this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
78 points (92.4% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
54424 readers
1128 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
💰 Please help cover server costs.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Torrents are P2P. You are downloading from other people who are seeding. If no one seeds, there's nothing to download. Simple as that. Etiquette dictates you should seed more than you download to ensure the network stays lively.
So even if no one directly connects to my computer, just letting it seed is all you need? I use Deluge and, when it finishes downloading, it says "seeding" but I worry that means that someone can connect to my computer directly. Does it work fine if I just leave it be?
the reason you were able to download it is because other people were seeding it. that's why seeding is helpful
That's how torrents work. Everytime you're downloading so.ething you're connecting to other people's computers and letting other people connect to yours.
Kinda just how the Internet works in general, really. Just distributed vs centralized
They don't connect to your computer like you're thinking. There is a connection, yes, just like when you're downloading you connect to other people's computers. You can see them in the peer list.
Oh that's what that is! I kept seeing that but it didn't really click. Thanks!
Nobody is hacking your computer LMAO. It just lets them establish a connection to your computer to leech the file(s), nothing more
Person 1 has file A, which person 2 wants to download. Person 2 connects to person 1 and starts to download which makes person 1 a seeder. If person 1 has file A but doesn't seed, person 2 can't download file A since there is no seeder.
When you seed you make sure that others can download that same file, but yes, they establish a connection with you to download it. If I have understood it correctly.
Bittorrent is a file sharing protocol, which isn't inherently dangerous. The 'torrent' contains the information that's being passed around to allow connectivity to that particular file. This is also not inherently dangerous as that information is very specific and limited... and doesn't allow any other user to browse the rest of your computer.
What may be dangerous is downloading a file that contains malware or viruses via a torrent. Use reputable sites and keep your security software up to date. Better yet, use a different computer for this activity with a vpn.
Also potential security vulnerabilities in the torrent client. But that's uncommon and they fix them as they're found.
Torrents work by someone directly connecting to your computer, that's what happens when you download and seed a torrent after.
So the whole time you're doing anything with torrents, hundreds/thousands of other computers are connecting to yours to make that work.