5iUctM.png https://i.imgur.com/e5iUctM.png https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/?ip=173.239.215.12 https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/?ip=173.239.215.12
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Joeboy 9y ago
Interesting companion piece from today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/20/police-made-appalling-errors-in-using-internet-data-to-target-suspects https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/20/police-made-...
zodPod 9y ago
I tried it from my Verizon smart phone and it showed me 4 downloads that happened Thursday night/Friday morning at 1am. I definitely wasn't downloading Torrents on my phone last Thursday nor was I downloading porn while visiting my family? I also don't use the phone as a hotspot. I'm not sure how to take that?
- nlperguiy 9y ago
  Dynamic IP. My IP is so heavily reused that there's hundreds of downloads, porn, tv shows, movies etc.
  - zodPod 9y ago
    I wonder why it's so frequently porn? The ones displayed on my device all have "Bubble Butt" in the title somewhere plus extras so it's clear it's all porn. I mean, I know the internet is based on porn but is that really most of what people use BT for now adays? lol
    - loeg 9y ago
      https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/US/daily https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/US/daily from the fine link show it's about 80% movies and 10% porn.
      - zodPod 9y ago
        Haha unintended advantage to this view, I now know that Flatliners came out! Oh. I must've missed it by a lot it doesn't seem to be in theaters anymore.
        loeg 9y ago
        It was very poorly received. Probably explains light advertising and short theater runtime. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/flatliners_2017/ https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/flatliners_2017/
aalleavitch 9y ago
Oh hey check out this cool link: https://goo.gl/8i8qE7 https://goo.gl/8i8qE7

120 points by d33 9y ago

sli 9y ago

Seems IP-based, and so completely ineffective at identifying VPN users, then. And it promotes sending your friends shady links so you can spy on them.

d33 9y ago
I hadn't submitted this because I approve it, but because I believe it should be used as a warning. BitTorrent seems to be the most popular P2P network right now and I believe that this kind of websites pose a real threat to it.

mimsee 9y ago

Shady practice or not I find this interesting. Following is a link for North Korean BitTorrent activity. https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/KP/daily https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/KP/daily

thisisit 9y ago

IP based, so if your ISP doesn't provide a static IP it will show incorrect results.

paganel 9y ago
As it does for me. I’m writing this from my phone (using my phone’s data plan) and apparently someone else downloaded a couple of movies yesterday from this very IP. It wasn’t me, that’s for sure.

lev99 9y ago

I'm not on this list so something is clearly wrong.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

teilo 9y ago

Well, it lets me know I have to remind my users that attempting to download porn on the company network is NOT ok. I only wish I could put the title of the video in the all-company email. Even the title is NSFW. But it would scare whoever did it.

hartator 9y ago
Glad you get your priorities right.

jrochkind1 9y ago

That's how BT works, of course, what IP is downloading what torrent is not private information (and kind of can't be, from others participating in the torrent. you can blacklist known snoop IPs). The RIAA already knows too. But yeah, good to remind people.

zlynx 9y ago

I guess I'm doing something right because even though I use a static IP and no VPN, and I've been continuously seeding some torrents since 2012 that site does not list any of my downloads. It probably only looks at popular movie download sites and I don't use those. But anyway, the domain name is a lie.

geekamongus 9y ago
"You" is subjective.
- tritium 9y ago
  This intimidation tactic fails to intimidate. Many of the subjective “us” remain recalcitrant.

gfredtech 9y ago

I rarely download torrents, however it shows just a list of a bunch of movies I haven't even heard of before

erikb 9y ago

Nice attempt, but I haven't downloaded anything and it shows two downloads. Not so reliable I suppose.

hbt 9y ago

A good reminder to Dockerize + VPN https://github.com/haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn https://github.com/haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn put that on any cloud vm and you have peace of mind + good internet speed.

captainmuon 9y ago
Wouldn't a cloud provider hand out your data just as fast as an ISP, if someone comes with a court order? Or is it not so easy for the content industry's lawyers to get that data in the US?
- hbt 9y ago
  All traffic is encrypted + goes through the VPN in a docker image with firewall configured to shutdown the moment the VPN disconnects. The IP of the cloud VM is never exposed. Only the VPN's. If you're worried about dropbox type surveillance, you store the data in an encrypted drive.
  - halter73 9y ago
    But couldn't ask the same question of the VPN that the grandparent post asked of the cloud provider? Namely, won't they turn your info over just as fast as an ISP?
    - hbt 9y ago
      1) The VPN's IP will be used by more than one person. (i.e a pool) 2) use a VPN that has a reputation for not keeping logs and turning people over. https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/
  - hartator 9y ago
    Why not just use a VPN then? A cloud VM does seem overkill.
    - 9y ago

niftich 9y ago

It was never private. In BitTorrent, IP addresses are public. Trackers help peers match with each other, but trackerless mechanisms have been introduced not long after, and this keeps a distributed datastore "in the cloud", distributed among participating peers. Any peer, whether a real downloader, or purposedly written to just crawl the DHT, can obtain IP addresses for peers who have relevant pieces, and aggregate this information over a long time.

Canada 9y ago

This sham site can't reliably say anything. It returns results of things I didn't touch and fails to show anything I did download and seed. You'd think it would be technically easy to get this right.

emidln 9y ago

As a happy Put.io customer, no you don't.

alexmat 9y ago
Make that two of us. And since they take Bitcoin payments, Put.io has no idea who I am.
- koolba 9y ago
  Do you also access their website over Tor? If not then they have your home IP address. According to their about page[1] the company is based in Turkey which isn't exactly a paragon of consumer privacy protection. [1]: https://put.io/aboutus https://put.io/aboutus
  - alexmat 9y ago
    I access them over a public library wifi or starbucks connection and tunnel that through a vpn, and randomize my mac each time I connect.
- plopz 9y ago
  Bitcoin isn't anonymous unless you're putting it through a tumbler or transferring it to monero/zcash.
  - woolvalley 9y ago
    But it isn't one-click non-anonymous like normal payment methods either ;)
  - alexmat 9y ago
    You don't have to swim faster than a shark, just faster than the guy next to you. It's harder to trace a bitcoin transaction then a credit card payment, even without a tumbler.

smcl 9y ago

Nothing showed for me, I opened up dev tools to see if some requests were failing and ... wow the page makes a LOT of requests to mc.yandex.ru

Simon_says 9y ago

Apparently somebody at my IP is downloading Category: "Child porn" Title: "Massive Porn-Torrent" That's lovely.

QAPereo 9y ago
Jesus Christ... at least they’re not bright or subtle, or they’d never get caught.
zodPod 9y ago
Yeah. "Someone" ;-( No it's pretty awful how this thing works. It showed 4 videos for me that I had never heard of before and would've been downloaded on a torrent on my phone while I was sitting at my parents' house last week chatting with them. Definitely was me....? lol

ramshanker 9y ago

I share my IP with N number of people, thanks to IPv4 shortage led CGN-NAT I get. It would offer some anonymity I guess. Edit: I see 50+ downloads by my IP-neighbours. That's interesting.

korethr 9y ago

I'll have to take a look at this later when I get home. (I forget what my residential IP is, so I can't easily check this from work.) I've not been on any torrents for some years, so unless my roommate is downloading things, my IP should be clean. If my roommate is pirating things via torrent, then I think a smack upside the head for doing so without protection is in order. If he's on any legit torrents, I don't particularly care, though I should probably throttle it a bit so it doesn't step on traffic that needs to be more responsive, like our video games.

betterunix2 9y ago

I have not downloaded any of the movies this claims I downloaded, and it lists none of the torrents I actually have downloaded. How should I interpret that?

saint_fiasco 9y ago
It means your ISP doesn't always give you the same IP. Some other customer of your ISP must have downloaded those movies. If a copyright holder gets really serious about protecting their IP, they could ask your ISP who was holding that IP address at the time of the download.

r721 9y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13249578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13249578 TorrentFreak story: https://torrentfreak.com/i-know-what-you-downloaded-on-bittorrent-161223/ https://torrentfreak.com/i-know-what-you-downloaded-on-bitto... Interesting quote: "The company informed us that the site helps to showcase their abilities to the various outfits they work with, including copyright holders. “We’ve set up the site for promotional purposes and as a demonstration of our capabilities,” Marketing director Andrey Rogov says. “We are engaged in the distribution of information relating to torrent downloading activity to rightsholders, advertising platforms, law-enforcement and international organizations.” The company offers API access to its data for interested parties and can also provide TCP dumps as extra proof that downloaded content is linked to a certain IP-address."

mythrwy 9y ago

Echoing the many here who say "No, apparently you _don't_ know what I download on BitTorrent". And I'm not surprised either.

toxican 9y ago

You may know what the countless other users of my VPN download, crafty website, but certainly not what I download.

kbvk 9y ago

They also appear to be tracking child porn torrents. IP is from the vpn I use. https://i.imgur.com/e5iUctM.png https://i.imgur.com/e5iUctM.png https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/?ip=173.239.215.12 https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/?ip=173.239.215.12

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Joeboy 9y ago

Interesting companion piece from today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/20/police-made-appalling-errors-in-using-internet-data-to-target-suspects https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/20/police-made-...

zodPod 9y ago

I tried it from my Verizon smart phone and it showed me 4 downloads that happened Thursday night/Friday morning at 1am. I definitely wasn't downloading Torrents on my phone last Thursday nor was I downloading porn while visiting my family? I also don't use the phone as a hotspot. I'm not sure how to take that?

nlperguiy 9y ago
Dynamic IP. My IP is so heavily reused that there's hundreds of downloads, porn, tv shows, movies etc.
- zodPod 9y ago
  I wonder why it's so frequently porn? The ones displayed on my device all have "Bubble Butt" in the title somewhere plus extras so it's clear it's all porn. I mean, I know the internet is based on porn but is that really most of what people use BT for now adays? lol
  - loeg 9y ago
    https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/US/daily https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/US/daily from the fine link show it's about 80% movies and 10% porn.
    - zodPod 9y ago
      Haha unintended advantage to this view, I now know that Flatliners came out! Oh. I must've missed it by a lot it doesn't seem to be in theaters anymore.
      - loeg 9y ago
        It was very poorly received. Probably explains light advertising and short theater runtime. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/flatliners_2017/ https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/flatliners_2017/

aalleavitch 9y ago

Oh hey check out this cool link: https://goo.gl/8i8qE7 https://goo.gl/8i8qE7