What about fake clients I see in my peers list?

[paooleole]

Sometimes when I upload a torrent I see in the peers list something like FAKEutorrent

What about these fake clients? Is it something important?

[Sid]

When peers connect they go through a "handshake" process. They tell each other what client/version they are, what pieces of the torrent they have, etc.

For a variety of reasons--most well intentioned but almost all ill considered--developers of some clients sometimes choose to have their clients not share with other clients.

To counteract that, developers of some clients allow their clients to lie during the handshake process--to claim to be uTorrent (which is generally considered a "good" client) when they are in fact some other client.

To counteract that, developers who wish to discriminate try to use other means to tell whether a peer who claims to be one thing is actually another.

All of which makes things ridiculously complicated.

So, the peers your client claims to be fakeuTorrent may be other clients pretending to be uTorrent, or they may be uTorrent clients which your client has misidentified.

None of which is really of any significance whatsoever.

tl; dr = just ignore that nonsense; it is harmless and essentially meaningless

[dueda]

Good to know, thanks!

Also, there are a few smart-ish guys who put fake client-IDs out of fun, or even develop clients with unregistered / unknown IDs.
The "FU" torrent client code was a classic.

[plhbg.sprby]

I usually get connected to these clients tagged with "[Fake]" not only during uploading but also downloading.
They appear in like 3-4 of them and notice that they operate at same port with different IP's but are on same range then usually resolves to amazonaws.com.

I did some searching and one forum site says those IP's are linked to some site called iknowwhatyoudownload.com.
Upon reading that I quickly added their IP's to the ipfilter.dat of my uTorrent to block them.

[dueda]

...I quickly added their IP's to the ipfilter.dat of my uTorrent to block them.

Yep, there are bots worked by the copyright groups. Most are for network analysis (study us) and a few were made to deny access by overflowing a torrent with fake clients that never end, and for a while they tried to put out fake torrents that always got you stuck at 98%. In my case, I just don't care, I don't live in the US.

[Sid]

or even develop clients with unregistered / unknown IDs.

Yes, I forgot to mention that, one of the "ridiculous complications" is that the blocking scheme assumes universal knowledge on the part of the client doing the blocking. Which of course isn't true as (although the pace has slowed down considerably) new, legitimate but obviously previously unknown clients appearing continually.

I did some searching and one forum site says those IP's are linked to some site called iknowwhatyoudownload.com.
Upon reading that I quickly added their IP's to the ipfilter.dat of my uTorrent to block them.

That is scaremongering.

Sites like iknowwhatyoudownload.com are academic research projects / attempts to educate the public. There is no value in blocking them.

Copyright trolls don't announce themselves, or make themselves easy to spot. They are seeking to make as much money as possible from unwitting downloaders. They rely on going unnoticed until they get a chance to threaten you directly and personally.

[dueda]

Sites like iknowwhatyoudownload.com are academic research projects / attempts to educate the public. There is no value in blocking them.

Copyright trolls don't announce themselves, or make themselves easy to spot. They are seeking to make as much money as possible from unwitting downloaders. They rely on going unnoticed until they get a chance to threaten you directly and personally.

Although I agree with the last part, who knows?

Maybe now they are legit, but what about tomorrow? Maybe without their knowledge, some suit is using their work to make plans or arm lawyers.
If the guy is in doubt, he may feel like pulling the safety on.

Not that I want to scare people, browsing the web will hurt your privacy much more than torrenting, but at least they should know about risks and have options.

[Sid]

I know. Common sense tells me. If you have seen them, they have seen you. If they were harvesting addresses they would already have yours. Blocking them before the fact is impossible and blocking them after the fact is pointless.

As for you not scaremongering? You have joined a thread asking about one thing to reply about completely unrelated things which sound scary; without bothering to explain that they are nothing to worry about or the easy ways people could protect themselves if they were worried. I've no doubt that people will draw the appropriate conclusions.

[paooleole]

I want to thank u all for the information you shared and especially Sid who is totally extensive when he explains something 

[dueda]

You have joined a thread asking about one thing to reply about completely unrelated things which sound scary; ...
I've no doubt that people will draw the appropriate conclusions.

Uh, sorry to crash the party with the hockey mask. I sometimes forget all kinds of people will read this, including scary or just not-expert ones, myself included.

Not to start lengthly discussions, but my reply isn't completely unrelated, it was about identification of clients.
May be just out of place to make fun and bring back oldies. For that I apologize.

And while you are right about educating people in a positive way, what in the world is "not to worry about"?
Internet is like crossing a street, we are just used to it and most of the time safe, just keep eyes open, ears up, phone into pocket.

I think people should go on their own conclusions; better if they search and think first. Then, to clarify my short understanding of the matter:

Disclaimer


I am no tech expert, nor record company-, governament agency-, activism group-, law office-, ISP- or anything- related, never was.
And in the last decade (probably more) I never heard of dangers in torrenting;
as far as I know, it is technically impossible to use the torrent network as means to seize or hurt it's users.

But still it is possible to:

- Track users who connect to torrent sites;
- Find out who is torrenting by their data shape / packet properties (addresses, frequencies, sizes, etc);
- Create a fake client (trojan) and offer it for us to download and use, or convince the developers of a good client to become bad, or hack their system or the authentic download sistes to put malware on us.
- Even worse, it is possible to seize, infiltrate or impersonate clients, sites and ISPs (VPNs too) in order to supress liberty, damage, or just pry on us.
- Scam, fish, hack and track your computer, even if not torrent-related.

Hope this helps people understand that torrenting is generally safe, but anything in the Internet isn't.

For me, I wouldn't mind anything in torrenting. I worry about my Android smartphone and my Windows laptop.