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- Best Torrent Client Privacy Concerns
In this guide, we will take a look at some of the best ways you can use Flud for Android. We’ll also cover some of the precautions you’ll need to take to ensure your experience is as streamlined as possible.
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Let’s get started:
What Is Flud?
Flud is an Android torrent downloader—one of the most reliable and intuitive downloaders of its kind, second to other top apps like the tTorrent downloader.
Flud offers users some great torrenting features such as proxy support and encryption.
When a torrent client provides users with proxy support, that usually means that torrent downloaders do not have to expose their machine’s IP address when they’re downloading torrents.
In the next few sections, we’ll show you how to install Flud on your Android device and use it anonymously to protect your privacy.
We’ll also talk more about how to customize your Flud experience and configure SOCKS proxy.
Flud: Free Version vs Paid Version
The easiest and safest way to download Flud on your Android device is through the Google Play Store. However, keep in mind that Flud currently has two versions on offer at the Google Play Store.
As you would expect, the free version gives you access to all the new interface options Flud offers, but you have to tolerate advertisements.
The ad-free app costs $1.49 USD as a one-time payment. Both versions basically offer the same torrenting experience.
Like most other apps on the Google Play Store (and almost all other mobile app platforms), the pro version is only different from the free version because it’s ad-free.
As a consumer, the best way forward is to download the free version, check out the interface options available, and use it for a while to see how you like it.
If you already know you want to purchase the pro version, go ahead. Sometimes, people just want to support the developers behind the application, and that’s a good reason to get the paid version.
Your Privacy Is at Risk When You Engage in Torrenting Activities Using Flud
Flud is a client, which means it has to make use of a public file-sharing protocol that’s not exactly privacy-friendly. Each peer in the same swarm that wants to download the same file as you can see your real IP address.
Not only that, but some BitTorrent clients also allow other peers to see your country. Torrent users who may be part of more than one swarm will have nothing stopping them from seeing all the other files/downloads you’ve shared from your device on the torrent network.
To keep your torrent history as private as possible, you need to use a SOCKS proxy or a VPN.
VPNs and SOCKS services are two of the best tools that torrenters all over the world use to keep their location anonymous and their identity hidden.
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Privacy and anonymity are crucial in the torrenting world. Many people (and law enforcement, in some countries) consider all torrenting activities to be the same as illegally pirating copyrighted content.
But there are plenty of resources where you can download legitimate and copyright-free content without paying anything. People often use torrents to sync files, update game downloads, and access open-source datasets.
Note:
Torrenting can also be used for research and education purposes.For example, you can bulk-download archived books and other content from the Internet Archive. Also, Wikipedia offers free copies of its entire database, downloadable through a BitTorrent magnet link.
Torrenters should realize, though, that downloading content from legal sources should take priority over everything else. But it isn’t always obvious if you’re downloading pirated or copyrighted content.
So the safest approach forward is to use a VPN service to safeguard your data and privacy.
Will Downloading Content Through Flud Compromise Your Privacy?
Not exactly, but here’s the deal: If you click on any given torrent that’s actively downloading, you’ll see a panel labeled ‘Details.’ Click on it and you’ll see another tab that says ‘Peers.’
Then you’ll see the name of every other torrent user who’s also sharing the same torrent file in the swarm. You don’t have to download anything extra to see their torrent version and their original IP address.
There’s no malicious intent here on part of anyone. This is just how BitTorrent is supposed to operate. If peers in a given swarm don’t know each other’s IP addresses, they cannot download content from each other. But this shouldn’t distract from the simple fact that downloading torrent files from Flud does expose your data.
This is important:
Additionally, per Flud’s privacy policy, the app collects users’ usage data, unique identifiers, location and session details.Which VPN or Proxy Should You Download for Flud?
There are many download options. SOCKS5 proxy is generally considered more stable when compared with a VPN when you only want to download torrents on your Android devices.
VPN apps for Android devices haven’t made a name for themselves in terms of reliability just yet, so it’s a good idea to learn how to set up a proxy for the Flud torrent app. (We’ll cover this in detail in the next section.)
The best approach is to use a proxy service and then use a VPN for added security. Fortunately, most top VPN apps also offer SOCKS5 services for free with their VPN packages. Most of the time, you’ll find that you actually pay less for the VPN + SOCKS5 bundle than for a SOCKS5 standalone service.
Just make sure that the provider you sign up for offers unlimited bandwidth and fast service, along with P2P-enabled servers and a zero-logs policy.
Step-By-Step Guide on How to Add Proxy and Encryption to Flud
Step 1: Sign Up for a Socks Provider That Doesn’t Keep Logs
There are many options. Some say NordVPN is good for its no-logging policy, but you’re free to choose any provider you like. Just make sure the proxy service is not HTTP. It has to be SOCKS.
Once you’ve signed up for a subscription, note your username and password combination. Check your email for a confirmation.
Step 2: Configure Proxy for Flud
Launch Flud and then go to the Menu option.
Click on Settings and then on Network.
From there, click on Proxy Settings.
If you signed up for NordVPN, then input these simple items:
- Proxy Type: SOCKS5
- Host: nl1.nordvpn.com
- Port: 1080
- Also Use for Peer Connection: Check the box
- Requires Authentication: Check the box
- Username: Use the NordVPN subscription
- Password: Use the NordVPN subscription
Press the button that says Apply.
Step 3: Configure Encryption for Flud
To get encryption, just install the VPN app of your VPN provider and run it every time you access Flud.
Note:
Flud also has encryption as a built-in feature.It may not be the best, but to use it, just go to the Menu (tap the three vertical dots button in the top right corner of your Flud main menu screen) and then go to Settings. From there, go to Network, then to Encryption.
The encryption section presents three options: Enable, Disable, and Forced.
- With the Enabled option, Flud will be using encryption every time it’s available, but it will connect to peers who don’t offer it. As a result, you’ll have access to more peers when compared to the Encryption mode, called Forced. Hit the Disable option to turn off Enabled encryption.
- In the Forced option, Flud will not form a connection with any peer that doesn’t have the full encryption option enabled. Needless to say, the Forced option is safer, but it will result in a decreased number of peers. That could so slow down your torrents by a huge margin.
Flud Main Interface
The interface of the Flud BitTorrent client for Android is fairly simple and easy to use.
There are three buttons on the main screen. The magnifying glass icon is for searching for torrents, the magnet icon is for pasting a torrent magnet link and the icon with three vertical dots takes you to the menu.
Use the plus button in the lower region of the interface to add .torrent files if you have any saved on your Android device.
Below that, you may see an advertisement if you didn’t pay for the pro version of the app.
FAQ Flud Android BitTorrent Client
A 6 Minute Read
09 Feb 2017
Image By Shane Adams
Despite all their political baggage, torrents are undeniably one of the most efficient and effective ways to distribute data. Their speed and resilience are part and parcel to their popularity. However, because of their design they also easily expose those who use them.
Political/social/philosophical debates aside, torrents present a serious privacy problem for their everyday users. Indeed, anyone can watch who torrents what. This tutorial will describe two separate ways, each with their pros and cons, to route around this issue.
Weak Privacy, Fast Speed: VPN
The most popular method to achieve privacy while torrenting is to use a VPN. Of course, this comes with a very large caveat that will be covered shortly. Nevertheless, VPNs work by routing your traffic through a given server, often in a location of your choice. Importantly, the server that routes your traffic will also route the traffic of hundreds, if not thousands of other users. Assuming that the VPN company doesn’t log who is using the VPN server (a big assumption), there’s no way for the average actor to tell where the traffic came from behind the VPN.
What this means is that if you’re downloading a given file using torrents, all the peers that you’re sharing with will only see the VPN server’s IP address rather than your own. Of course, they can still approach the VPN company to try and determine who was behind the VPN, but most decent VPNs promise not to hand over this information. Moreover, if your ISP is watching they will also only see garbled data instead of the actual files, because VPNs encrypt all the data that passes through them.
Now for the caveat: unfortunately, VPN companies work exclusively based on promises, and promises are easily broken without you, the customer, ever knowing. While a VPN company may claim not to log traffic, you have no way to verify that they’re keeping to this promise. When faced with the threat of legal action a VPN company may very well just reveal your information, rendering the privacy they claim to provide completely null.
With that said, VPN companies are also extremely reputation based, and if a user were to face negative consequences because the VPN company broke their privacy guarantee, then news would spread like wildfire and they would likely lose much of their business quite rapidly. Moreover, VPNs are also quite fast, allowing you to download files quickly. Whether you accept these risks is a decision that is exclusively your own.
If you do head down the path of VPNs, know that you’ll want to either find one that has drop protection built into the provided software, or (if you’re on Linux) check out my tutorial on using firewall rules to protect against VPN drops. The reason that this is necessary is that if the VPN suddenly disconnects and you don’t have adequate protection in place to stop your torrents, you’ll end up revealing your real IP address, which may or may not land you in trouble.
Strong Privacy, Slow Speed: I2P (via Vuze)
I2P is an online anonymity network that leverages the wonders of cryptography to provide strong privacy. Indeed, if a VPN provides privacy by policy, then I2P provides privacy by design. It relies less on promises and more on mathematics to provide the utmost level of protection. While it operates much slower than a VPN, it is also much more private and secure, and is completely free.
I2P works by encrypting your connection and routing it through not just one server, but several servers in such a fashion that by the time your traffic reaches its destination it is nearly impossible to determine where it originated from. This is similar to Tor, but with a notable difference being that the Tor network is not designed to handle heavy traffic (i.e. torrenting), whereas I2P proudly encourages it.
For this reason, there are a few options available for torrenting on I2P, with the strongest being through Vuze, a torrent client with an optional I2P plugin called I2PHelper. I2PHelper has a built-in I2P client, meaning that you don’t need to bother with the rather clunky I2P interface.
Installing an I2P-enabled Vuze client is easy. First, head over to Vuze’s website and download and install the Vuze client. Next, open Vuze and head to the Tools menu, navigate to Plugins, and finally the Installation Wizard. Select By List, click Next, and scroll down until you find the I2PHelper plugin. Select it, click next, and complete the rest of the installation.
Next, we need to configure I2PHelper just slightly. Navigate again to the Tools menu, but this time click on Options. On the Mode menu in the left panel, select Advanced as the user proficiency to give yourself more options in the interface. Next, head down to Plugins>I2PHelper, again on the left panel. Here you can adjust your bandwidth. Set it to a reasonable level based on how much of your network connection you are willing to share (I set mine to unlimited).
Finally, go to the Connection menu in the left panel, and scroll down to the Networks option set. This is where you will select whether you want torrents to be downloaded through the regular internet, through I2P, or through Tor. If you want the utmost anonymity, select I2P. Do not select Tor for this, as you will harm the network. Finally, click save and exit the options.
Do know that initially any torrents that you download will be painfully slow, but over time as your computer becomes better known on the network your connection will become faster until it is no longer painfully slow, just slow.
Finding Torrents
Other than the slower speeds, the main downside to torrenting with I2P is torrent availability. Indeed, you can’t just download any torrent through I2P. Instead, you must find torrents that are already being shared by other I2P users. There are two ways to go about this.
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First, you could head over to my I2P introduction tutorial and learn how to navigate to hidden services (websites not available on the regular internet) on I2P, where you will find a torrent tracker called Postman. Any torrent you find on Postman will work reliably with I2P, but the only downside is that the selection isn’t as large as what is available on the clearnet.
If, on the other hand, you want to download torrents you find on regular torrenting websites like The Pirate Bay (yes, .torrents, magnet links to the clearnet won’t work with only I2P enabled), you’ll have to go through a bit of trial and error. This is because Vuze’s I2PHelper allows users to torrent both on I2P and the clearnet in parallel, a feature it calls network mixing. This means that if you download an Ubuntu torrent, for example, it will download and share Ubuntu through the regular internet, but it will also go onto I2P and download and share it there as well.
The implication of this is that if other I2PHelper users have already downloaded a regular torrent on the clearnet and are sharing it on I2P through network mixing as well, then you’ll be able to download it from them exclusively through I2P. Knowing which torrents are available through network mixing, however, involves simply adding them to Vuze and hoping that they find peers, which is by no means a guarantee. Again, using Postman is a much more reliable method, even if selection is more limited.
Network Mixing for the Public Good
If, on the other hand, you’re comfortable with the increased speed and risk of a VPN, but would also like to help those who use I2P exclusively to torrent, then you’re a prime candidate for enabling network mixing. Do note that you won’t gain any real benefit in terms of privacy through this route as your weakest link will still be the VPN, but you’ll be helping build a more secure and private torrent network by making more content accessible to it.
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The only necessary change to enable this is to go back into Vuze’s Options menu, navigate to the Connection settings on the left pane, scroll back down to the Networks option set, and select both Public IP Network and I2P Network as your default torrent networks. With these enabled, everything you download through the clearnet will also be available to those who only use I2P. Just don’t forget to enable your VPN before you begin torrenting!
Best Torrent Client Privacy Concerns
Want to upgrade your online privacy? I use NordVPN to encrypt my traffic and route it across the globe, and Spideroak for rock solid encrypted cloud storage!