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Comment on Ask HN: I've Built a DHT Torrent Sniffer and Search Engine. Should I Release?

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I mean, it already exists. [1] Always fun to see what my neighbors behind the same NAT download.

[1]: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/

I thought streaming had spelled the demise of torrenting, so was v surprised to check out my local hood (quiet suburban, skewing older few ppl <40yrs) and see how it's very much alive and well. I guess I was naive. (Not condemning anyone, as I did my share of peering back in the day, but streaming services are convenient and honestly don't cost that much all things considered. Torrents (tho I prefer IRC) good for finding obscure stuff that's unavailable anywhere else, but that's not what my neighbors are downloading; and it's not like any of them can't afford to pay. Interesting dynamic.

This showed up in my news feed, and I wondered if it was a coincidence that I just learned about that site from your comment and then the next day I see they're getting spammed by idiots abusing DMCA: https://torrentfreak.com/i-know-what-you-download-overwhelme...

Checked it for my Transmission host static IP which doesn't download anything for a while and it has some completely random stuff I never downloaded or searched for. Even shows items from today which for sure I haven't requested. Could be some DHT spoofing or my Transmission is relaying some DHT requests?

It gives quite fascinating results for me. Surprisingly, among dozens of torrents only a couple are porn. Most of my neighbors using BitTorrent are Russians and Ukrainians (I'm in Cyprus), judging by files names and seeder distribution, a couple of English-speaking people (probably brits) and a single person seeding content in Greek. At least half of Russian-speaking neighbors seed IT, engineering and English learning materials. And I seed more than everyone together on the same subnet Wish I could message them.

Ah, haven’t checked that one for a while. Surprised to find a tech-minded neighbor who has downloaded kali-linux-2022.3-live-everything-amd64.iso. And no pr0n this time round.

You'd better have a good firewall since you have such a tech-minded neighbor. )

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