uTorrent bundles Bitcoin Miner, time for some alternatives
Update: This is uTorrent's official statement on the matter.
This morning users on the uTorrent forum started to report that EpicScale, a Bitcoin miner, was installed on their systems without their permission after upgrading to uTorrent 3.4.2 Build 38913.
According to those users, they did pay attention to the third-party offers displayed in the installer and did not accept any of those.
EpicScale on the other hand was not offered to them according to their reports. This was refuted later on by a uTorrent staffer who stated that partner software downloads would not occur without user approval.
We have reviewed the issue closely and can confirm there is no silent install happening. It is in fact impossible for partner software to be installed without user permission. We are continuing to look at the issue. But it is almost certain these users accepted the offer during install.
A quick test installation showed that several partner offers were included during the installation process but EpicScale was not one of them.
What makes EpicScale particularly worrying is the fact that it uses the computer's cpu cycles to mine Bitcoin.
Windows users who have installed that version of uTorrent should check the Task Manager (with a tap on Ctrl-Shift-Esc) to make sure EpicScale is not running on their system.
Even if those allegations are not true, bundling a software like EpicScale with uTorrent is highly problematic as it uses system resources all the time while running.
It may be time to switch to another torrent client.
List of uTorrent alternatives that you may try
All torrent clients below do not include third-party offers or are portable.
Deluge (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Deluge - This is a cross-platform BitTorrent client available for windows, Linux and Mac OS X. supports a wide variety of features: ButTorrent Protocol Encryption, uTorrent Peer Exchange, Local Peer Discovery, Mainline DHT, RSS, bandwidth scheduling and speed limits.
Deluge supports client and server operations meaning that you can run it on a remote server and connect to it from your desktop. That's one option though and if you want to run it only on your desktop, you can do that as well.
Deluge looks fairly similar to uTorrent before BitTorrent took over. So, a clean interface without advertisement that puts you in control.
Flud (Android)
Torrent downloader for Android. Is powered by advertisement but supports a variety of features including universal plug and play, nat-pmp, DHT, RSS feeds, magnet links, priorities and more.
If you like to download torrents on Android Flud is one of the apps you can use for that. What speaks for it is its support of all important features.
The one thing that you may dislike is that it is powered by ads. An ad free version is offered on the other hand that you cant purchase to get rid of those ads.
qBittorrent (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Another cross-platform client that ships with a clean installer and an impressive list of features. Supports all Bittorrent extensions (magnet and BitComet uris, DHT, Peer Exchange, Full Encryption), torrent queuing and prioritizing, UPnP and NAT-PMP support, RSS support, bandwidth scheduler, IP filtering and sequential downloading. The interface is similar to that of uTorrent as well.
Honorable Mentions
- Aria2 - If you don't mind working from the command line, Arira2 may be the tool for you. It is a full featured BitTorrent client for Windows, OS X and Android.
- Tixati - It takes some getting used to time as the interface is different than what you expect from a client. Tixati is available for Windows and Linux.
- Transmissions Win - Available for Windows, it is an unofficial build of the popular client for Mac OS X and Linux.
Closing Words
The uTorrent client has been walking the path of the dark side for quite some time. The two biggest issues right now from a user perspective are the partner offers that the installer ships with and the advertisement that has been integrated into the client.
While you can avoid the installer by downloading a portable version and disable ads, it may be time to switch clients for good and forget about uTorrent regardless of what a great client it was in the past.
My pick? I switched to qBittorrent some time ago and never looked back. You can read my review of qBittorrent here.
Now You: Which Bittorrent client are you using?
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.