Try as you might, there's no foolproof way to be absolutely sure that your BitTorrent downloads are private and hidden from prying eyes. To prove it, one web site is posting your downloading habits out and in the open for all to see, and so we all understand how easy it can be to pin specific torrents to individual IP addresses. You Have Downloaded is a new site that claims to know what files you've been torrenting—and it makes all of that information public to anyone who searches for it.


If you visit the site yourself, You Have Downloaded will look up your IP and display any torrents it's managed to scrape that are associated with you. If you change your IP regularly or have a dynamic IP, it may not have anything on you—or at least nothing recent—but if you've had the same IP for a while and do a lot of downloading, it's possible they have at least some record of you. The folks behind the site claim they're watching 20% of all public tracker downloads and they're expanding to keep track of more, which means if you're not on the site now, you may be soon.

You Have Downloaded site currently has a database of over 51 million users, over 100,000 torrents, a million files, and it's still growing. The folks behind the site want their project to be a wake up call to encourage downloaders to secure their activities by torrenting through a VPN or proxy, or through other methods that will keep their traffic private.


For what it's worth, You Have Downloaded's own privacy policy points out that you shouldn't take them too seriously - they have a message to send, but they're not doing anything nefarious with the data except making it public. Still, if you BitTorrent, you should consider making your downloads as private as possible. For tips on how to lock down your torrents, check out our guide to boosting your BitTorrent speed and privacy, and our guide to protecting your privacy while downloading.

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Head over and check out You Have Downloaded, and then let us know if the site has any data on you in the comments below.

You Have Downloaded | via TorrentFreak