Several ISPs in India have started blocking popular torrent sites like ISO Hunt, Vimeo, Pastebin, The Pirate Bay and Extra Torrent on various ISPs including those of Airtel and Reliance. Users who visit these website on those ISPs will see a message as shown in the image below.

The message reads:

This site has been blocked as per instructions from Department of Telecom (DOT).

The reason for the ban is still unknown and users are flooding Twitter with tweets opposing the ban. If your ISP has blocked ISO Hunt, Pirate Bay or Extra Torrent for you, you might still be able to access those sites albeit using some workarounds.

If you are looking to access those websites, you can try out several of the proxies we had listed in our earlier article on how to access blocked websites. Additionally, you can also try out some other failsafe methods to access blocked websites.

Additional Reads:

• Bypass Internet Censors And Access Blocked Sites
• View NSFW and Blocked Websites with Google Mobilizer

Some of the blocks are DNS based (h/t @anantshri) . To overcome this issue you can try out services like Google DNS or Open DNS to access those websites. Read our earlier guide on How to use Google Public DNS on Windows 7 and Windows XP or use a Google DNS helper to automatically change to Google DNS. You can also use a Public Proxy DNS site like http://dnetproxy.appspot.com/.

You can also visit Pirate Bay using proxies which you can find at http://about.piratereverse.info/proxy/list.html and http://tpb.fl.ax/. You might also want to switch to magnet links if your tracker is being blocked. Learn more about what magnet links are.

Last but not the least you can also use Google’s site operator to search those sites directly without visiting them and then view the cached version of the page through Google search.

The post Access isoHunt, Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrent and Kick Ass Torrents in India appeared first on Techie Buzz.

While you might get into trouble legally for downloading the content, there is a high chance that the torrents available on the internet are infected with viruses and spyware which might put your computer at risk.

Back in 2010, Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 1 was leaked on Torrent websites and was downloaded millions of times. That leak was potentially intentional because it left off a good part of the movie out of the torrent thus driving users back to the theatre to catch up the rest of the movie. There were also several instances of fake torrents which infected users who downloaded them. The Dark Knight Rises torrents are fake and targeted towards gullible users who will be infected with malware and spyware.

While downloading torrents in itself is not illegal, it is always advisable to check your copyright laws before you download anything to your computer. While there are several tools which help you to download torrents anonymously, you should also use services which will tell you whether a torrent is infected or not.

And last but not the least, go ahead and check out some Dark Knight Rises Posters and Billboard ads and enjoy the Dark Knight Rises in theatres this week. It is definitely going to be worth it.

The post Beware of Dark Knight Rises Leaked Torrents on the Internet appeared first on Techie Buzz.

But fear not, a single torrent tracker can’t take down the whole P2P world. The Pirate Bay’s descendent may have already seen the light of the day or let me say, the url of the internet.

We are talking about OpenBittorent. Let us check out what it is.

OpenBitTorrent is a bittorrent tracker free for anyone to use. You don’t need to register, upload or index a torrent anywhere, all you have to do is to include the OpenBitTorrent tracker URL in your torrent.

Unlike other Torrent trackers, you won’t need to upload your torrent to some torrent indexing site. OpenBittorrent aims to be an open and stable torrent tracker, that anyone can use, without any dependency on another site for the torrent to work.

So next time you create a torrent and use OpenBittorrent for the tracker, you won’t need to index your torrent to a site. Just put in the torrent, pass it and continue the spirit of sharing. These are urls for the OpenBittorrent tracker. You can use either one of them or both:

http://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80/announce
udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80/announce

And for those who don’t know how to create a torrent, follow this guide that Keith wrote some time back. How To Create and Share .torrent Files?

The post OpenBittorrent: An Open & Universal Bittorrent Tracker appeared first on Techie Buzz.

In a world of peer-to-peer sharing, Torrents have come along a long way along. However, Torrents are being deemed less safe these days because of people being able to easily track them. This has led several websites including “The Pirate Bay” from changing the way they allow users to download files.

The Pirate Bay recently switched from torrents to magnet links marking a big change in how it operates. In a nutshell, magnet links change how users download content. We’ll take a look at what has changed and what you will need to change in order to download files using Magnet links.

What are Magnet Links? What’s the Difference Between Magnet Links and Torrents?

Magnet Links change the fundamental way in which we download from peer-to-peer networks. Unlike Torrents, which needed a centralized server for tracking purposes, magnet links directly download content from other peers thus getting rid of the centralized server for tracking seeds and peers.

Magnet links make use of DHT, which is a form of decentralized distribution which allows a group of users to share a file faster amongst themselves without having to rely on a server. There is not much difference between how a file is downloaded from a torrent vs how it is downloaded from a magnet link.

Do I Have to Change How I Download Using Magnet Links?

No. Magnet links are similar to torrent files and if you have P2P torrent software installed, you will be able to download the content using magnet links without having to change anything. However, you might have to upgrade your P2P software to the latest versions so that the browsers are aware that they should handle those links.

How to Download Files Using Magnet Links?

There are a couple of ways in which you can download content using magnet links. The first is pretty straightforward. Just click on the link that is provided and it will launch your default torrent software as shown below. You might want to check the checkbox next to “Remember my choice for all links of this type” or “Always use this software to open such links” so that it will automatically open magnet links in your favorite torrent client.

Clicking on the “Get This Torrent” link in Pirate Bay will automatically launch your Bittorrent application.

Once you open the magnet link, your torrent client will start downloading the content just like a regular torrent. Alternatively, you can also copy the magnet link and add it directly to your torrent client just like you used to do for regular torrents.

Are Magnet Links Safe?

Downloading through magnet links is as safe as downloading a torrent file. However, make sure to download legitimate content and you will be safe. There have been several cases of infected torrents so the files you download through magnet links could be unsafe as well.

The post What Are Magnet Links? How Are They Different From Torrents? appeared first on Techie Buzz.