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I live in a dictatorship and use the Tor Network to get around censorship. I read that Torrenting over Tor Network is not good because of high Internet usage and it slows everything down. For a short time, I ran a Tor exit node and noticed half the Internet usage was torrents. Is the Tor network now OK for torrents? I need to release a controversial movie about my country and would need to use Tor to seed the torrent for a day or so. The total usage may be 5GB. I am running Whonix to prevent DNS leaks. I notice that when downloading a test linux torrent, sometimes when heavy usage of above 250KBYTES per second, when traffic leaves VirtualBox Machine it goes to 2 Tor entry nodes. Usually there is only 1 entry node connection. I worried that when uploading torrents, 2 entry nodes can allow dictator to find and maybe hurt me because of correlation attack.

I don't know if this was the official Tor support until reddit let me know. So I posted this here.

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    Why don't you use free file hosting?
    – user263485
    Commented Aug 27, 2014 at 4:04
  • Curious to know what kind of video is there, please share the details here when released.
    – shirish
    Commented Sep 4, 2014 at 15:12
  • This is not a venue for sharing details about torrents, it is a venue for asking questions about Tor. Please refreain from off-topic discussion (eg. sharing the specifics of whatever this is about) in the comments; thanks!
    – user5
    Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 17:14
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    Also, for the record, this isn't official Tor support; it's just a convenient place to ask and answer questions :)
    – user5
    Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 17:14
  • Actually I think this comment is appropriate. I asked one time how secure tor connections were, more specifically about the possibility or probability of the exit point owner reading decoding or decrypting my traffic. The answer was basically no but this submission tells me that this user is able to recognize and read (?) what his exit point was doing so I am still wondering about the safety and security of exit points.
    – ron
    Commented Feb 5, 2016 at 16:06

6 Answers 6

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Making a movie available via BitTorrent is fine. But using Tor, either for seeding or recommended for downloading, is unwise. It's hard to properly configure torrent clients to use Tor without leaking, so recommending that people download via Tor would put them at risk. And even if torrent clients are properly configured, they would be stealing bandwidth from people who just need Tor for browsing.

A better plan would be to lease a seedbox from (for example) BolehVPN. To stay anonymous, use Tor for all associated connections. Get the price from the BolehVPN site. Then buy enough Bitcoins, plus 20% to cover mixing fees and price changes.

I've written a guide that covers using Bitcoins anonymously in great detail. I recommend multiple transfers through mixing services, using MultiBit clients in multiple Whonix instances. For better anonymity, each Multibit client should have a wallet with several receiving addresses. For each transfer from one client to another through a mixing service, you randomly spread the Bitcoins among several address combinations. That increases the anonymity that each transfer provides, by reducing correlation based on quantities transferred.

Reputable mixing services include BitLaundry and Bitcoin Fog. Avoid OnionBC. It has either broken, or become a scam. It accepts deposits, but won’t execute withdrawals.

After each mixing step, it’s crucial to check receiving addresses for taint from sending addresses. On the Blockchain explorer page, enter each receiving address in the “Search” field, and hit enter. Then click “Taint Analysis”, and download the results. Once you have all of the data, search the taint results for each receiving address for the corresponding sending address. If it appears, you need to remix that component.

Once you have your anonymized Bitcoins, browse the BolehVPN site via Tor, and lease the seedbox. Then upload the movie to the seedbox via sftp via Tor, in relatively small, random-size pieces.

Now you have a torrent to share. People can download as they wish.

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    I will be releasing patches for torrent client qTorrent in some time, so I'll post it here to download. The patch goal is just to add leakless "darknet mode"
    – Alexey Vesnin ♦
    Commented Feb 4, 2016 at 15:30
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At Tor blog they say it is not good idea to seed via Tor network. I think best bet of yours would be using Tor browser to contact anonymously someone from non-standard country to seed the torrent for you. You reward him by doing some service in exchange or paying him using cryptocurrency account created over tor network and source funds would be anonymized thru coin mixing service mentioned already by user "mirimir".

Another way would be to google some free service that allows uploading torrent and seeding for you for some time, im sure there are such services. Dont forget to use only Tor/Tor browser registering/using such service.

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I know this isn't exactly what you asked for, but because Bittorrent over Tor isn't considered the best thing to to there are other options.

Depending on what you mean by "movie", another option might be to upload it directly to various leaking platforms. Most of them support a secure way to upload videos to the press directly. You may even want to upload it to different ones.

The most famous one is Wikileaks of course. But there is a lot of others, like GlobaLeaks with many instances, Wikipedia having a big list and SecuDrop also used by various organizations. They all allow you to upload it.

As for sharing files, be it movies or something else there actually are various website allowing that on the Tor network (so hidden services/onions). You might want to look for the Hidden Wiki and start there. That way you can simply host your file.

In the end you also have the option of setting up an HTTP Server or something similar to share your movie that way.

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If having wide availability of the video is ok, perhaps getting it up on archive.org without caught doing it might be what you need. Then anyone can see it and download it. Plenty of "activist" class material there.

Aside from presenting traffic that is unwelcome on Tor, I think your torrent client itself is apt to leak who you are in several ways. Very bad to take such a risk.

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Free VPN is an option for you. There is no money trail and you do not need to fund VPN usage. You may encounter volume limitation since you need 5GB usage volume, but this can be overcome by dividing your file to as many parts as you wish, and use different free VPN to load each part. This may improve your anonymity and security. However, make sure all free VPNs encrypt the files. Like all other answers, I will tell you using Tor is not a right answer for what you want to do.

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  • One free VPN you can try is securityKISS, but it only lets you transfer 300MB/day (per one account).
    – knaperek
    Commented Sep 1, 2014 at 7:08
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    CyberGhost is an ideal free VPN in this regard. It welcomes torrent, allow 1MB/s speed for free VPN and no limitation on volume except maximum 3 hour continues use that can be reactivated unlimited number of times per day. So essentially you can download almost 24 hrs a day.
    – Roya
    Commented Sep 1, 2014 at 7:21
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Here is another option. Using Tribler behind free VPNs may help, as Tribler is specially designed to prevent leaking IP address (although it has some flaws currently, VPNs can still protect you when Tribler is exploited).
Always use a separate VM for seeding to avoid exploits against your torrent client.

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