Are you using P2P and torrents without VPN?

First of all lets get one thing straight. We strongly believe, that people should get paid for their job. However we are very far from judging any one or even seeing problem of piracy in just black and whit colours. Whole problem is much more complicated and let’s be honest – so called entertainment industry is not guilt free as well.

Never the less it is time to bring you latest story about fight against piracy and those evil pirates ;-).
As we said above we believe in honesty. But at the same time our primary obligation is to bring you as much privacy and anonymity as we can. In some countries use of P2P and torrent networks is completely banned, in some (like Poland) you are allowed to download movies and music but uploading is considered crime. Again in some torrents and P2P have no restrictions at all.

Recognized through IP address (if only they used VPN….)

Movie was download and uploaded via uTorrent network. German company “Baseprotect”, that specializes in copyrights protection and is patrolling computer networks for such illegal activity. They have wrote to producers of “Czarny czwartek” (“Black Thursday“) letting them know that they can help with pursuing pirate uploaders.

Right now over 300 users in Poland received letters asking them to pay settlement fee of over £100 within 7 days. Article says, that this is just the beginning and if successful we might start to see more and more such actions in Poland or other EU countries. If user will refuse to pay  case will end up in court.

How they got my home address? – your IP address is all they need !!!

To check users IP address in torrent network is pretty easy. But going from IP address to your home address looks hard. Trust us, it is not. Especially in cases like above.

Users in Poland were asking, how those lawyers got my home address?

Once user IP was established, “Baseprotect” contacted Polish police asking for assistance. Police wrote to specific ISP asking for personal data of users using particular IP addresses (date, time) and handed them over back to “Baseprotect”. Although process is time consuming it is fairly easy to do if you are a company that specializes in such activities you will have no problem with it.

How to use P2P or Torrents and be anonymous?

There is only one thing user can do in order to hide IP address. If you do use torrents and want to avoid such nasty surprise there is only one solution. Always use active VPN with torrents and P2P. Only than your real IP address will be hidden, replaced with fake, VPN IP address. And if you happen to download file that you should not… no problem as no law company will get (searching for you) as far as your ISP ;-)!

Remember, your IP is your ID!