How to Create a Private BitTorrent
These are dark days for BitTorrent. Using it leaves you open to fake torrents, viruses, an ISP that throttles your connection, and media companies that snoop to see what you’re downloading. If you want to avoid all that, you can create an uber-private BitTorrent community that only you and your friends can access. Here’s how.
You’re open to these problems because most BitTorrent trackers allow anyone to come in and share files (a BitTorrent tracker, for those that don’t remember, is the server that connects you with other BitTorrent users in order to download files). Those other people could include virus spreaders, snoopers, and other untrustworthy folk. While joining a private tracker can help, many users feel they aren’t private enough—after all, if you can get an invite, can’t anyone?
What You’ll Get: A Tracker Only Your Friends Can Join
You can do a lot of things to protect yourself, but why go through all that trouble? Between you and your best friends, you probably have a pretty solid collection of media and other files you could share without the need for other, less secure parties. We’ve shown you how to share your own files using BitTorrent, but if you want a bit more privacy, you can create your own BitTorrent tracker right on your home computer.
When you’re done with this process, you’ll have a (admittedly primitive) BitTorrent tracker running on your PC, sharing your files through torrents you create. Send those torrents to your friends, and they can download the files directly from you, without any other parties snooping. If your friends share their files too, you can pool your torrents together in a shared Dropbox folder (or something similar) and have a pretty sizable library of stuff to download, without the need for other unsafe channels. Continue reading
