Possible Relay Exposure

General
#1

I started to use Tribler as an anonymous torrent agent on Nov. 5, 2015. I downloaded a video and a software. However, I received a complaint from copyright holders about sharing a video I have NEVER downloaded or even seen before.

Details of the file claimed to be shared by me are shown below:

Screen Shot 2015-11-09 at 11.17.55 PM.png744×218 33.9 KB

Given that users are relays in Tirbler’s network (at least from what I learnt from Wikipedia), I might be responsible for the sharing of a file that my computer relayed.

Given that there is nothing talking about safety measures to be taken when using Tribler, I assumed that it is anonymous being a user without any special measures taken, at least from copyright holders. But now I am in quite some trouble due to the warning from the copyright holder. It might be a good idea for Tribler to check the anonymity mechanism itself, and meanwhile I would stop using it until the issue is solved.

Is there any measures I have to take before using Tribler safely?

#2

I assume you are running current stable version (v6.4.3)
Did you press “accept” on the popup window asking you if you wanted to act as an exit node the first time you start Tribler? It explains what happens when you do. (You become an exit node for chunks of other Tribler peers downloads)

We have noticed that people get in trouble because they just don’t read popup windows and press accept on everything. So the next release comes disabled by default and you have to go to the settings pane to enable that feature.

#3

I am using the latest stable mac version indeed. However, I did not receive any prompt about being a node when I first open the app, nor can I find anything about it in the settings…

#4

may be I did miss the popup window, sorry…

#5

Yeah, there’s no settings option on that version yet, you will have to edit Tribler’s config file by hand to disable it.

Have a look at this topic: .Tribler directory structure and description

You will have to shut Tribler down and edit libtribler.conf, look for the [tunnel_community] section and set the option called optin_dialog_shown to False so you get the popup again if you want to read it or just set enabled to False to disable it.

The next release (now we are on RC6) allows you to selectively enable/disable the exit node part without losing the option to do tunneled downloads and it’s off by default.