13 ms·

Newest version of uTorrent has Bitcoin mining offer during install

301 points by benbristow 12y ago

deanclatworthy 12y ago
I have rarely used torrents over the years, but my understanding is that uTorrent has been bundled with crap for ages now. I still have a really old version installed.
- barking 12y ago
  Correct, I uninstalled it after an upgrade was bundled with crapware and got deluge instead http://deluge-torrent.org/ http://deluge-torrent.org/
- franciscogarcia 12y ago
  IIRC uTorrent 2.2 is the last usable version. I specifically search for it whenever I format my PC.
Touche 12y ago
What is wrong with the state of software on Windows? Whether it is download pages containing 4 or 5 Download links that are really just ads or "partner downloads" for crapware, it's just really difficult to get software on Windows.
- barking 12y ago
  Try ninite, https://ninite.com/ https://ninite.com/
- cabirum 12y ago
  Chocolatey, https://chocolatey.org/ https://chocolatey.org/, "Package Manager, somewhat like apt-get, but built with Windows in mind". This will be the package manager bundled with Powershell in Windows 10, I think. Still, I prefer standalone installers. Neither Ninite nor Chocolatey offer choice of a location for installing a package, and I prefer to keep large/IO intensive apps installed on my HDD, not on a tiny SSD.
  - voltagex_ 12y ago
    OneGet [1] will be included in W10, probably with Chocolatey as an optional package source. A big thank you to @fearthecowboy over at Microsoft/Outercurve for sticking with OneGet since it was called CoApp. [1]: https://oneget.help/ https://oneget.help/
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    I had some troubles with putty using chocolatey. It didn't install it 'traditionally', instead executables were added in a weird places and linked back to the PATH. Other than that chocolatey was quite enjoyable.
  - Potando 12y ago
    Curious what advantage that gives. Isn't quickly loading big programs what SSDs are for? That's why I got one. A program shouldn't be writing to its program files folder if you're worried about large amounts of data building up there.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      I keep all my games on a huge, slow 2TB drive rather than an SSD because SSDs are expensive compared to HDDs, and they're also smaller. And modern games are big. I keep Windows on the SSD and the big files on the HDD.
  - honestcoyote 12y ago
    I prefer choosing my own install location as well. For me, Portable Apps works well for several different applications. No worries about something quietly installing spyware and, since the applications are portable, I can put them in my Dropbox and have them available across my many different Windows machines. Plus, I really appreciate the simplicity of having the install / uninstall of programs involve moving folders around. One less thing which could potentially break one day.
  - astrodust 12y ago
    Steam can be configured to install applications wherever you want. Hopefully they'll have feature parity in this department.
- rmc 12y ago
  Windows is not very user friendly like that. ;)
- kalleboo 12y ago
  It's not just Windows anymore either... http://www.howtogeek.com/210589/mac-os-x-isn’t-safe-anymore-the-crapware-malware-epidemic-has-begun/ http://www.howtogeek.com/210589/mac-os-x-isn’t-safe-anymore-...
- tw04 12y ago
  The problem is the culture of freeware and shareware is so engrained that it was impossible for them to truly get their app store online. As a result, even people writing good software have to compete with free software that's embedded with spyware/adware, and the average user has no idea. So they're given an option of something "completely free" that does what they want, or something they may have to pay $5 or $10 for. The choice for them is easy, because they don't know any better.
VeejayRampay 12y ago
uTorrent is a great client, really is, but it's been plagued with ads, bundled crapware and other "goodies" for years now. I understand software doesn't come free and the developers have to be paid, but this is tarnishing the brand now. Good thing for them that the state of Bittorent clients is rather stale and mediocre, there's no way they would survive more competition with that behaviour.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  It's ironic given that µTorrent was always supposed to be this ultra-compact and lightweight client (it's in the name!). And it has been, but BitTorrent, Inc. have been slowly ruining it.
- tyrfing 12y ago
  It's a terrible client. The only reason it's survived so long despite the owner shamelessly milking it of every penny they can is name recognition. The brand isn't being tarnished - it's being sacrificed wholesale for dollars, with the singular goal of extracting as many dollars as possible before it dies. I suggest Deluge, or maybe Transmission. http://deluge-torrent.org/ http://deluge-torrent.org/ edit: retracting Transmission recommendation because I'm unfamiliar with it's state on Windows. Looks like there are builds, but I've never used them.
  - Djorak_ 12y ago
    I have been using qBittorrent (http://www.qbittorrent.org/ http://www.qbittorrent.org/) for a while and don't have anything to complain about. Perfect for my simple needs (RSS feeds, launch a program on completion).
  - cabirum 12y ago
    It's not terrible. It does it's job well enough, ads can be easily disabled via advanced settings, it works in portable mode without even having a chance to install bundled crapware, the UI does not make my eyes bleed.
    - 12y ago
wodenokoto 12y ago
Why does the headline say "Bitcoin mining offer during install" when the posts in the forum talks about silent install of crapware?
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  The crapware in question is a bitcoin miner.
  - wodenokoto 12y ago
    My point was, why does the headline say "offer" when it is not offered but silently installed. Sorry for the poor articulation.
    - DonHopkins 12y ago
      Oh sure, it's an offer -- you just can't refuse it.
      - wernercd 12y ago
        No... you can. The problem is they use reverse psyc, hidden triggers, double negatives, etc. For example, I can't remember if it was Downloads.com or SourceForge, I recently almost installed Vosteran because the option to deselect the "extra awesomeness" was hidden in "Advanced Install" section and I had clicked on "Normal Install". I've also seen plenty of "Accept Offer" with "Decline Offer" next to it, greyed out like it was disabled. Plenty of examples exist of them TECHNICALLY giving you an opt-out - but hiding that opt out in every way imaginable.
  - comboy 12y ago
    I doubt it's a bitcoin miner. Probably some altcoin. Bitcoin mining is not profitable on CPU anymore, no matter how many general purpose CPUs you have at your disposal (fair approximation).
    - 12y ago
garou 12y ago
the bittorrent suffers from the same problem? I can not tell if they are different programs, after all they are the same company and are visually identical.
- barking 12y ago
  bittorrent bought utorrent and started bundling crap with it
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  BitTorrent (the client) is based on uTorrent's codebase as they are owned by the same company. Both can install malware if you're not careful.
mappu 12y ago
A plug for GPL/MIT Transmission (windows version http://trqtw.sf.net/ http://trqtw.sf.net/ ) If you want to avoid ads and bundled spyware, better to use up-to-date FOSS instead of years-old unsupported versions of uTorrent.
- blfr 12y ago
  Better yet, Transmission allows you to run the torrent client/daemon on a server and only GUI on your computer (there's even an Android app somewhere). Or you can just go with rTorrent, and control it over ssh. That way you use bandwidth where it's cheap and don't tax your, often battery-bound, local device.
  - rmc 12y ago
    Or you can run a web gui on the server and connect to it's web interface
    - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
      Yes, transmission-daemon's web interface is the shit. Lets me use my VPS as a mini "seed box".
  - icebraining 12y ago
    If you use rtorrent, check out Transdroid, it's a pretty nice Android frontend. The main advantage is that you can simply open a magnet link with it, and it'll automatically push it to rtorrent, instead of having to copy-paste between the app and your SSH client.
    - xrjn 12y ago
      I tried to set up Transdroid on multiple occasions, both with commercial seedboxes and ones that I've set up my self - to no avail every time. Right now I use instead Flud on my phone, Transmission on my laptop, and rtorrent on a DO droplet for when I want to quickly download something (and then stream it over ssh + cat + mplayer).
keslag 12y ago
I've always wondered if there was a way to monetize uTorrent. The userbase is predominantly people who don't want to pay for digital goods. So they're not going to pay for your software, and it's a pretty hard space to sell to advertisers. You're essentially left with companies whose reputation is so bad, that being associated with illegal downloads doesn't negatively affect their brand.
- harperlee 12y ago
  Perhaps one could pay for the content that he/she downloads with cpu time and RAM temporal storage, something akin to a distributed dropbox.
  - copsarebastards 12y ago
    A friend of mine worked on a project that tried to do distributed RAM temporal storage circa 2005. The company went under because after 4 years 6 engineers couldn't get it to reliably work even though they controlled most of the participating machines. This is a very hard problem.
    - anonymousDan 12y ago
      "RAM temporal storage" - what exactly do you mean by temporal storage? I've never heard the term before.
      - copsarebastards 12y ago
        Basically the idea is to do long-term storage in short-term memory (RAM) by distributing the storage across many machines. One one machine you shouldn't store stuff you want stored long-term in short-term memory (RAM) because as soon as the short-term memory loses power the data is gone. RAM temporal storage attempts to mitigate this problem by duplicating the data across many many machines so that if one machine powers off, the other machines still have the data. This is sort of a holy grail of distributed computing because it could allow people to elastically donate their storage similarly to how people donate their CPU cycles to Folding@Home or GPU cycles to BTC mining. The idea is that a lot of your CPU cycles (for example) are wasted because you aren't doing anything on your computer, so you can donate those cycles to Folding@Home. You could do something similar with RAM, but RAM is different: if I decide to run a program and start using my CPU cycles again Folding@Home can just push computation to another machine. But if I decide to reclaim RAM from a distributed computing system to run a program on my machine, then whatever the system was storing in RAM is lost, and if they need that, they a) need to have it duplicated elsewhere, and b) need to know how to retrieve it efficiently from a network of computers any of which may or may not actually have the data. This has proven to be a very hard problem to solve in practice.
qnr 12y ago
I highly doubt it really mines bitcoin because with the current difficulty a typical modern graphics card can expect to mine less than $0.01 worth of bitcoin a week if left running 24/7 on full load. Edit: what I meant is that EpicScale in all likelihood mines another cryptocurrency, not bitcoin. Especially that it seems to use CPU which is utterly useless for bitcoin mining (you won't even get $0.01 in a year with the latest i7!)
- anonymfus 12y ago
  They have few hundreds millions users.
- harperlee 12y ago
  Perhaps it could mine whatever someone wants to have calculated, instead of garbage, in exchange for that amount of money :)
- wldlyinaccurate 12y ago
  From the Epic Scale website (http://www.epicscale.com/ http://www.epicscale.com/): How is money earned? Solving math problems for weather prediction, physics simulations, cryptography (including cryptocurrency mining) and more has real world value. We solve these problems on behalf of our trusted partners, and donate proceeds to your favorite charities. The key words there being including cryptocurrency mining.
- dagw 12y ago
  Even if we assume half load and 12 hours a day, it still adds up to real money if you multiply it by enough users.
- imaginenore 12y ago
  It probably mines altoins and then trades them for bitcoin. With a decent GPU you can break even. http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency
Jack000 12y ago
torrent clients haven't changed much over the years, the old version still works just as well for me. Private torrent sites require specific clients, and the old version of utorrent is usually on the list.
rythmshifter 12y ago
and BitTorrent has questionable ties to the mpaa
- caractacus 12y ago
  Hahahaha. No. No, it doesn't. It once agreed to remove content when told (ie, adhere to the DMCA) many many many years ago (ten? more?) when it had a search portal on its own web site but if you really believe that bittorrent has some kind of direct line to the MPAA to report users, you are very deluded. Edit: 2005. https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-and-mpaa-join-forces/ https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-and-mpaa-join-forces/
ilitirit 12y ago
I reverted to version 2.X (don't remember which one exactly). Anything beyond that is crap. My brother swears by Tixati: http://www.tixati.com/ http://www.tixati.com/
- masklinn 12y ago
  Tixati's the one I switched to once I got enough of utorrent becoming more and more crap-filled with each new release. It's ugly as sin and the interface is a clusterfuck (even without the "haXXorz" green-on-black they use for their screenshots), but aside from that it's lightweight, does the job well and is very, very flexible.
- u1F3B2 12y ago
  I've been using uTorrent 2.2.1 Build 25302 [0] for a couple years now on Windows and it works great. The installer still has a few crapware offers that you have to click off, but if you turn off update checking the client will never bug you again. To install it on Windows 8, I had to disconnect from wifi and set Win7 compatibility mode on the installer. [0] http://www.oldversion.com/windows/utorrent-2-2-1-build-25302 http://www.oldversion.com/windows/utorrent-2-2-1-build-25302
- kenrick95 12y ago
  Since uTorrent 3 has "ads" in it (uTorrent Plus offer in the app), I reverted to 2.2.1 and never upgraded anymore.
shaunol 12y ago
uTorrent has been crapware for a long time now and I'm not sure why people support it. Since people are plugging their favourite alternatives, my current favourite by a long shot is qBittorent[1] which is open source and natively supported on Windows/MacOS/Linux/FreeBSD. [1] http://www.qbittorrent.org/index.php http://www.qbittorrent.org/index.php
wslh 12y ago
It seems like BitTorrent doesn't know how to make money: $40.8 Million in 3 Rounds from 3 Investors [1] and 178 people [2] working there are not enough. It's a tragedy that this company can't leave the startup hangar yet, mainly based on Bram Cohen's great contribution to Internet protocols. And we can't forget the uTorrent free version embedded flash control that consumes more than 10% of the CPU in Windows. [1] Crunchbase [2] LinkedIn
- bhouston 12y ago
  Utorrent and bittorrent are different companies. Edit: I was wrong. It is owned by bittoreent. I thought they would not be this scummy.
  - nbaksalyar 12y ago
    Are they? www.utorrent.com says "© 2015 BitTorrent, Inc." in the footer.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - tapoxi 12y ago
    utorrent was purchased years ago to become the mainline client, due to name recognition they still offer it as a separate brand.
- pjc50 12y ago
  It's a product whose primary market is people who prefer not to pay for things.
  - zerr 12y ago
    Exactly. I've even disabled its ads.
  - 1ris 12y ago
    It's a shame. It's great for all kind of stuff. Doesn't WoW distribute their game via torrent?
orf 12y ago
Notice how the EpicScale website[1] says nothing about what percentage of bitcoin profits goes charities. The uTorrent installer is by far the worst I have encountered - there must be 4 or 5 offers you have to click through and each one has a different way of tricking you like a tiny checkbox in the text which must be checked before pressing forward, or having to press a button that looks like one that takes you back a stage to progress without installing. 1. http://www.epicscale.com/ http://www.epicscale.com/
- cordite 12y ago
  They also have stuff bundled in the mac installer, but without the check boxes (last time I tried..) that bundle in crapware. At this point, I've moved to just using an rtorrent interface on a server.
- krelian 12y ago
  That company deserves a place among in the top scumbags list. The one and only purpose of this malware masquerading as charity is listed on the site as if it was an afterthought "(including cryptocurrency mining)" .
caractacus 12y ago
(200m unique monthly users) * (even only a teeny percent of users accepting these offers) = considerable money for BitTorrent Inc.
abcdefabcdef 12y ago
ffg
jugbee 12y ago
seriously? no Vuze/Azureus fans?
- tw04 12y ago
  Admittedly it has been 5+ years since I touched Azureus, but at least at that time it was a complete memory pig which basically made it unusable.
- the8472 12y ago
  I'm using it, in fact I was a contributor a few years ago. But considering that the default installer offers a ton of adware too (although you can opt-out of all of that) might not make it the best counter-example for the purpose of this discussion. The core is open source though (GPL even), so a savy user could just download the .jar (+ libs + optionally a .exe launcher) and launch it like any other java process without all the installer crap. But that's not something most people are aware of.
- alvarosm 12y ago
  It works fine. Still a bit of a memory hog but we have more ram now. They're going down the path of adware/spyware too, however, you have to opt out in a convoluted way and you're still shown ads. But at least it doesn't carry a coin miner. Yet. Fingers crossed.
  - the8472 12y ago
    > you're still shown ads. current version, classic UI, no ads: http://i.imgur.com/8nD46ab.png http://i.imgur.com/8nD46ab.png
rdudek 12y ago
I've been using a server as a seedbox to avoid this hassle of having clients installed on my computer. I'm trying to keep my system to a bare minimum of installed junk.
stygiansonic 12y ago
I stopped using uTorrent a while ago because of all the bundled crapware like this. I switched to qBittorrent[0] and haven't looked back. It has a similar UI. 0. http://www.qbittorrent.org/ http://www.qbittorrent.org/
- mg1982 12y ago
  Me too! Abandoned utorrent when it started with ads; every release since seems to be a new low. Hopefully this'll penetrate their user base enough to make them take stock because it seems like they've basically got away with crapifying a once-great client. How low can they go? Find out when you download v3.4.3 - utorrent with "visual ad enhancement"* brought to you by Superfish!
IkmoIkmo 12y ago
That's really dumb, bad for users, bad for the environment and without clear benefits to uTorrent. Why? Because ASICS that's why. To illustrate. A Macbook Pro bought a few years ago costs $1200 today. Its CPU will get you 1.8 megahash per second. It uses about 250 watt at max CPU. Meanwhile, an ASIC today costing about $350 will get you over 1 million MH/S and its max watt usage is about 590. Considering uTorrent isn't specialized mining software, and considering you'll only use about 25% of CPU or so (and that is way too much itself), you're looking at being able to run about 10 million megahash per second on an ASIC for the same cost of running 2 MH/S on a MBP. Now consider that this ASIC is available to you and me, and that even better ASICS are used by mining farms in China with access to electricity that's 2x - 4x cheaper than what you're paying at home, purchased at factory prices even lower than the $350 I mentioned above. What does it all mean? It means that if you run a Macbook Pro at today's hashrate for 30 years, 24/7 at 100% of CPU, you will earn $0.07. So just think about what uTorrent is doing to you. If they took 50% of your CPU for the 8 hours you use your device each day the next year, they'd make 1/25th of a single penny, and that 50% extra CPU would cost you about $20 in electricity, and reduce the lifetime of your computer. This idea would have been brilliant years ago, before ASICs. Today it's one of the dumbest ideas in the world. It can cost your users tens of dollars, slow down their computers, reduce the lifetime of their hardware and generates virtually no money for you in the process. Even with 1 million Macbook Pros running this year round, they'd make $700 while generating tens of millions in extra electricity costs. If they think that 1 million users opening their app every single day and running it for 8 hours to generate $700 is a lasting business model, then I think that's very telling of where uTorrent is headed. I say that even if it didn't cost users 50% of their CPU and a few dollars a month in the process. -- quick edit: Bitcoin would actually be a very interesting usecase for torrent technology. You could for example attach a bitcoin address to each torrent packet. Then a torrent client could verify if the packet contains valid data (like normal), and automatically send a microreward (e.g. 1/millionth of a penny) back to whoever supplied you that packet. Each user could connect a bitcoin wallet and set a reward for various things he's downloading (e.g. $1 for a 1960s vintage album that can't be found anywhere, or 1 cent for the guy sending him House of Cards). You could completely monetize seeders on a voluntary pay-what-you-want basis. And uTorrent could offer an option to send 1% of these 'donations' to uTorrent itself automatically. It'd generate a lot more revenue than mining, while costing the user a fraction, and incentivize seeding of a whole range of new content and make torrenting more popular than ever, without having to rely on centralized payment systems that would shut it down immediately. It's just one of many ideas. I'm all for cryptocurrency and torrents, but this particular product just makes no sense.
rawe 12y ago
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/forum.utorrent.com http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/forum.utorrent.com slashdotted. http://forum.utorrent.com/index.php?app=members&module=online&sort_order=desc http://forum.utorrent.com/index.php?app=members&module=onlin...
techaddict009 12y ago
Any better alternative to uTorrent? I am using it since years. Bittorrent seems just clone of it with different color scheme.
blumkvist 12y ago
qbittorrent guys. Forget that uTorrent shit.
squeaky-clean 12y ago
I doubt it's mining Bitcoins specifically, people in the thread only mention CPU usage so far. I found this[0] on the epicscale site, which let's you query for things like the hashrate of a Node, but it doesn't seem to work. So while not bitcoins, I would guess they are mining some altcoin rather than being a botnet or something else. [0] http://report.epicscale.com/ http://report.epicscale.com/
justizin 12y ago
"This is abhorrent!" "What kind of monster would suck up my CPU cycles, increasing my power bill, and shortening the life of my hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of computing equipment, to make a few cents?!" This is basically just flash ads without annoying audio coming from a mystery tab. I laud it as innovation. ;) Also: transmission, yo.
wnevets 12y ago
I havent updated utorrent since it was bought by bittorrent. What a waste of a great product.
helical 12y ago
Is there a relatively easy way to import all torrents from uTorrent to some other torrent client?
acd 12y ago
I suggest you use qbitorrent instead which is a fork of uTorrent the site ninite has an installer for it.
jonnynezbo 12y ago
The link doesn't work: "Account Suspended"
- vesinisa 12y ago
  Their whole forum seems down.
- xrjn 12y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20150306113124/http://forum.utorrent.com/topic/95041-warning-epicscale-riskware-silently-installed-with-latest-utorrent/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150306113124/http://forum.utor...
cpeterso 12y ago
Some MIT students founded a company called TidBit that let web publishers mine bitcoins (using asm.js) in their readers' browsers as an opt-in alternative to banner ads. They current face a subpoena from the New Jersey division of consumer affairs. http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/12/new-jersey-slaps-mit-bitcoin-hackers-with-subpoena-and-theyre-fighting-back/view-all/ http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/12/new-jersey-slaps-mit-bitco...
charonn0 12y ago
I was able to load up the page a few minutes ago, but now it says the hosting account is suspended.
GigabyteCoin 12y ago
As a old bitcoin miner, this is a phenomenally terrible idea. CPU and GPU mining will literally cost their users millions of dollars in electricity for the few thousand dollars they would stand to make in bitcoin mining.
AdmiralAsshat 12y ago
I remember when uTorrent was the shiny, slim, new BT client to supersede the bloated and ad-riddled Bitlord and BitComet clients. The more things change...
ghantila 12y ago
Did anyone notice? uTorrent main setup file is packed by UPX and is made unpack-able by UPX itself by modifying some bytes in the packed UPX. Why would a developer do that? Point.
jimkri 12y ago
Did anyone else catch what one of the Admins on the site said? >Looks like the Epic Scale software is not uninstalling as it was intended to by design. I literally cannot stand companies that write software like this.

301 points by benbristow 12y ago

I have rarely used torrents over the years, but my understanding is that uTorrent has been bundled with crap for ages now. I still have a really old version installed.

barking 12y ago
Correct, I uninstalled it after an upgrade was bundled with crapware and got deluge instead http://deluge-torrent.org/ http://deluge-torrent.org/
franciscogarcia 12y ago
IIRC uTorrent 2.2 is the last usable version. I specifically search for it whenever I format my PC.

Touche 12y ago

What is wrong with the state of software on Windows? Whether it is download pages containing 4 or 5 Download links that are really just ads or "partner downloads" for crapware, it's just really difficult to get software on Windows.

barking 12y ago
Try ninite, https://ninite.com/ https://ninite.com/
cabirum 12y ago
Chocolatey, https://chocolatey.org/ https://chocolatey.org/, "Package Manager, somewhat like apt-get, but built with Windows in mind". This will be the package manager bundled with Powershell in Windows 10, I think. Still, I prefer standalone installers. Neither Ninite nor Chocolatey offer choice of a location for installing a package, and I prefer to keep large/IO intensive apps installed on my HDD, not on a tiny SSD.
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  OneGet [1] will be included in W10, probably with Chocolatey as an optional package source. A big thank you to @fearthecowboy over at Microsoft/Outercurve for sticking with OneGet since it was called CoApp. [1]: https://oneget.help/ https://oneget.help/
- agumonkey 12y ago
  I had some troubles with putty using chocolatey. It didn't install it 'traditionally', instead executables were added in a weird places and linked back to the PATH. Other than that chocolatey was quite enjoyable.
- Potando 12y ago
  Curious what advantage that gives. Isn't quickly loading big programs what SSDs are for? That's why I got one. A program shouldn't be writing to its program files folder if you're worried about large amounts of data building up there.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    I keep all my games on a huge, slow 2TB drive rather than an SSD because SSDs are expensive compared to HDDs, and they're also smaller. And modern games are big. I keep Windows on the SSD and the big files on the HDD.
- honestcoyote 12y ago
  I prefer choosing my own install location as well. For me, Portable Apps works well for several different applications. No worries about something quietly installing spyware and, since the applications are portable, I can put them in my Dropbox and have them available across my many different Windows machines. Plus, I really appreciate the simplicity of having the install / uninstall of programs involve moving folders around. One less thing which could potentially break one day.
- astrodust 12y ago
  Steam can be configured to install applications wherever you want. Hopefully they'll have feature parity in this department.
rmc 12y ago
Windows is not very user friendly like that. ;)
kalleboo 12y ago
It's not just Windows anymore either... http://www.howtogeek.com/210589/mac-os-x-isn’t-safe-anymore-the-crapware-malware-epidemic-has-begun/ http://www.howtogeek.com/210589/mac-os-x-isn’t-safe-anymore-...
tw04 12y ago
The problem is the culture of freeware and shareware is so engrained that it was impossible for them to truly get their app store online. As a result, even people writing good software have to compete with free software that's embedded with spyware/adware, and the average user has no idea. So they're given an option of something "completely free" that does what they want, or something they may have to pay $5 or $10 for. The choice for them is easy, because they don't know any better.

VeejayRampay 12y ago

uTorrent is a great client, really is, but it's been plagued with ads, bundled crapware and other "goodies" for years now. I understand software doesn't come free and the developers have to be paid, but this is tarnishing the brand now. Good thing for them that the state of Bittorent clients is rather stale and mediocre, there's no way they would survive more competition with that behaviour.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
It's ironic given that µTorrent was always supposed to be this ultra-compact and lightweight client (it's in the name!). And it has been, but BitTorrent, Inc. have been slowly ruining it.
tyrfing 12y ago
It's a terrible client. The only reason it's survived so long despite the owner shamelessly milking it of every penny they can is name recognition. The brand isn't being tarnished - it's being sacrificed wholesale for dollars, with the singular goal of extracting as many dollars as possible before it dies. I suggest Deluge, or maybe Transmission. http://deluge-torrent.org/ http://deluge-torrent.org/ edit: retracting Transmission recommendation because I'm unfamiliar with it's state on Windows. Looks like there are builds, but I've never used them.
- Djorak_ 12y ago
  I have been using qBittorrent (http://www.qbittorrent.org/ http://www.qbittorrent.org/) for a while and don't have anything to complain about. Perfect for my simple needs (RSS feeds, launch a program on completion).
- cabirum 12y ago
  It's not terrible. It does it's job well enough, ads can be easily disabled via advanced settings, it works in portable mode without even having a chance to install bundled crapware, the UI does not make my eyes bleed.
  - 12y ago

wodenokoto 12y ago

Why does the headline say "Bitcoin mining offer during install" when the posts in the forum talks about silent install of crapware?

blueskin_ 12y ago
The crapware in question is a bitcoin miner.
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  My point was, why does the headline say "offer" when it is not offered but silently installed. Sorry for the poor articulation.
  - DonHopkins 12y ago
    Oh sure, it's an offer -- you just can't refuse it.
    - wernercd 12y ago
      No... you can. The problem is they use reverse psyc, hidden triggers, double negatives, etc. For example, I can't remember if it was Downloads.com or SourceForge, I recently almost installed Vosteran because the option to deselect the "extra awesomeness" was hidden in "Advanced Install" section and I had clicked on "Normal Install". I've also seen plenty of "Accept Offer" with "Decline Offer" next to it, greyed out like it was disabled. Plenty of examples exist of them TECHNICALLY giving you an opt-out - but hiding that opt out in every way imaginable.
- comboy 12y ago
  I doubt it's a bitcoin miner. Probably some altcoin. Bitcoin mining is not profitable on CPU anymore, no matter how many general purpose CPUs you have at your disposal (fair approximation).
  - 12y ago

garou 12y ago

the bittorrent suffers from the same problem? I can not tell if they are different programs, after all they are the same company and are visually identical.

barking 12y ago
bittorrent bought utorrent and started bundling crap with it
blueskin_ 12y ago
BitTorrent (the client) is based on uTorrent's codebase as they are owned by the same company. Both can install malware if you're not careful.

mappu 12y ago

A plug for GPL/MIT Transmission (windows version http://trqtw.sf.net/ http://trqtw.sf.net/ ) If you want to avoid ads and bundled spyware, better to use up-to-date FOSS instead of years-old unsupported versions of uTorrent.

blfr 12y ago
Better yet, Transmission allows you to run the torrent client/daemon on a server and only GUI on your computer (there's even an Android app somewhere). Or you can just go with rTorrent, and control it over ssh. That way you use bandwidth where it's cheap and don't tax your, often battery-bound, local device.
- rmc 12y ago
  Or you can run a web gui on the server and connect to it's web interface
  - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    Yes, transmission-daemon's web interface is the shit. Lets me use my VPS as a mini "seed box".
- icebraining 12y ago
  If you use rtorrent, check out Transdroid, it's a pretty nice Android frontend. The main advantage is that you can simply open a magnet link with it, and it'll automatically push it to rtorrent, instead of having to copy-paste between the app and your SSH client.
  - xrjn 12y ago
    I tried to set up Transdroid on multiple occasions, both with commercial seedboxes and ones that I've set up my self - to no avail every time. Right now I use instead Flud on my phone, Transmission on my laptop, and rtorrent on a DO droplet for when I want to quickly download something (and then stream it over ssh + cat + mplayer).

keslag 12y ago

I've always wondered if there was a way to monetize uTorrent. The userbase is predominantly people who don't want to pay for digital goods. So they're not going to pay for your software, and it's a pretty hard space to sell to advertisers. You're essentially left with companies whose reputation is so bad, that being associated with illegal downloads doesn't negatively affect their brand.

harperlee 12y ago
Perhaps one could pay for the content that he/she downloads with cpu time and RAM temporal storage, something akin to a distributed dropbox.
- copsarebastards 12y ago
  A friend of mine worked on a project that tried to do distributed RAM temporal storage circa 2005. The company went under because after 4 years 6 engineers couldn't get it to reliably work even though they controlled most of the participating machines. This is a very hard problem.
  - anonymousDan 12y ago
    "RAM temporal storage" - what exactly do you mean by temporal storage? I've never heard the term before.
    - copsarebastards 12y ago
      Basically the idea is to do long-term storage in short-term memory (RAM) by distributing the storage across many machines. One one machine you shouldn't store stuff you want stored long-term in short-term memory (RAM) because as soon as the short-term memory loses power the data is gone. RAM temporal storage attempts to mitigate this problem by duplicating the data across many many machines so that if one machine powers off, the other machines still have the data. This is sort of a holy grail of distributed computing because it could allow people to elastically donate their storage similarly to how people donate their CPU cycles to Folding@Home or GPU cycles to BTC mining. The idea is that a lot of your CPU cycles (for example) are wasted because you aren't doing anything on your computer, so you can donate those cycles to Folding@Home. You could do something similar with RAM, but RAM is different: if I decide to run a program and start using my CPU cycles again Folding@Home can just push computation to another machine. But if I decide to reclaim RAM from a distributed computing system to run a program on my machine, then whatever the system was storing in RAM is lost, and if they need that, they a) need to have it duplicated elsewhere, and b) need to know how to retrieve it efficiently from a network of computers any of which may or may not actually have the data. This has proven to be a very hard problem to solve in practice.

qnr 12y ago

I highly doubt it really mines bitcoin because with the current difficulty a typical modern graphics card can expect to mine less than $0.01 worth of bitcoin a week if left running 24/7 on full load. Edit: what I meant is that EpicScale in all likelihood mines another cryptocurrency, not bitcoin. Especially that it seems to use CPU which is utterly useless for bitcoin mining (you won't even get $0.01 in a year with the latest i7!)

anonymfus 12y ago
They have few hundreds millions users.
harperlee 12y ago
Perhaps it could mine whatever someone wants to have calculated, instead of garbage, in exchange for that amount of money :)
wldlyinaccurate 12y ago
From the Epic Scale website (http://www.epicscale.com/ http://www.epicscale.com/): How is money earned? Solving math problems for weather prediction, physics simulations, cryptography (including cryptocurrency mining) and more has real world value. We solve these problems on behalf of our trusted partners, and donate proceeds to your favorite charities. The key words there being including cryptocurrency mining.
dagw 12y ago
Even if we assume half load and 12 hours a day, it still adds up to real money if you multiply it by enough users.
imaginenore 12y ago
It probably mines altoins and then trades them for bitcoin. With a decent GPU you can break even. http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

Jack000 12y ago

torrent clients haven't changed much over the years, the old version still works just as well for me. Private torrent sites require specific clients, and the old version of utorrent is usually on the list.

rythmshifter 12y ago

and BitTorrent has questionable ties to the mpaa

caractacus 12y ago
Hahahaha. No. No, it doesn't. It once agreed to remove content when told (ie, adhere to the DMCA) many many many years ago (ten? more?) when it had a search portal on its own web site but if you really believe that bittorrent has some kind of direct line to the MPAA to report users, you are very deluded. Edit: 2005. https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-and-mpaa-join-forces/ https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-and-mpaa-join-forces/

ilitirit 12y ago

I reverted to version 2.X (don't remember which one exactly). Anything beyond that is crap. My brother swears by Tixati: http://www.tixati.com/ http://www.tixati.com/

masklinn 12y ago
Tixati's the one I switched to once I got enough of utorrent becoming more and more crap-filled with each new release. It's ugly as sin and the interface is a clusterfuck (even without the "haXXorz" green-on-black they use for their screenshots), but aside from that it's lightweight, does the job well and is very, very flexible.
u1F3B2 12y ago
I've been using uTorrent 2.2.1 Build 25302 [0] for a couple years now on Windows and it works great. The installer still has a few crapware offers that you have to click off, but if you turn off update checking the client will never bug you again. To install it on Windows 8, I had to disconnect from wifi and set Win7 compatibility mode on the installer. [0] http://www.oldversion.com/windows/utorrent-2-2-1-build-25302 http://www.oldversion.com/windows/utorrent-2-2-1-build-25302
kenrick95 12y ago
Since uTorrent 3 has "ads" in it (uTorrent Plus offer in the app), I reverted to 2.2.1 and never upgraded anymore.

shaunol 12y ago

uTorrent has been crapware for a long time now and I'm not sure why people support it. Since people are plugging their favourite alternatives, my current favourite by a long shot is qBittorent[1] which is open source and natively supported on Windows/MacOS/Linux/FreeBSD. [1] http://www.qbittorrent.org/index.php http://www.qbittorrent.org/index.php

wslh 12y ago

It seems like BitTorrent doesn't know how to make money: $40.8 Million in 3 Rounds from 3 Investors [1] and 178 people [2] working there are not enough. It's a tragedy that this company can't leave the startup hangar yet, mainly based on Bram Cohen's great contribution to Internet protocols. And we can't forget the uTorrent free version embedded flash control that consumes more than 10% of the CPU in Windows. [1] Crunchbase [2] LinkedIn

bhouston 12y ago
Utorrent and bittorrent are different companies. Edit: I was wrong. It is owned by bittoreent. I thought they would not be this scummy.
- nbaksalyar 12y ago
  Are they? www.utorrent.com says "© 2015 BitTorrent, Inc." in the footer.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- tapoxi 12y ago
  utorrent was purchased years ago to become the mainline client, due to name recognition they still offer it as a separate brand.
pjc50 12y ago
It's a product whose primary market is people who prefer not to pay for things.
- zerr 12y ago
  Exactly. I've even disabled its ads.
- 1ris 12y ago
  It's a shame. It's great for all kind of stuff. Doesn't WoW distribute their game via torrent?

orf 12y ago

Notice how the EpicScale website[1] says nothing about what percentage of bitcoin profits goes charities. The uTorrent installer is by far the worst I have encountered - there must be 4 or 5 offers you have to click through and each one has a different way of tricking you like a tiny checkbox in the text which must be checked before pressing forward, or having to press a button that looks like one that takes you back a stage to progress without installing. 1. http://www.epicscale.com/ http://www.epicscale.com/

cordite 12y ago
They also have stuff bundled in the mac installer, but without the check boxes (last time I tried..) that bundle in crapware. At this point, I've moved to just using an rtorrent interface on a server.
krelian 12y ago
That company deserves a place among in the top scumbags list. The one and only purpose of this malware masquerading as charity is listed on the site as if it was an afterthought "(including cryptocurrency mining)" .

caractacus 12y ago

(200m unique monthly users) * (even only a teeny percent of users accepting these offers) = considerable money for BitTorrent Inc.

abcdefabcdef 12y ago

ffg

jugbee 12y ago

seriously? no Vuze/Azureus fans?

tw04 12y ago
Admittedly it has been 5+ years since I touched Azureus, but at least at that time it was a complete memory pig which basically made it unusable.
the8472 12y ago
I'm using it, in fact I was a contributor a few years ago. But considering that the default installer offers a ton of adware too (although you can opt-out of all of that) might not make it the best counter-example for the purpose of this discussion. The core is open source though (GPL even), so a savy user could just download the .jar (+ libs + optionally a .exe launcher) and launch it like any other java process without all the installer crap. But that's not something most people are aware of.
alvarosm 12y ago
It works fine. Still a bit of a memory hog but we have more ram now. They're going down the path of adware/spyware too, however, you have to opt out in a convoluted way and you're still shown ads. But at least it doesn't carry a coin miner. Yet. Fingers crossed.
- the8472 12y ago
  > you're still shown ads. current version, classic UI, no ads: http://i.imgur.com/8nD46ab.png http://i.imgur.com/8nD46ab.png

rdudek 12y ago

I've been using a server as a seedbox to avoid this hassle of having clients installed on my computer. I'm trying to keep my system to a bare minimum of installed junk.

stygiansonic 12y ago

I stopped using uTorrent a while ago because of all the bundled crapware like this. I switched to qBittorrent[0] and haven't looked back. It has a similar UI. 0. http://www.qbittorrent.org/ http://www.qbittorrent.org/

mg1982 12y ago
Me too! Abandoned utorrent when it started with ads; every release since seems to be a new low. Hopefully this'll penetrate their user base enough to make them take stock because it seems like they've basically got away with crapifying a once-great client. How low can they go? Find out when you download v3.4.3 - utorrent with "visual ad enhancement"* brought to you by Superfish!

IkmoIkmo 12y ago

That's really dumb, bad for users, bad for the environment and without clear benefits to uTorrent. Why? Because ASICS that's why. To illustrate. A Macbook Pro bought a few years ago costs $1200 today. Its CPU will get you 1.8 megahash per second. It uses about 250 watt at max CPU. Meanwhile, an ASIC today costing about $350 will get you over 1 million MH/S and its max watt usage is about 590. Considering uTorrent isn't specialized mining software, and considering you'll only use about 25% of CPU or so (and that is way too much itself), you're looking at being able to run about 10 million megahash per second on an ASIC for the same cost of running 2 MH/S on a MBP. Now consider that this ASIC is available to you and me, and that even better ASICS are used by mining farms in China with access to electricity that's 2x - 4x cheaper than what you're paying at home, purchased at factory prices even lower than the $350 I mentioned above. What does it all mean? It means that if you run a Macbook Pro at today's hashrate for 30 years, 24/7 at 100% of CPU, you will earn $0.07. So just think about what uTorrent is doing to you. If they took 50% of your CPU for the 8 hours you use your device each day the next year, they'd make 1/25th of a single penny, and that 50% extra CPU would cost you about $20 in electricity, and reduce the lifetime of your computer. This idea would have been brilliant years ago, before ASICs. Today it's one of the dumbest ideas in the world. It can cost your users tens of dollars, slow down their computers, reduce the lifetime of their hardware and generates virtually no money for you in the process. Even with 1 million Macbook Pros running this year round, they'd make $700 while generating tens of millions in extra electricity costs. If they think that 1 million users opening their app every single day and running it for 8 hours to generate $700 is a lasting business model, then I think that's very telling of where uTorrent is headed. I say that even if it didn't cost users 50% of their CPU and a few dollars a month in the process. -- quick edit: Bitcoin would actually be a very interesting usecase for torrent technology. You could for example attach a bitcoin address to each torrent packet. Then a torrent client could verify if the packet contains valid data (like normal), and automatically send a microreward (e.g. 1/millionth of a penny) back to whoever supplied you that packet. Each user could connect a bitcoin wallet and set a reward for various things he's downloading (e.g. $1 for a 1960s vintage album that can't be found anywhere, or 1 cent for the guy sending him House of Cards). You could completely monetize seeders on a voluntary pay-what-you-want basis. And uTorrent could offer an option to send 1% of these 'donations' to uTorrent itself automatically. It'd generate a lot more revenue than mining, while costing the user a fraction, and incentivize seeding of a whole range of new content and make torrenting more popular than ever, without having to rely on centralized payment systems that would shut it down immediately. It's just one of many ideas. I'm all for cryptocurrency and torrents, but this particular product just makes no sense.

rawe 12y ago

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/forum.utorrent.com http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/forum.utorrent.com slashdotted. http://forum.utorrent.com/index.php?app=members&module=online&sort_order=desc http://forum.utorrent.com/index.php?app=members&module=onlin...

techaddict009 12y ago

Any better alternative to uTorrent? I am using it since years. Bittorrent seems just clone of it with different color scheme.

blumkvist 12y ago

qbittorrent guys. Forget that uTorrent shit.

squeaky-clean 12y ago

I doubt it's mining Bitcoins specifically, people in the thread only mention CPU usage so far. I found this[0] on the epicscale site, which let's you query for things like the hashrate of a Node, but it doesn't seem to work. So while not bitcoins, I would guess they are mining some altcoin rather than being a botnet or something else. [0] http://report.epicscale.com/ http://report.epicscale.com/

justizin 12y ago

"This is abhorrent!" "What kind of monster would suck up my CPU cycles, increasing my power bill, and shortening the life of my hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of computing equipment, to make a few cents?!" This is basically just flash ads without annoying audio coming from a mystery tab. I laud it as innovation. ;) Also: transmission, yo.

wnevets 12y ago

I havent updated utorrent since it was bought by bittorrent. What a waste of a great product.

helical 12y ago

Is there a relatively easy way to import all torrents from uTorrent to some other torrent client?

acd 12y ago

I suggest you use qbitorrent instead which is a fork of uTorrent the site ninite has an installer for it.

jonnynezbo 12y ago

The link doesn't work: "Account Suspended"

vesinisa 12y ago
Their whole forum seems down.
xrjn 12y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20150306113124/http://forum.utorrent.com/topic/95041-warning-epicscale-riskware-silently-installed-with-latest-utorrent/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150306113124/http://forum.utor...

cpeterso 12y ago

Some MIT students founded a company called TidBit that let web publishers mine bitcoins (using asm.js) in their readers' browsers as an opt-in alternative to banner ads. They current face a subpoena from the New Jersey division of consumer affairs. http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/12/new-jersey-slaps-mit-bitcoin-hackers-with-subpoena-and-theyre-fighting-back/view-all/ http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/12/new-jersey-slaps-mit-bitco...

charonn0 12y ago

I was able to load up the page a few minutes ago, but now it says the hosting account is suspended.

GigabyteCoin 12y ago

As a old bitcoin miner, this is a phenomenally terrible idea. CPU and GPU mining will literally cost their users millions of dollars in electricity for the few thousand dollars they would stand to make in bitcoin mining.

AdmiralAsshat 12y ago

I remember when uTorrent was the shiny, slim, new BT client to supersede the bloated and ad-riddled Bitlord and BitComet clients. The more things change...

ghantila 12y ago

Did anyone notice? uTorrent main setup file is packed by UPX and is made unpack-able by UPX itself by modifying some bytes in the packed UPX. Why would a developer do that? Point.

jimkri 12y ago

Did anyone else catch what one of the Admins on the site said? >Looks like the Epic Scale software is not uninstalling as it was intended to by design. I literally cannot stand companies that write software like this.