Thanks for clearing that up. I have setup the proxy running through my VPN and all appears to be working well. What I have noticed (you'll probably think I'm paranoid by using it with a VPN) is that PeerBlock no longer stops any IP ranges through the proxy? However, when I disable the proxy and return to the VPN I immediately start getting hits again in PeerBlock. Im guessing that its because the VPN is encrypting the proxy data before it leaves my computer and so PeerBlock cannot read the IP ranges? Any thoughts on this?
Thanks for clearing that up. I have setup the proxy running through my VPN and all appears to be working well. What I have noticed (you'll probably think I'm paranoid by using it with a VPN) is that PeerBlock no longer stops any IP ranges through the proxy? However, when I disable the proxy and return to the VPN I immediately start getting hits again in PeerBlock. Im guessing that its because the VPN is encrypting the proxy data before it leaves my computer and so PeerBlock cannot read the IP ranges? Any thoughts on this?
The encryption applies to the data of the packets, not the destination. (The destination is still there in plain text, as is has to be for networking to work at all.)
The proxy however is a tunnel, and if all data going through it is packet up in packets that to Peerblock, look like the final destination is the proxy, then Peerblock cannot apply rules beyond that point. Once your packets reach the proxy, they are unpacked and sent on in whatever form they were before they were packet for the proxy.
I see. So....from a privacy & security point of view, would you say i'm better protected using the VPN with PeerBlock, or running the proxy through the VPN without PeerBlock? Additionally, if the proxy is encrypted via the VPN, is it still necessary to enable protocol encryption to "Forced" in Utorrent?
I see. So....from a privacy & security point of view, would you say i'm better protected using the VPN with PeerBlock, or running the proxy through the VPN without PeerBlock? Additionally, if the proxy is encrypted via the VPN, is it still necessary to enable protocol encryption to "Forced" in Utorrent?
I have just stopped bothering with Peerblock. It was great at one time, but IP ranges change too often for me to continue blocking everything under the Sun.
As for what is best, that is up to you. I cannot really say what is best. I can however tell you what is best for me. And I would set protocol encryption to "Enabled" and never let the VPN drop for a second. Do remember to set it back to forced if ever you want to use a torrent without the VPN.
Setting enabled in place of forced will get you more peers, since many people are absolute morons with regards to such simplistic things like encryption. And you do not need to discriminate from accepting data from their systems just because they are moronic.
If however you want to be extra paranoid, and do not mind that it will have a slight drop in performance, setting forced encryption would be a good move.
Thanks for the info, your input is much appreciated.
I think i'll plod along with the proxy VPN option for now and see how things pan out, although admittedly i'd feel better if PeerBlock was also doing some work. I'll leave protocol encryption set at "Forced". I don't care much for speed from Utorrent, privacy to me is more important.
I think I've got security buttoned up fairly tight on my machine, so I'll continue using the proxy with the VPN. At the end of the day, if the proxy drops then my connection will fall back onto the VPN anyway with protocol encryption set to forced, and PeerBlock will also kick-in. And if my VPN drops then the whole connection including the proxy will collapse thanks to the kill switch, so either way my real IP address should not be exposed?
Are there any other proxy servers available besides the Netherlands? As I'm sure you are already aware that the Netherlands recently lifted its levies and banned downloading. If not does PIA intend to release any new proxy server locations anytime soon?
The Netherlands does not actually mean a word of that mess. They said it to get jackasses from a bunch of different groups to stop hounding them, and have taken no steps whatsoever to change anything at all since then.
The people in the Netherlands download daily. And no law is going to chnage something that has become their heritage. Technically speaking, pot is illegal in the Netherlands, yet even the police smoke pot in coffee shops. They have a word there, that I do not recall. It means "It is illegal, but I do it too.". That word explains this pretty well.
Lawmakers like to be able to say they are fighting crime. So every few years, more redundant laws are put out. Here in the US, they made laws banning terrorism. How fucking stupid... Terrorism is already illegal because it cannot be done without breaking other laws. But like I said, lawmakers like to say they are fighting crime. And the more useless laws they make, the more they think they have accomplished.
Hell, here in Texas where I live, sodomy is illegal. And it has been for well over a hundred years. But so far, I have never once heard of anyone being charged with it.
The point is that the laws do not always mean anything at all. They are just words that are not of any concern to anyone. And in the Netherlands, you would offend less people by requiring them to walk around with a dildo in their mouth than to require them to stop downloading. When you start hearing of people in the Netherlands being *CHARGED* with downloading, I will have to retract my statements here. Until then, pay no heed to it.
And there is only the Netherlands proxy at this time. I have heard nothing of plans to add locations.
Exactly, I agree with every word you've said. However, Unfortunately laws do eventually change, and with pressure from the Entertainment Industry and the US Government how long are the Netherlands willing to hold out. They've already agree to life its levies and ban downloading, but the big question is: will they actually enforce it. I think no, or at least not just yet. PIA however should certainly have a contingency plan to relocate its proxy server or at least a secondary server available to its subscribers should the worst come.
Out of interest, if PIA did have to move its proxy server, or make a secondary location available, where would you prefer it to be located?
uTorrent with PIA proxy in Windows 7 is not working for me. I have followed the instructions in the initial posts to the letter -- including setting the user/password and setting the Protocol Encryption's mode of operation in BitTorrent to Force. I ran ProxyChecker, which passed for SOCKS 5 but failed on all other tests. I tried every proxy in the initial list, and a couple at the recommended page http://tejji.com/ip/url-to-ip-address.aspx?domain=proxy-nl.privateinternetaccess.com. I have tried some of the suggestions that seemed straightforward, like disabling IPv6. I have read through the entire thread. I have been to the uTorrent forum, a search of which (keyword: privateinternetaccess) yielded five results, none of which are pertinent. I see some references in this thread to "port forwarding," router settings, but no instructions. And nowhere in the initial post is it suggested that such settings need to be accessed. I am at wit's end. Thanks for any help.
Try this: 1) Uninstall Utorrent. 2) Once uninstall is completed, re-install Utorrent from one of its download sites. [find one of the 2014 releases just to be safe]. 3) Lastly, go through instructions for setup from the top of this thread.
Sometimes software gets "tangled up" [technical jargon ] with another program on the computer. You should be good to go once you follow these 3 steps!
im new here guys and new to using proxys.whats the username and password im supposed to use when using the proxy listed in the beginning of the thread?
im new here guys and new to using proxys.whats the username and password im supposed to use when using the proxy listed in the beginning of the thread?
Is it necessary to set up the proxy server in uTorrent for complete safety?
I was told by tech support that this step is unnecessary.
All they told me to do is forward my port on the VPN software, then enter the port number into the RANDOM PORT field on uTorrent.
You do not require the proxy to be secure. But it does not hurt to have it as a backup in case something goes wrong in your configuration.
And the forwarded port is random only on the server side. Meaning you do not get the same port each time you connect. But the field you put it in is not called random anything. (I do not use uTorrent, so I cannot say what exactly it is called.)
I use DD-WRT to handle VPN for handling bittorrent and web browsing.
I can't use the kill switch and support assures me that I'll never manage a port forward.
However, I have a setup that I'm very satisfied with and thought I might share it with all of you.
I periodically change the PIA server that my router is connected to. Not only does this randomize my habits a bit, it also offers variety in the ads I get
My router uses the "WDS/Connection Watchdog" setting. It checks Google DNS (8.8.8.8) every 180 seconds. If VPN disconnects, it reboots the router to reconnect it.
Because my IP is temporarily exposed for a couple of minutes after rebooting the router, I use the SOCKS5 proxy in my torrent client.
Regardless of whether you use uTorrent or qBittorrent as your client, it will fail to connect to peers periodically when connected to the SOCKS5 proxy. I use Windows Task Scheduler to reboot the torrent client twice a day to pick up any stalled torrents. I typically load torrents by having the client automatically add torrents saved to a particular folder (in this case, it is a folder in ownCloud).
I tend to use qBitttorrent more often than uTorrent because uTorrent displays the User Agent in Windows and the setting cannot be changed. While this information is only applicable to the version of the client you're using, it is still unnecessary extra information (unless you are on a tracker that bans certain client apps).
i changed my settings as recommended in the op, but now it will not upload. the little circle in the bottom right corner indicating a connection is now green but many of my torrents have turned dark red. connections start for a couple of seconds then just dwindle to nothing. any ideas? i'm using windows vista btw. also, i contacted chat support and they instructed me on port forwarding and how to set it in the vpn settings area, then get the port number, then input that number into my utorrent preferences. still no connection. when i run utorrent tests it says there is no port but i can still connect but the indicator in the bottom right stays yellow, whereas it was green before with minimal to no activity. now there is none..
To get magnet links to work at all with the proxy on, I had to "enable" "connections unsupported by the proxy". I'm not sure what that means for my security, but it allowed magnet links to work through the proxy.
Apologies to everyone, but I'm going to bang on the Mac uTorrent Tracker/Peers error drum one more time.
Other people on this thread using a Mac, claim to get this working by 1) disabling their firewall 2) getting a new proxy user/pass or 3) restarting utorrent. I've done all three and it doesn't work.
How can I get my Mac using uTorrent and the PIA proxy to connect to tracker peers? When I deactivate the proxy, uTorrent works fine. The SOCKS5 proxy is causing the issue.
And it's not a shortage of peers. This one has 500+ seeds!
I've had PIA for about five weeks and I'm running Win 7 64 bit. The socks5 proxy has worked for me in the past. Today i switched isp's to get better DL speeds. I can reconnect the PIA windows client, but the proxy seems to be failing with uTorrent.
I check it with Proxy Checker and just keep getting Testing Failed. Error message "Authentication on the proxy server failed. Please check your username and password". I checked the username and password on the Client COntrol Panel page and re-entered it manually. Then I started a chat with a PIA agent who suggested the obvious - check the username and pass and re-generate the user and pass, being sure to enter the currently generated info. Still the same result. So he asked me to open a ticket. I opened a ticket and explained the problem and what steps I'd taken and of course their suggestion was re-generate the user and pass and be sure you are entering the correct data, and enter it manually.
Short of hearing this same advice a fourth, fifth or sixth time, has anyone got a real solution?
I've noticed a number of people mention an inability to get the SOCS5 proxy working with uTorrent for Mac OS X. The problem, at least in the last published Mac version of uTorrent (1.8.4) is actually due to bugs in SOCKS5 implementation for UDP trackers in the version of the libtorrent engine upon which it is built that were not fixed until the 0.15.16 version of libtorrent. This affected other clients such as Deluge and Vuze that are built on libtorrent. My solution was to switch to qBittorent. The latest Mac version works quite well with PIA's SOCKS5 server with the exception that it only resolves the IP address for the SOCKS5 server once which can cause it to stop working occasionally. The best workaround is to enter a specific IP address for one of the PIA proxy servers. I routinely see download speeds at the limit I have set of 8000kBps (62.5mbps on a 75mbps connection) with uploads around 2300kBps (limited to 2500kBps/19.5mbps on a 35mbps connection). I do still sometimes see unexplained problems particularly with UDP trackers and will every once and a while switch to VPN instead of SOCKS5 but I prefer the SOCSK5 proxy for speed and lack of interference with incoming applications when the VPN is in use.
I have been reading this topic and as a newbie I just would like to ask the following question :
Why configure utorrent for proxy whereas internet connection is already using pia VPN ?
Thanks to help me understand it.
Look around the forum.
Wow, what a worthless reply.
To Lionfish, it's to offer another layer of anonymity to your torrenting.
Thanks! You are cool my friend! Not all of us have an easy time with this but that does not mean we are stupid, just not born into this mighty 'techno' revolution as many of the younger folks here are. I'm only 50 but I remember the days when my husband had a Commodore 64 then a 128 and the only way to get some good games was to sit down all weekend and type them in line by tiny little never ending line and God help you if you missed a space or typed a one that should have been an L! There was no Internet, just a lot of message boards but there was email which could get pretty spicy at times and if there are any of my contemporaries out there do your remember the game "Stroker" and at the time I was stupid enough not to know what I was typing in when I found out my husband was on the run! We're still married by the way, going on 30 years! There was one awesome game I remember to this day, Kings Castle. Sounds dumb but to those of us who could sit in front of 'Pong' for hours on end it was an improvement. I'm a physician and I guarantee, not stupid however, it is not easy to understand this stuff although my background is heavy in mathematics (loved Calculus, took every course offered & symbolic logic, 5 semesters, every course offered, there were only 3 of us in the senior class second term!) so when someone asks here I think it is in the hope to get a less technical answer than you get most other places in the Forums. My sons are 20yrs thru 26yrs and can dance circles around me and my husband is a computer programmer with a PhD who does NOT approve of my P2P activity since getting a letter from Comcast (for downloading a documentary which came from the Public Domain site!!! The MPAA are IDIOTS because the documentary had the namd "The Animal House" you can guess what they thought it was! Thank you again for just giving it straight and simple. It also takes time to read through all this stuff, much of it you don't understand to try to find your answer somewhere else when it would be so simple to just zip out a short answer here to help the clueless! God Bless One of the Clueless Masses!
I really wish PIA had a wiki, because finding information is quite difficult But this shows how to setup the "Connection" tab, what about the rest of uTorrent? Like the "BitTorrent" - with all the DHT, Local Discovery etc. Which boxes should be checked and which shouldn't?
Update: Well it looks like nothing works if DHT Network is turned off.
From what I've gathered after days scouring the internet, the Mac version of uTorrent's SOCKS5 implementation is severely broken with respect to how it handles UDP trackers over a proxy. I tried the PIA proxy in multiple other bit torrent clients (including uTorrent on Windows) and the proxy worked flawlessly at near-native speeds. The problem isn't with PIA - it's uTorrent.
Edit:
I'm now using MacProxy with a custom rule that pushes all uTorrent traffic through the proxy. I used the TorGuard IP test torrent, and it successfully grabbed a Netherlands IP through the tracker. I was also able to download an Ubuntu 14 ISO using a magnet link with no issue, although it took a minute or two to download the metadata.
I should also mention that this torrent used a UDP tracker, not HTTP. I suggest that anyone looking to stick with Transmission or uTorrent on their Mac use either MacProxy or Proxifier - both have free trials available.
Edit: Sorry! I wasn't looking at the right thing, I managed to generate a socks username/password, thank you for this thread!
I do have a question though, after setting it up I was unable to connect to any of my peers in utorrent and unable to download anything. My question is, is it necessary for me to have both a VPN and set up utorrent with a proxy? I have killswitch enabled on PIA in case it goes down while my internet is active, is that enough to prevent my ISP and anyone else from seeing my torrent activity? Any advice is greatly appreciated. I just signed up for PIA last night, I'm completely new to VPNs and I'm still acclimating to the technology, so forgive me if I say stuff that doesn't make sense or is completely stupid.
I enabled the kill switch, dns leak protection and IPv6 leak protection, as well as port forwarding, used that port for utorrent and my speeds have been decent, but I'm not sure if I needed to set it up any further to protect my information leaking.
I read the OP but I don't get what they mean by generated username and password but not your VPN password? Where can I find this generated log in? I see my username and password in the settings as well as the email I received, and it was generated by PIA but it's the only username and log in I have so I wasn't sure if that was the correct one to use in utorrent.
Comments
Thanks for clearing that up. I have setup the proxy running through my VPN and all appears to be working well. What I have noticed (you'll probably think I'm paranoid by using it with a VPN) is that PeerBlock no longer stops any IP ranges through the proxy? However, when I disable the proxy and return to the VPN I immediately start getting hits again in PeerBlock. Im guessing that its because the VPN is encrypting the proxy data before it leaves my computer and so PeerBlock cannot read the IP ranges? Any thoughts on this?
The proxy however is a tunnel, and if all data going through it is packet up in packets that to Peerblock, look like the final destination is the proxy, then Peerblock cannot apply rules beyond that point. Once your packets reach the proxy, they are unpacked and sent on in whatever form they were before they were packet for the proxy.
In short, Peerblock is useless with the proxy.
I see. So....from a privacy & security point of view, would you say i'm better protected using the VPN with PeerBlock, or running the proxy through the VPN without PeerBlock? Additionally, if the proxy is encrypted via the VPN, is it still necessary to enable protocol encryption to "Forced" in Utorrent?
As for what is best, that is up to you. I cannot really say what is best. I can however tell you what is best for me. And I would set protocol encryption to "Enabled" and never let the VPN drop for a second. Do remember to set it back to forced if ever you want to use a torrent without the VPN.
Setting enabled in place of forced will get you more peers, since many people are absolute morons with regards to such simplistic things like encryption. And you do not need to discriminate from accepting data from their systems just because they are moronic.
If however you want to be extra paranoid, and do not mind that it will have a slight drop in performance, setting forced encryption would be a good move.
Thanks for the info, your input is much appreciated.
I think i'll plod along with the proxy VPN option for now and see how things pan out, although admittedly i'd feel better if PeerBlock was also doing some work. I'll leave protocol encryption set at "Forced". I don't care much for speed from Utorrent, privacy to me is more important.
I think I've got security buttoned up fairly tight on my machine, so I'll continue using the proxy with the VPN. At the end of the day, if the proxy drops then my connection will fall back onto the VPN anyway with protocol encryption set to forced, and PeerBlock will also kick-in. And if my VPN drops then the whole connection including the proxy will collapse thanks to the kill switch, so either way my real IP address should not be exposed?
Are there any other proxy servers available besides the Netherlands? As I'm sure you are already aware that the Netherlands recently lifted its levies and banned downloading. If not does PIA intend to release any new proxy server locations anytime soon?
The people in the Netherlands download daily. And no law is going to chnage something that has become their heritage. Technically speaking, pot is illegal in the Netherlands, yet even the police smoke pot in coffee shops. They have a word there, that I do not recall. It means "It is illegal, but I do it too.". That word explains this pretty well.
Lawmakers like to be able to say they are fighting crime. So every few years, more redundant laws are put out. Here in the US, they made laws banning terrorism. How fucking stupid... Terrorism is already illegal because it cannot be done without breaking other laws. But like I said, lawmakers like to say they are fighting crime. And the more useless laws they make, the more they think they have accomplished.
Hell, here in Texas where I live, sodomy is illegal. And it has been for well over a hundred years. But so far, I have never once heard of anyone being charged with it.
The point is that the laws do not always mean anything at all. They are just words that are not of any concern to anyone. And in the Netherlands, you would offend less people by requiring them to walk around with a dildo in their mouth than to require them to stop downloading. When you start hearing of people in the Netherlands being *CHARGED* with downloading, I will have to retract my statements here. Until then, pay no heed to it.
And there is only the Netherlands proxy at this time. I have heard nothing of plans to add locations.
Out of interest, if PIA did have to move its proxy server, or make a secondary location available, where would you prefer it to be located?
But I suspect Sweden or Toronto would be the better of the locations they already have VPNs at.
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/
And the forwarded port is random only on the server side. Meaning you do not get the same port each time you connect. But the field you put it in is not called random anything. (I do not use uTorrent, so I cannot say what exactly it is called.)
i changed my settings as recommended in the op, but now it will not upload. the little circle in the bottom right corner indicating a connection is now green but many of my torrents have turned dark red. connections start for a couple of seconds then just dwindle to nothing. any ideas? i'm using windows vista btw. also, i contacted chat support and they instructed me on port forwarding and how to set it in the vpn settings area, then get the port number, then input that number into my utorrent preferences. still no connection. when i run utorrent tests it says there is no port but i can still connect but the indicator in the bottom right stays yellow, whereas it was green before with minimal to no activity. now there is none..
Other people on this thread using a Mac, claim to get this working by 1) disabling their firewall 2) getting a new proxy user/pass or 3) restarting utorrent. I've done all three and it doesn't work.
How can I get my Mac using uTorrent and the PIA proxy to connect to tracker peers? When I deactivate the proxy, uTorrent works fine. The SOCKS5 proxy is causing the issue.
And it's not a shortage of peers. This one has 500+ seeds!
I'm a physician and I guarantee, not stupid however, it is not easy to understand this stuff although my background is heavy in mathematics (loved Calculus, took every course offered & symbolic logic, 5 semesters, every course offered, there were only 3 of us in the senior class second term!) so when someone asks here I think it is in the hope to get a less technical answer than you get most other places in the Forums. My sons are 20yrs thru 26yrs and can dance circles around me and my husband is a computer programmer with a PhD who does NOT approve of my P2P activity since getting a letter from Comcast (for downloading a documentary which came from the Public Domain site!!! The MPAA are IDIOTS because the documentary had the namd "The Animal House" you can guess what they thought it was!
Thank you again for just giving it straight and simple. It also takes time to read through all this stuff, much of it you don't understand to try to find your answer somewhere else when it would be so simple to just zip out a short answer here to help the clueless!
God Bless
One of the Clueless Masses!
But this shows how to setup the "Connection" tab, what about the rest of uTorrent? Like the "BitTorrent" - with all the DHT, Local Discovery etc. Which boxes should be checked and which shouldn't?
Update: Well it looks like nothing works if DHT Network is turned off.
I do have a question though, after setting it up I was unable to connect to any of my peers in utorrent and unable to download anything. My question is, is it necessary for me to have both a VPN and set up utorrent with a proxy? I have killswitch enabled on PIA in case it goes down while my internet is active, is that enough to prevent my ISP and anyone else from seeing my torrent activity? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
I just signed up for PIA last night, I'm completely new to VPNs and I'm still acclimating to the technology, so forgive me if I say stuff that doesn't make sense or is completely stupid.
I enabled the kill switch, dns leak protection and IPv6 leak protection, as well as port forwarding, used that port for utorrent and my speeds have been decent, but I'm not sure if I needed to set it up any further to protect my information leaking.
I read the OP but I don't get what they mean by generated username and password but not your VPN password? Where can I find this generated log in? I see my username and password in the settings as well as the email I received, and it was generated by PIA but it's the only username and log in I have so I wasn't sure if that was the correct one to use in utorrent.