BTGuard is a paid service (US$6.96/month as of this date) that says it will make bittorrent downloading anonymous. It invites you to test and prove this by checking your own external IP before and after.
The service simply forwards your traffic for you, promising complete anonymity. Their site’s main page says,
Your downloads will be routed through Canada which enforces some of the strictest privacy
laws in the world, ensuring the protection of your identity, even from your own ISP!
First, exactly how does this work? Your computer initiates a connection to the tracker, but sends the tcp packet to BTGuard. BTGuard substitutes their IP address for yours, and forwards the packet. Now it’s out there on the net, reaches the tracker, deals with it, alll with BtGuard’s IP address, not yours, on the packet. A reply packet comes to BTGuard, they change its destination IP address back to yours, and it’s sent onward to you.
The world saw that interaction happening with BTGuard’s IP address, not yours. This should supposedly keep you anonymous and safe. It’s a simple forwarding service, the same thing as TPB’s IPREDator service.
The first thing you should know is that Canada’s privacy laws are NOT strict, and that as I write this, Canada is considering its own version of the USA’s disastrous DMCA law. The well-known tracker Demonoid was originally based in Canada but was successfully sued out of existence there, going down completely for half a year until it found a new home.
Demonoid certainly found Canadian law no shield for them! Canada’s privacy laws are no stricter than anyone else’s, and are in the process of becoming much more MPAA-friendly.
The second thing to understand is that claiming to hide you from your own ISP, is absurd. The only way to do that is not to use the connection at all. Your traffic is still passing through their network, on their equipment. If you think you’re being hidden from your ISP, try not paying your bill this month. You’ll soon discover how hidden you were. If your ISP really wants to find out what you’re doing, they will. Count on it.
The third thing to understand is that bittorrent gets most of its speed from incoming connections.
This is where technical support here at CometForums gets most of its questions, about how to allow incoming connections.
This is what port-forwarding through a router’s firewall is all about.
We have one entire topic devoted to questions and answers about this one issue. It’s the largest single topic on the whole forum.
Other peers have to be able to initiate contact with you for this to work. They have to be able to call you.
If they can’t, then you are limited to just the peers that you call, which is much slower because there’s only one of you and thousands of them.
If they can’t call you, it’s the same as operating in “no listen port” mode. you can do that, bittorrent will still work, but your download speed will be extremely slow.
Using BTGuard puts you in this no-listen-port mode permanently. An incoming connection has no way of finding you behind BTGuard, preventing that is the whole point of the thing. Their FAQ says,
Can I allow incoming connections?
Incoming connections directly to you are not anonymous. Please ignore any errors regarding incoming connections, you don’t want them!
Which is quite simply a lie. You DO want them, and you want them very badly indeed. They are where most of your download speed comes from. Anyone who bothers to understand how bittorrent works, understands this. If you don’t have incoming connections, your download slows to a crawl compared to what it was. it’s true they’re not anonymous. They can’t be.
BTGuard is a service for the gullible, those who can’t be bothered to learn what they are doing, instead buying into slick-talking, dishonest sales pitches like this, instead.
This service doesn’t make you particularly safe, relying on Canada’s weak-and-getting-weaker privacy laws; it certainly can’t hide you from your own ISP; it will slow you down tremendously and has you paying for the privilege while lying to you about it.
