Anonymous Bittorrent with I2PSnark

I personally think that is is very important to use anonymizers whenever possible for most of the tasks on the Internet. All of your movement and actions are tracked and can be easily traced back to you which is probably something that most users on the Internet are either unaware of or do not like at all if they know that this is the case.

One major problem are P2P networks where anonymity is not that easily achieved. If you do lack the technical background you will face severe difficulties on the road to anonymity. There is however a great solution if you want to be anonymous while downloading and sharing files on Bittorrent.

“Unlike many other anonymizing networks, I2P doesn’t try to provide anonymity by hiding the originator of some communication and not the recipient, or the other way around. I2P is designed to allow peers using I2P to communicate with each other anonymously — both sender and recipient are unidentifiable to each other as well as to third parties.”

Here is what has to be done to setup the anonymous bittorrent client:

Download the I2P installer for Windows or Linux
Install the application. Just run the executable in Windows
go into the start menu and open the I2P folder there. Click on Start I2P (restartable)
You have to configure a local proxy now. You do that the following way:
1. Firefox: Go to Tools > Options. Click on Advanced > Network and select the Settings button under Connection. check Manual Proxy Configuration and add localhost as the HTTP Proxy and the port 4444
2. Internet Explorer: Click on Tools > Internet Options. Select Connections from the Tab and click on the LAN settings button. Activate Use a proxy server and enter the same data. (Localhost and 4444)
3. Opera: Select Tools > Preferences and click on the Advanced tab. Choose network from the menu and click on the Proxy Servers buttons. Add localhost and the port 4444 to the HTTP and all other protocols that you want to use.
Visit http://localhost:7657/index.jsp to load the main interface. You do have many options such as chatting anonymously on IRC or starting the anonymous bittorrent client.
click on I2PSnark in the header to load the bittorrent interface.
You may now Add Torrents by either browsing your local computer or pasting a url with the torrent information.
The speed seems to be a little bit lower than usual which is caused by the anonymization. I think that the download rates are still acceptable if you consider that you download and share anonymously.