AfterDawn: Tech news

Website tells you what you pirated

Written by James Delahunty @ 13 Dec 2011 9:06 User comments (18)

Website tells you what you pirated Website tracks your BitTorrent activity.
Youhavedownloaded.com is a website setup to show what files have been downloaded using BitTorrent trackers by a specific IP address. The site claims to have almost 53 million "users" in its database, from 113,200 tracked torrents containing almost 2 million files.

When you visit the website, it will check you IP address automatically and present you with files it knows you downloaded. If it doesn't have your IP address in its database, then it will simply say, "Hi. We have no records on you."

If you have a friends' IP address, you can check to see if it knows any of their downloads. It even offers a widget for your website, blog or Facebook page that you can use to annoy your friends.

You can search any IP address, torrent hash or filename for results, or you can snoop on randomly-presented IP addresses that are in the database.

This won't go down too well for heavy torrent users who would rather keep their activities private, but it does raise questions about how easy it is to track this kind of information across BitTorrent trackers and other sources.

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18 user comments

113.12.2011 22:08

I am in the clear! Just goes to show you this site is limited to what it can find, as I never denied being a pirate. Evidently you need to have DHT on, and that ain't happening on mine.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 13 Dec 2011 @ 10:21

213.12.2011 23:18

At the bottom of the page it says "Don't take it seriously" an if you click it, it says

Quote:
Don't take it seriously

The privacy policy, the contact us page ? it?s all a joke. We came up with the idea of building a crawler like this and keeping the maintenance price under $300 a month. There was only one way to prove our theory worked ? to implement it in practice. So we did. Now, we find ourselves with a big crawler. We knew what it did but we didn?t know how to use it. So we decided to make a joke out of it. That?s the beauty of jokes ? you can make them out of anything.

However, if you have a better idea ? don?t hesitate to contact us.


so... its all a prank?

313.12.2011 23:35

It doesn't seem to work...I've downloaded countless Linux distros using torrents, and it says I have not downloaded anything.

413.12.2011 23:59

Originally posted by flyingpen:
At the bottom of the page it says "Don't take it seriously" an if you click it, it says
Quote:
Don't take it seriously

The privacy policy, the contact us page ? it?s all a joke. We came up with the idea of building a crawler like this and keeping the maintenance price under $300 a month. There was only one way to prove our theory worked ? to implement it in practice. So we did. Now, we find ourselves with a big crawler. We knew what it did but we didn?t know how to use it. So we decided to make a joke out of it. That?s the beauty of jokes ? you can make them out of anything.

However, if you have a better idea ? don?t hesitate to contact us.


so... its all a prank?
No Idea, I've checked across several other sites that reported it and in comments its a mixture of feedback. Some say the results look accurate, while others don't get any. I'll keep an eye on it anyway. If it's a prank... it's a little bit early (or late) for April Fool's Day... but no reason this kind of tracking couldn't be done on at least public BitTorrent sites, and obviously already is by some anti-piracy firms.

514.12.2011 00:45

Got nothin' on me...

614.12.2011 00:50

Haha...mine came up with 100% accuracy of the songs that my family has downloaded, along with my download of Trojan Remover :p

Good reminder to disable DHT on my laptop...doh!

714.12.2011 04:05

Originally posted by Dela:
Originally posted by flyingpen:
At the bottom of the page it says "Don't take it seriously" an if you click it, it says
Quote:
Don't take it seriously

The privacy policy, the contact us page ? it?s all a joke. We came up with the idea of building a crawler like this and keeping the maintenance price under $300 a month. There was only one way to prove our theory worked ? to implement it in practice. So we did. Now, we find ourselves with a big crawler. We knew what it did but we didn?t know how to use it. So we decided to make a joke out of it. That?s the beauty of jokes ? you can make them out of anything.

However, if you have a better idea ? don?t hesitate to contact us.


so... its all a prank?
No Idea, I've checked across several other sites that reported it and in comments its a mixture of feedback. Some say the results look accurate, while others don't get any. I'll keep an eye on it anyway. If it's a prank... it's a little bit early (or late) for April Fool's Day... but no reason this kind of tracking couldn't be done on at least public BitTorrent sites, and obviously already is by some anti-piracy firms.
Well, if you go to the Privacy and contact information... It is REALLY jokey~. Like... not even trying to be serious which makes me really think that it's either a prank with a bunch of people playing along for the lols, or they did it a little bit, and posted what they found but don't plan on collecting anymore data.

814.12.2011 08:53

Quote:
It doesn't seem to work...I've downloaded countless Linux distros using torrents, and it says I have not downloaded anything.
Maybe they don't consider linux distros pirated content. For all we know this strictly uses a media file search (avi, mp3, mpg, mkv, flv, etc) I got bored started clicking through some of the members, I didn't see any programs just movies and music.

914.12.2011 19:27

Got nothing on mine 100% accurate. I think you are right Mysttic, they must only scan for games, movies, porn, and music. Some software is sold or freely available on torrents like Linux distros. I guess they just want to make sure they just get the dirt on people.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 14 Dec 2011 @ 7:28

1014.12.2011 22:33

McMaster University Thode Library shows the complete season 4 of The Big Bang Theory and MS Office 2010 downloaded lol

There's hundreds of students in this library everyday though, many of them torrenting. IMO this site isn't very good...

1114.12.2011 23:48

I sees 3 files that I've downloaded this month. nothing from the past is showing up tho, and not all of what I've downloaded has appeared either.

1215.12.2011 15:28

Its got a few PSX ISO's on me, torrent was the only place I could get them, newzgroups for everything else

1315.12.2011 15:50

Since I don't use Torrents, thought I'd make sure there was nothing on me.
Nothing....

Jeff

1415.12.2011 19:33

Ive downloaded seasons 1-4 of eureka 3 days ago and it says Ive got nothing. even have DHT on.

1515.12.2011 21:18

Originally posted by DXR88:
Ive downloaded seasons 1-4 of eureka 3 days ago and it says Ive got nothing. even have DHT on.
http://torrentfreak.com/common-bittorrent-dht-myths-091024/

1615.12.2011 22:15

Peerblock FTW

1715.12.2011 22:26

Originally posted by bobiroc:
Peerblock FTW
Yep, it's amazing how much crap happens beneath your nose.
Not just the basics but movie studios, Music money grubbers and more.

Maybe I should of never installed Peerblock. It makes me a bit paranoid for no reason.

Jeff
This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 15 Dec 2011 @ 10:28

1819.12.2011 17:34

I'm clear as a bell here but I will never state that I have downloaded hundreds of gigs of movies and music and software...................because I HAVEN'T.

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