Connected to a university wifi, it´s incredible fast! We´ve been told our ip or whatever is unique, and the admin can "see" whatever we are doing. What does this mean? There are several hundred connected to this wifi 24/7. Also, torrents can be legal right? It´s the content that can be illegal. How can they see the difference?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
legal torrents
- Thread starter Grassgreen
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Your ISP has the ability to know every website you visit and connection you make. You ask them to show you macrumors.com, they request it and pass the information along to you.
Torrenting the latest Ubuntu release won't get you in trouble, although that university Internet use policy you read and agreed to might forbid the use of torrent protocol in general.
Torrenting the latest Ubuntu release won't get you in trouble, although that university Internet use policy you read and agreed to might forbid the use of torrent protocol in general.
I just retired from a major university. Yes, they have high speed Internet. They also have high-speed firewalls and traffic-shapers which mediate your connection to the outside world. In addition, intellectual property owners like music producers and film studios have a small army of law firms that track the fact that at this particular time, this particular IP address download this particular movie which is the intellectual property of this particular studio, and they demand it be dealt with at once.
The record of every site you go to is logged and available to IT security.
The record of every site you go to is logged and available to IT security.
these were the answers I was looking for(not to be sounding to much like Obi-Wan) Thank you for your replies.
It may be legal in the eyes of the law, but that doesn't mean an organization has to permit them, i.e., they can set terms of use, and prohibit the use of them.
To be honest, the use of torrents is mostly to pirate stuff. Lets call a spade a spade and while there are valid uses for torrents they pale in comparison to pirating music and software.
Eight Legal Uses For Bit Torrent- Can't remember which game, but a recent download utilitzed torrent. I'll also acknowledge they are used to distribute pirated content.
Humble Bundle uses them as an option to download stuff you get from them too.
It's the seeding that is the problem I would think. Legal or not, you shouldn't be distributing content to hundreds to thousands of people. It's a waste of their resources, especially if everyone is doing it. I get 2GB uploaded within a hour according to Transmission.
It's the seeding that is the problem I would think. Legal or not, you shouldn't be distributing content to hundreds to thousands of people. It's a waste of their resources, especially if everyone is doing it. I get 2GB uploaded within a hour according to Transmission.
At one point Vmware was using it to download a Vm appliance, this was a couple of years ago, so I don't know if they still use it. I opted not to get the appliance (it was a specific Linux build), as I didn't want to deal with the seeding and uploading.
I think in this day and age, the use of torrents is mostly used for piracy and valid uses are probably diminishing
I think in this day and age, the use of torrents is mostly used for piracy and valid uses are probably diminishing
Using bittorrent technology is legal; what you download via that technology may not be.
Your IP address isn't necessarily unique, and ISPs randomly assign IP addresses or else they'd run out of them - but they have heavy logging and databasing to know which IP is assigned to which subscriber at what time, and that can be easily cross-referenced with the webpages requested. Sysadmins can see live traffic and also scan back through the logs, and they give this information over to law enforcement whenever it's requested.
Furthermore, using Tor may hypothetically get around that - but don't count your chickens: Your ISP knows when you use a Tor client and this often can put some type of flag on your account. Plus, unless you use Tor on a computer you've never used for anything other than Tor and you've only used it at a public access point it can be tracked; Tor traffic is anonymous when it's being transferred, but the endpoints can be recorded and that's how Tor users can be found out.
Even then, gardon-variety websites can track tons and tons of stuff that makes you unique - https://panopticlick.eff.org is a cool way to see just how unique and trackable your system is - even down to how many and what fonts you have installed all contribute to making your footprint unique - and if your computer footprint is unique, then it is trackable. In fact, the unique factor could simply be low enough (e.g. less than 100% unique) and they'd have a pretty good idea it was you based on browsing behavior patterns.
But that's all academic because your Alma Mater may just restrict access to certain thing, or even block sites by keywords, and they're within their right to do it.
Just because it's the US government or Google invading your privacy doesn't mean it's not 1984 all over again in 2015. In fact Google probably knows more about you than your mother does. Or the NSA.
I seed a little bit. If I'm paying for my internet, I expect to be able to use it - for uploading, downloading, sideloading, backloading, whatevers. I'll stop the seed once the download is done though, and if I like the music I torrent I'll go buy it. There's no way I'm paying the price-gouging executives when I haven't heard the song all the way through... they pay pennies on the dollar to the artists anyway - and then whine about how they're being victimized. Yeah, right.
Your IP address isn't necessarily unique, and ISPs randomly assign IP addresses or else they'd run out of them - but they have heavy logging and databasing to know which IP is assigned to which subscriber at what time, and that can be easily cross-referenced with the webpages requested. Sysadmins can see live traffic and also scan back through the logs, and they give this information over to law enforcement whenever it's requested.
Furthermore, using Tor may hypothetically get around that - but don't count your chickens: Your ISP knows when you use a Tor client and this often can put some type of flag on your account. Plus, unless you use Tor on a computer you've never used for anything other than Tor and you've only used it at a public access point it can be tracked; Tor traffic is anonymous when it's being transferred, but the endpoints can be recorded and that's how Tor users can be found out.
Even then, gardon-variety websites can track tons and tons of stuff that makes you unique - https://panopticlick.eff.org is a cool way to see just how unique and trackable your system is - even down to how many and what fonts you have installed all contribute to making your footprint unique - and if your computer footprint is unique, then it is trackable. In fact, the unique factor could simply be low enough (e.g. less than 100% unique) and they'd have a pretty good idea it was you based on browsing behavior patterns.
But that's all academic because your Alma Mater may just restrict access to certain thing, or even block sites by keywords, and they're within their right to do it.
Just because it's the US government or Google invading your privacy doesn't mean it's not 1984 all over again in 2015. In fact Google probably knows more about you than your mother does. Or the NSA.
I seed a little bit. If I'm paying for my internet, I expect to be able to use it - for uploading, downloading, sideloading, backloading, whatevers. I'll stop the seed once the download is done though, and if I like the music I torrent I'll go buy it. There's no way I'm paying the price-gouging executives when I haven't heard the song all the way through... they pay pennies on the dollar to the artists anyway - and then whine about how they're being victimized. Yeah, right.
Last edited:
I think u were meaning your "admin" can see... Yes, the ISP can see, but i'd be more worried about the admin in your workplace..
VPN would solve this, unless he has the nerve to block ports... Some may do
U can use torrents for legal stuff and usually u do for sharing.... but Hollywood look at where the money is and its what its mostly used for, piracy.
VPN would solve this, unless he has the nerve to block ports... Some may do
U can use torrents for legal stuff and usually u do for sharing.... but Hollywood look at where the money is and its what its mostly used for, piracy.
Way to go for what?
If your university does not allow you to download illegal torrents, and that's what you're trying to do, then yes, a VPN will help hide it. If your university doesn't have a blanket ban on torrents and you're downloading legal ones, then why do you need to hide what you're doing? If your university doesn't allow torrents of any kind, a VPN will hide the fact you're downloading torrents, but they're still going to see a ton of traffic to and from your IP address and be suspicious.
A VPN only hides the data - it's like a pipeline: they can see it, but they can't see what's inside of it; but it does't hide the bandwidth. They can still tell you're doing something. e.g., they know there's a pipeline about yea big but they can't tell whether it's carrying brand-name Fiji™ water, molten adamantium, or raw sewage (for example). BUT they can measure the volume and speed, and therefore they know how much of X is being piped through it.
Edited for clarity.
Last edited:
OP, This is the best answer. Yes it will hide what you are doing, but they will still see an increase in bandwidth. If you take the piss no doubt you will hear from them. Keep it under the radar and don't give them a headache and you should be fine.
I wanna say I appreciate you guys taking the time to explain this to me, and all the answers you have given