Fight Internet Censorship with the Pirate Bay's PirateBrowser

Fight Internet Censorship with the Pirate Bay's PirateBrowser

By Dark Politricks

To celebrate it's 10th birthday the worlds most infamous censored site, The Pirate Bay, has introduced its own Internet browser to enable people to access its website even if it's being blocked by your ISP.

Most big ISP's have blocked The Pirate Bay for its users claiming it breaches copyright by allowing people to download Torrents of films and music.

If you don't know what a torrent it it's a movie split into thousands of small pieces. Each piece is stored on various computers so that each user is not in theory holding a full version of a film that may be breaching copyright. When you download  the torrent the files are all put together and downloaded from their various locations.

However most ISP's still see this as copyright violation and even though The Pirate Bay is just like Google in the fact they are just a search engine and don't actually host the films or music they have been attacked from all quarters.

Is Your ISP Blocking You?

You can quickly test whether you are being blocked by your ISP by clicking these links which all point to the Pirate Bay Website.

http://thepiratebay.org

http://thepiratebay.sx

https://piratereverse.info

Check More Pirate Bay Proxies

If you want a PHP script that will scan a number of known Pirate Bay Proxies then you can download this one I quickly knocked up from here: Pirate Bay Proxy Checker Script.

Just change the file extension to .php and either run it from your local computer or server. If you are running Windows I recommend downloading WAMP so that you can run an Apache server on your PC.

I also recommend changing the port number the server runs on to 8080 or 8888 so it can run side by side with IIS. This article will explain how to set WAMP up.

The benefits of running your own local webserver on your PC are many. You can make scripts such as web proxies, scrapers, scanners, BOTS, proxy hunters and many more cool tools. Plus the great thing is that the only IP address that will show up on the remote hosts log files will be 127.0.0.1 (unless you set up a different IP).

As this is the standard loopback localhost address there is no way for someone checking a logfile to know where in the world you are unless they have further information. Therefore running a local server, especially over another wifi network than your own is ideal for a wide range of HTTP activity.

Use Pirate Bay Tor Browser

If you are being blocked from the Pirate Bay by your ISP then you have a number of choices.

1. Find a working mirror to the site - e.g search for Pirate Bay Proxies on DuckDuckgo.com or try this page: http://torrentproxies.com/ to find some not blocked by your ISP. Many mirrors will first open up in something called adf.ly with a JavaScript countdown. After a few seconds a link will appear saying "click here to continue". On clicking the page will change (usually to an advert with a blue bar at the top) and in the top right corner will be another countdown saying "Please Wait". Usually after 5 seconds it will say "SKIP AD" and on clicking it you will end up at the Pirate Bay mirror site.

2. Use a proxy to access the Pirate Bay. There are many free proxies out there and you can find a good list at http://nntime.com/proxy-list-01.htm. Use a tool like FoxyProxy to manage your proxy lists and toggle between them. Or you can go into your browsers network / proxy settings and manually enter the IP address and port number you want to use.

3. Download the new Pirate Bay Browser or the Mozilla TOR Browser. Both of which access the TOR network to help disguise your internet footprint by bouncing your HTTP requests through a series of servers.  As the TOR website explains.

"Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol."

With all the outrage surrounding the NSA spying on ALL American citizens and the recent revelations that they are using this information not only to catch terrorists but to catch petty criminals, drug dealers, tax avoiders and to spy on and blackmail politicians and judges it is in everyone's best interests that they tighten up on their Internet Security.

As this article I wrote explains there are a number of measures you can take to reduce your Internet footprint and whilst you might be totally invisible you can blend into the background.

So do yourself a favour and use the Pirate Bay browser or the TOR Mozilla Browser. Not only does making use of the TOR network help protect your privacy but the Pirate Bay Browser will let you access a number of Pirate Bay Mirror sites and bypass any censorship that your ISP or country may have introduced.

Download the TOR Browser

Once installed when you open the .EXE you will connect to the TOR network.



Once connected you can use the Firefox browser to surf the web. All your Pirate Bay Mirror sites and other Torrent sites are linked at the top in the icon bar. Pick one and then carry out your search for movies, applications or other content.

As you can see it's just a search engine like Google which makes it very unfair that the Pirate Bay is being blocked by ISP's as Google also indexes illegal content such as porn and copyrighted material.

This is a search for the US TV show Dexter.



Like most search engines once you run a search you get your results.



As you can see from the results on the right there are two columns, seeders and leachers.

You want to choose an item with as many seeders (uploaders) and as few leachers (downloaders) as possible to get a quick download.

You can also tell from the names of the file what sort they are e.g if the file has the word CAM in it then it's a poor quality camera in a cinema job. If it's HDTV quality it will be a bigger better quality file and BRRip is a BluRay copy.

Clicking on the file you want will open up the result page. Hopefully you will get comments telling you the quality of the file. Click on "Get This Torrent" to download your torrent file.



When you want to download a torrent from the Pirate Bay you will first need to have a torrent client. There are many out there including:

www.utorrent.com/downloads/win

bitlord.soft32.com/

www.bittorrent.com/

Once you have one installed your application of choice you can just click on the torrent in your search results and it will open up in the client and start downloading.

As you can see whilst you download the file you will also be uploading at the same time. This way you are not just taking without giving back the files you have already leached. You can control the bandwidth ratio between upload and download as well as set limits on the rate you upload.



However bewarned, ISP's are also on the lookout for people downloading (leaching) and uploading (seeding) torrents so you need to protect yourself.

Some of the ways include:

-Using someone else's WIFI or network.

-Using an anonymous proxy that doesn't leak identifying information or even better a VPN. A paid for tool like BTGuard which is both a proxy and encryption tool which helps prevent your ISP throttle your traffic.

-Using a block list which will mean that all traffic is bounced around ISP routers so that they cannot scan the traffic.

-Setting your download port to a common port for other traffic such as 80 or 8080  (HTTP) so that it doesn't look obvious you are downloading P2P data. Most people use a "random port" but it is better to look like you are downloading HTTP content especially if you are encrypting your traffic as well.

-Limiting your upload rate to a minimum. Although this violates the spirit of P2P (sharing) the people going after you for stealing copyrighted material are more interested in those spreading (uploading) the content rather than downloading it.

-Ensuring you force outgoing traffic to be encrypted. This will help prevent your ISP see that you are using BitTorrent traffic and may prevent them throttling your bandwidth.

-Set a download cap on your traffic. Even if you are encrypting your traffic some ISP's may see the amount you are downloading and throttle it if they think you are up to no good.

-Using an application like PeerBlock which will block traffic from known bad IP addresses such as P2P blocklists, known bad IP addresses, spyware, FBI and copyright monitoring sites and so on. It is worth downloading and just sits in the background running as you do you're downloading.

As with most security measures a wide range of different measures is much better than just relying on one system.

Hopefully this article will help you make use of The Pirate Bay if you have been blocked so far.

View the original article The Pirate Bay Introduce "The PirateBrowser" at darkpolitricks.com.

Prism means we should all be wary - journalists especially!

Prism means we should all be wary - journalists especially!

By Dark Politricks

With the explosion of information about the latest American spy scandal, and the revelation that the USA has been spying on us all for years, isn't it all about time we all took our Internet security more seriously?

You might have read my earlier article Internet censorship and surfing anonymously but if you are not a "text" reader and felt over-loaded with information then the following links to some nice infographics will help show you just how Google and your browser track, log, identify and make money from your personal information as you surf the web.

They will also show you in a simple way which settings to turn off depending on the browser you use, plus which browser specific plugins to install, to increase your security, improve privacy and reduce your "Internet footprint".

You may have seen Microsoft promoting their privacy options lately for Internet Explorer on the TV and there is a new setting which the browsers have introduced called DNT (Do Not Track).

Supposedly if you enable this setting in your browsers settings it will pass a special header called DNT (Do Not Track) along to all sites that you visit which is supposed to tell them to respect your privacy and not log or track you.

You can actually see this header with tools like HttpFox or Firebug or even most browsers own inbuilt developer console (F12 usually brings it up).

When you inspect your Request headers (all the information your browser passes to each site on each request for an HTML page, image or other resource required by websites to work) you will see the DNT header set to 1 if it's enabled.

However like all these things even though Google's own Chrome browser has a setting for this new option they themselves DON'T EVEN support it!

Just goes to show you that money is more important than a users security or privacy and that your online data is worth $£€ to the Internet companies.

Have a look at the following pages if you want a nice illustrated guide on how browsers and Internet sites track you online.

This explains how you can stop being tracked by your browser.

This explains how you are tracked online when you use Google.

This explains how your search results are tailored to previous searches and details obtained by your browser.

You should also look into using secure search engines such as www.startpage.com or duckduckgo.com instead of Google (yes other search engines do exist and are just as good!) as well as researching secure browsers and tools such as TOR for secure Internet browsing.

As journalists are now targets of the American government and whistle-blowers seem to be top of the USA's execution lists, far ahead it seems of real terrorists, then newspapers and anyone else wanting to bring truth to the masses by exposing government secrets should really be looking at creating secure ways to communicate so as to protect their sources. We long expected that our governments were basically spying on all our emails, phone calls, Internet traffic and now we have been proven right. It is up to you alone to help make it as hard as possible for them to track you if you respect your own privacy.

It may be hard but the easiest thing to do is stay away from any of the big Internet companies and their products e.g Google, Facebook, Skype, Hotmail etc (there are alternatives) and lock down and encrypt your PC and as much of your traffic as possible.

As Ron Paul says in this article he fears the most recent whistle-blower Edward Snowden might even be killed by a US drone strike!

What the fuck is going on USA?

If anyone was mistaken about the real reason for the war on terror and the loss of liberties at home that sprung from it this should come as a big fat punch on the nose warning!

This war is not going to end. Who does anyone think we are ever going to sign a peace treaty with to end it?

No this war was all about allowing the governments of supposed western democratic nations to go draconian on all of our asses and we only have to look at how Obama, a supposed liberal President, is:

• attacking free speech,
• spying on reporters who dare report on the Government,
• going after whistle-blowers which are supposedly protected by the law,
• spying on all Americans and International countries who use the Internet without warrant or probable cause,
• executing American nationals without trial,
• killing innocent people by the hundreds in remote drone strikes,
• supporting al-Qaeda linked terrorists in Syria and Libya, and worse of all,
• increasing the American police state that is still under emergency laws (since 9.11) - with bills like the NDAA to follow on from the constitution killing PATRIOT Act which was brought in by George W Bush.

Whether you like Obama or not a TRUE liberal would not be promoting such activities.

View the original article Prism means we should all be wary - journalists especially! at the main site darkpolitricks.com.