How could this have happened? They had me tracked down to the specific port I use with uTorrent.

Was it a stinger torrent designed to track the people who download it? Was it a person that I leeched it from?

Does anyone know how these kinds of things work?

Oh, and:

http://www.theesa.com/

is what hit me

Well I think its something like 1/3 (probably more at this point) of torrents are being connected to by anti-p2p organizations. I'm not sure how they work, but chances are they connected to you enough times that they decided to pwn your ass.

Lesson: use rapidshit and download torrents from school.

Were you using the newest version of uTorrent?

No, it was an older version.

Contact the EFF right away and if you feel comfortable, put the letter on Chilling Effects (chillingeffects.org).

Always use blocklists, and never assume any torrent to be safe.

Always use blocklists, and never assume any torrent to be safe.

I disagree with this statement. The torrents from the following sites are almost guaranteed not to land you in legal trouble:

Debian (http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/)
Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors#bt)
Fedora (http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/)
GotBSD (http://www.gotbsd.net/)

And there are many, many more along those lines. :p

I disagree with this statement. The torrents from the following sites are almost guaranteed not to land you in legal trouble:

Debian (http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/)
Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors#bt)
Fedora (http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/)
GotBSD (http://www.gotbsd.net/)

And there are many, many more along those lines. :p

Those torrents might not be safe either. You should still use blocklists to make sure that the MAFIAA can't steal software from those fine companies.

:)

We are living in one of the most fucked up times on record but because it is "normal" to us none of us question our freedom. Fuck you all.

We are living in one of the most fucked up times on record but because it is "normal" to us none of us question our freedom. Fuck you all.

QFT. Fuck the ESA. Don't go down without a fight.

out of curiosity what were you downloading? movies? music? games? software?

if you want to jump through the loop out of it find out EXACTLY what they have you down as "stealing" and go buy it right now. if you own a program/cd/movie etc you can download it as much as you want


but if they have you down for like $1000 worth of stuff its probably not worth it





and this exact thing is why i NEVER use torrents. i always use rapidshre, megauplaod and the likes for my music/movies/games/software

Get a friend you don't see often but trust to pay cash for it. Then scratch it and say you thought they probably wouldn't do returns and didn't feel like wasting your time trying to find out. Using a credit card to buy the copy will bite you in the ass.

and this exact thing is why i NEVER use torrents. i always use rapidshre, megauplaod and the likes for my music/movies/games/software

Great, so when rapidshare, megaupload and the likes get DMCA notices for the files you've downloaded, they'll fork over your IP and personal information in a heartbeat. You'll make a much easier target than any BitTorrent user. Thank you very much.

Linux/GNU could have saved him....

Linux/GNU could have saved him....

How exactly? I mean, if he got busted by a rootkit similar to the Sony Rootkit, then yeah, it could have, but assuming he got busted by a bad peer, I don't see why you're saying this.

Were you running PeerGuardian or any other kind of blocklist software?

my neighbour got the same problem.

he downloaded couple of movies using torrent.... he got call from ISP and his internet service is discontinued.... I think this is against out freedom.. Time to Protest.....

Were you running PeerGuardian or any other kind of blocklist software?
yeh at the very least use peerguardian. never had a problem meself.

Okay, it seems that no one really answered the OP's questions, so I will. I'll also explain why PeerGuardian may not save you. This information is taken by a study conducted by the University of Washington (Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice (http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/uwcse_dmca_tr.pdf)); and is obviously explained in more detail within their study, if anyone is interested.

Okay - you do not need any software installed on your computer to be found downloading illegal content from Bit Torrent; nor do you have to download a particularly designed torrent. Infact, you don't even have to leech from someone to get caught downloading the content. How it works is like this: the torrent file you download has the address of several servers (known as trackers) contained within it. These trackers are responsible for maintaining a list of peers (their IP address and port) for any torrent which they host, and providing this list to all of the connected peers. When your Bit Torrent client (in this case, uTorrent) receives the list, they connect to a few of these peers, and begin downloading the files from them. Other peers also connect to you, and begin download from you.

Software such as PeerGuardian acts as a firewall, and prevents you from connecting to peers who have known affiliations with law enforcement, DMCA people, etc. They do this by maintaining a list of blacklisted IP addresses, which your computer is blocked from accessing. This stops you from downloading from these organisations, as well as uploading to them, but it does not stop them from getting your IP address and port from the tracker. Since it would take monitoring organisations a very large amount of bandwidth to confirm that you were actually sharing the file (they would have to download and verify that it was the offending content for every connected peer), they often simply assume that you were.

Knowing that you were connected to the tracker for a particular torrent, the organisation (or whoever hired them) sends a complaint letter to your ISP. Your ISP then forwards the complaint to you. Here's one I received:

ISP have received a Notice of Claimed Infringement relating to the IP
address of your ISP ADSL account. In forwarding you this notice ISP
are not alleging that you are infringing any copyright but are advising you
that some other party has alleged that you have and has particularised that
allegation within the following notice.

...

If ISP receive another notice that alleges you are infringing copyright
we will ask you to show cause why we should not ask you to move your ADSL
service to another ADSL provider.

Note that nowhere do they actually mention whether or not I was sharing the particular file. The fact that they received the allegation was enough to send me a warning, because they have an obligation to ensure that they are not promoting the sharing of illegal content. In that instance, I may have been sharing the file in question - or I might have just been connected to the tracker for fun, without downloading a single byte of data from any of the peers. If this had gone to caught, the complainant would have needed evidence to prove that I did actually download the file,which is why a lot of these cases are not pursued.

For anyone who is interested in the subject, I suggest reading the paper that I linked to at the start of my post.

Xafine

Great, so when rapidshare, megaupload and the likes get DMCA notices for the files you've downloaded, they'll fork over your IP and personal information in a heartbeat. You'll make a much easier target than any BitTorrent user. Thank you very much.


you obviously have no idea how those sites work



straight from megauploads site


"Which files are allowed to be uploaded?

All files that do not violate our terms of service or the laws of concerned countries. This means that files violating copyrights, or containing pornography, are forbidden and will be removed as soon as we notice. If you see such files on Megaupload, we would be glad if you notified us: Simply file an abuse report on our front page. "





they dont "knowingly" host copyrighted material, and as soon as someone reports it they delete it.


plus, how many people have you heard of getting busted because of a torrent? ok. now how many people have you heard of being busted because MU, RS or a similar site turned in their IP? exactly.

you obviously have no idea how those sites work
straight from megauploads site
"Which files are allowed to be uploaded?

All files that do not violate our terms of service or the laws of concerned countries. This means that files violating copyrights, or containing pornography, are forbidden and will be removed as soon as we notice. If you see such files on Megaupload, we would be glad if you notified us: Simply file an abuse report on our front page. "

they dont "knowingly" host copyrighted material, and as soon as someone reports it they delete it.

plus, how many people have you heard of getting busted because of a torrent? ok. now how many people have you heard of being busted because MU, RS or a similar site turned in their IP? exactly.

Yes, they don't "knowingly" host copyrighted material illicitly. When it is reported, they will remove it and they will likely fork over a list of IP's who downloaded it and the IP that uploaded it if asked. There is a single point of litigation here and that means that it is extremely easy to get information from them.

I've heard of a few people getting "busted" from bittorrent. I've heard of people getting arrested because file hosting sites turned in their personal information.

You do not get any protection by hiding in a smaller crowd. You do not get any protection from hiding behind a single proxy. You are worsening your security.

Yes, they don't "knowingly" host copyrighted material illicitly. When it is reported, they will remove it and they will likely fork over a list of IP's who downloaded it and the IP that uploaded it if asked. There is a single point of litigation here and that means that it is extremely easy to get information from them.

I've heard of a few people getting "busted" from bittorrent. I've heard of people getting arrested because file hosting sites turned in their personal information.

You do not get any protection by hiding in a smaller crowd. You do not get any protection from hiding behind a single proxy. You are worsening your security.

well i dont exact details but i know of a few albums that i download from rapidshare. a week later i got a "ceast and desist" order from the record company saying that i uploaded the CDs(taken from my account on the site that DID upload it and has my email) i told em i didnt upload shit and to fuck off

so apperently they couldnt get too much from rapidshare cause the site reuploaded the links a day or 2 later and the guy who i know uploaded it got in no trouble

If you were to go to court, plead guilty, install a TOR server and modify your OS logs to make it appear that it's been there for a few years. Then you can make the claim that somebody was using your proxy server to download torrents. Remember, the TOR servers don't keep logs ;).

If you were to go to court, plead guilty, install a TOR server and modify your OS logs to make it appear that it's been there for a few years. Then you can make the claim that somebody was using your proxy server to download torrents. Remember, the TOR servers don't keep logs ;).

Yes, but the Tor router list is accessible and is probably cached somewhere, and you can be shown to not be on it.

Yes, but the Tor router list is accessible and is probably cached somewhere, and you can be shown to not be on it.
I'm almost positive that all of TORs records are completely destroyed.

I think Clover's right on this one... Unless something's changed since I last read up on it, I think the cache is destroyed rather quickly, if it exists as anything more than information tossed around in RAM at all.

I think Clover's right on this one... Unless something's changed since I last read up on it, I think the cache is destroyed rather quickly, if it exists as anything more than information tossed around in RAM at all.

You're right and you're wrong.

See, every time a Tor node joins the network, it queries the directory servers for a list of all known Tor routers, which it needs to build circuits. This is probably destroyed, or whatever, sure. Tor needs to know all the other routers in any event.

The thing is, anyone can download this. I'm sure someone is storing it, and that could be used to prove who was a Tor router at any given time.