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PSA: Don't torrent over TOR (tor.stackexchange.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

97 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It doesn't make you anonymous. Torrent protocol wasn't designed with anonymity in mind and there are a million ways you're going to leak your actual IP address.
Tor is a TCP only network.
While this doesn't give you the anonymity you wanted, it will hurt the network for other users.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Tor is a TCP only network.
Can someone ELI5 this point for me? I know there is TCP and UDP, is UDP safer then ?

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

TCP is a protocol where all the data is verified when sent. There is extra back and forth communication along with the payload to check that the payload arrived safely. Its great for downloading files when you want to make sure nothing is missing or damaged. UDP is more like a constant data stream where the sender doesn't care if it all gets to you. The advantage is that you send less data overall, useful if you don't care if one frame of a video stream looks weird.

One protocol isn't safer than another, its all about how much bandwidth you have/need. Torrenting over TOR uses up way more bandwidth than needed. Depending on the implementation, TCP can use 50% more bandwidth.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

and sometimes we do care about successful delivery but need to handle that ourselves so we use UDP to avoid layering delivery verification mechanisms.

https://openvpn.net/faq/what-is-tcp-meltdown

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

and sometimes we do care about successful delivery but need to handle that ourselves

Am I right to assume this is generally carried out by the users' torrent client which is why we prefer UDP for torrenting?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm definitely not an expert on Bittorrent, but I believe the person above was incorrect - I think there are some extensions to the protocol that enable UDP transport, but typically Bittorrent traffic occurs primarily via TCP.

What you said makes perfect sense in that hypothetical context, though!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Torrents are literally built around file hashes so yes

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

thank you sir!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Just different. Torrent protocol UTP is based on UDP, it has some advantages, you couldn't get with Tor