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Questions about anonymous mode

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 2:45 am
by Hime0698
Hi I am trying to figure out what exactly anonymous mode does on modern qbittorrent and how it effects the operation of the torrents. All the info I can find is either outdated or really vague. Does it still disable PHT, DEX and Local Discovery? What are the downsides to enabling it? What are the upsides? Thanks in advance for the help!

Re: Questions about anonymous mode

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 11:54 am
by Switeck
libtorrent's FAQ on Anonymous Mode would be the best place to read about that, although even it might be out-of-date.
I don't know if it still disables DHT, PEX, or Local Seed Discovery anymore.
But it might tell trackers qBT doesn't have a listening port and not to report qBT's ip to other peers/seeds...which will mean you could get very few connected peers/seeds on public torrents because many of them are firewalled.
I've read it leaves the BitTorrent client ID either blank or full of garbage, so any peer/seed connected to your qBT client won't see your peer/seed as using qBitTorrent -- which is probably going to be a big problem for private trackers that blacklist all but a few BitTorrent clients.

Anonymous Mode is nearly useless without being used along with a VPN or proxy to get a little bit extra anonymity.
Directly connecting to peers/seeds otherwise gives out your IPv4 and/or IPv6 address, for zero privacy.

And if you're using a VPN or proxy...  https://qbforums.shiki.hu/index.php/topic,5085.0.html