How to Prevent Unwanted Downloads in Torrent Clients - Is this possible?

ebikesrc2u

I've been using the latest version of uTorrent 3.45 with Ads disabled, but one annoying thing uTorrent has always done is download unwanted files that often come with a download you do want.

Does your torrent client do this too? Can you prevent this with X torrent client from happening?

When I use uTorrent to add a download, I have it bring-up the advanced download window so I can manually select which files I want downloaded that are offered for that torrent. Even though I uncheck many items to never download, frustratingly, often more than 50-100% of those unwanted files still download anyway! This deselection of files is done before the download even begins, but somehow these file rejections I select get overridden and still download anyway. It's very annoying this is always happening.

Why is this happening? Is this a potential security issue with my torrent client somehow able to download files I specifically reject? Bizarre!

Do you use a torrent client that can ALWAYS prevent this from happening? Somehow these torrent trackers can exploit my uTorrent file selections to override and download files I don't want within that download offering.

There must be a way to prevent this??? Perhaps another torrent client can do this effectively?

qTorrent?

Deluge?

Another one???

Osborne_Cox

In uTorrent, try unchecking start torrent download automatically, and also use the Files tab right-click menu to change files to Don't Download.

UltraHumanite

If you're really doing what you're saying i.e. user error can be excluded and you're really deselecting the files before the torrent starts downloading then there is something seriously wrong with your torrent client.

I haven't used uTorrent in a while but I never had this problem with it when I used it. You might try qbittorrent or another client to see if that stops the problem.

I don't think this is anything caused by the tracker. I don't think you're being "exploited" by the tracker.

Can you tell us which files are the being added?

ebikesrc2u

UltraHumanite said:

If you're really doing what you're saying i.e. user error can be excluded and you're really deselecting the files before the torrent starts downloading then there is something seriously wrong with your torrent client.

I haven't used uTorrent in a while but I never had this problem with it when I used it. You might try qbittorrent or another client to see if that stops the problem.

I don't think this is anything caused by the tracker. I don't think you're being "exploited" by the tracker.

Can you tell us which files are the being added?

EDIT: WHAT I POSTED BELOW IS NOT HAPPENING IN THE LATEST VERSION 3.4.5 INSTALLED ON WINDOWS 8.1. My mistake was to not recognize "the error"... what is happening is the files that were marked to NOT download DO ALWAYS show as if these were downloaded with the 100% "full green line" showing the download is completed for that unwanted file. However, when I check the actual directory, the files are NOT there. That is where my confusion was coming from with the latest version of uTorrent. I will now check the older version on another computer and OS to see what was actually happening there too. Sorry, for the mistaken "issue" at hand. It seems uTorrent reports it downloads these unwanted files showing the 100% green line "completed download" for the specific unwanted file. That is what is causing the confusion with me with this installation of uTorrent. Other than that weird "reporting error" the file is nevertheless not downloaded, which means it is working correct in that respect.

Thank you for your reply. These are torrents, such as broadcast tv, and will often have a sample file, .nfo, .jpg, .txt files that come with the main file. As I said, there is absolutely no user error going on, because I use a setting in the Options Menu from Preferences called UI Settings -> When Adding Torrents -> Show Options to Change Name and Location [...]  <---This setting when activated will always pop-up this "advanced" Window that allows many changes to be made BEFORE the torrent downloads. That includes deselecting any files offered for that torrent download. You must wait for those files to appear in the listing in order to deselect first.

To Osborne_Cox: See "above" what I explained I'm doing. And, yes, this step happens before the method you presented in your post above, so it is before the download begins. In your example, I also know about it and have done that too, but no method works 100%. See the OP original post for how often this can happen.

Since it does work sometimes 100% of the time for X torrent, then there must be something going on to either override the uTorrent settings possibly by a bug exploit or by what the torrent information contains somehow forcing the override???

This happens in more than one version of uTorrent on different computers with different Windows OS, so this is not a unique issue with one installation.

I think this issue can be duplicated with other uTorrent clients on Windows systems, but you need to check your directory for the torrent files and verify it was not downloaded. This IS an erratic problem.

If you use qBittorrent or Deluge or another torrent client, then please verify you can prevent these other files from downloading too. There is nothing odd about these torrents, as these are popular broadcast tv torrents that do this.

Thank you for your ideas and for checking-out what you can.

Btw, this seems to be always happening erratically with the smaller files. I don't recall this happening with 50 megabyte plus files, so I wonder if these smaller files somehow go under the radar of "some setting" or pre-load aspect once the files appear in the list to be deselected???

I can verify that once these are deselected these files are marked to not download once the download is actually running. It is turned-off to not download, and the percentage of download will say 0% as it should. But, later on, as the download proceeds it will erratically often download some or all or none of these files. It is erratic. Uninstalling and reinstalling or using a different version has not solved this problem for my installations.

Any Windows uTorrent user should be able to verify this issue, but don't go on memory. Test and verify. Please.

Thanks for your help and ideas or testing.

EDIT: WHAT I POSTED ABOVE IS NOT HAPPENING IN THE LATEST VERSION 3.4.5 INSTALLED ON WINDOWS 8.1. My mistake was to not recognize "the error"... what is happening is the files that were marked to NOT download DO ALWAYS show as if these were downloaded with the 100% "full green line" showing the download is completed for that unwanted file. However, when I check the actual directory, the files are NOT there. That is where my confusion was coming from with the latest version of uTorrent. I will now check the older version on another computer and OS to see what was actually happening there too. Sorry, for the mistaken "issue" at hand. It seems uTorrent reports it downloads these unwanted files showing the 100% green line "completed download" for the specific unwanted file. That is what is causing the confusion with me with this installation of uTorrent. Other than that weird "reporting error" the file is nevertheless not downloaded, which means it is working correct in that respect.

I need to verify this now in the other installation.

ebikesrc2u

UPDATE FYI:

I can confirm for a fact that uTorrent version 3.4.3 definitely has the problem I described in the OP first post in this thread. This was installed on Windows XP SP3, but if you have an older version of uTorrent like 3.4.3 it will probably still have the same problem in another OS too.

user9000

The reason this happens is not related to your torrent client OR user error. Rather it is due to how torrents work. Torrents are split up into tons of tiny chunks or pieces. One chunk can contain parts of more than one file depending on how the torrent was created. Especially with small files such as the .nfo or text files. Using the example of a video torrent that also has a text file in it, even if you tell the client not to download that text file but that you do want the video, the text file might be part of a chunk that also contains some of the video file you do want, so the torrent client is basically forced to download this chunk in order to complete the video file. This isn't normally something to worry about much because the amount of wasted bandwidth/space is very small. This is also the reason why the text file might show as fully downloaded even though it's marked as downloaded. Likely the whole text file is smaller than 1 chunk as text files are very small.

No matter what client you use the same result will always happen assuming you are testing with the same torrent file. That being said another client you might want to check out is qbittorent. It's open source and you don't have any ads you need to jump through hoops to turn off.