uTorrent didn’t announce this as big news, they just mentioned it in their update log “Feature: don’t use a consistent peer-id (to mitigate tracking)”. The users asked for this service and BitTorrent provided it. It will work very simply, every x-hours when users are downloading public torrents the peer-id will be automatically changed so the peer-id trace can’t be followed that easily. It will still be possible, but only until the peer-id changes. They remind us that the internet must keep its users privacy and they compare this project to private browsing on popular browsers, and praise that option as it gives users more control over their data.

There is still a lot to work regarding complete privacy on torrent networks, but this is certainly a step in the right direction. Especially if we consider that there are numerous companies that have specialized in tracking BitTorrent downloads and there are more of them coming every year. Hopefully in future there will be a simple solution to achieve complete privacy, but until then we can lean on VPN's and maybe some new security features that will come in Torrent clients.

[Ed – Privacy is always going to be a problem on the internet. There are many sites, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and more that be used to track people across the internet. Even in Proxy Networks if you know the exit IP and the exit time there are ways to track a user backwards across the Proxy Network. It is not easy, but it can be done. Still uTorrent’s move will help to a small degree, but do not think that it will keep you safe as you are traceable between Peer-id changes.]

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