uTorrent 1.6.1

[Timer]

I recently heard some arguments for and against upgrading utorrent from
v 1.6 to 1.6.1, and I'm not sure if I should upgrade or not. :mellow:
Can someone explain the advantages\disadvantages of the new version, and what do you think I should do?

[gamer4eva]

I think there was a thread about the uTorrent having exploits so hackers can get in. I can't really remember how it goes though.

[crossfade]

Advantages
- ease of use
- interface

Disavantages
- closed source
- uTorrent was bought by BitTorrent Inc. and BT Inc. had to cooperate with MPAA and Major Movie Studios because it was threatened with legal action (so uT is practically owned by the aforementioned)

I loved uT but now I'm seriously thinking of switching to another client.

Not so fond of Azureus, 'cause they kept the phone-home feature (i.e. Azureus reporting your total UL, total DL and ISP name and info to AZ) hidden for one year. It is fixed now though.

[V]

it's good
but nothin new shown
Azureus is the best

[peat moss]

I remember reading some where to stay at ver. 1.5 but after a format I could n't find it again so 1.6 is where I'll stay .

[crossfade]

It's not that difficult to find version 1.5 ( http://www.filehippo.com/download_utorrent/?922 )
But do you remember why switching to version 1.6 is bad?

[LinkS v2.0]

heh im still using 1.5.1 beta good thing its not banned :) in any of the trackers I use http://www.utorrent-deutsch.de/downloads/utorrent-1.5.1-beta-build-454.exe

[peat moss]

It's not that difficult to find version 1.5 ( http://www.filehippo.com/download_utorrent/?922 )
But do you remember why switching to version 1.6 is bad?

It was something on this forum I read but can't remember why . :( It was probably because of the open source angle which I prefer .

[crossfade]

heh im still using 1.5.1 beta good thing its not banned :) in any of the trackers I use http://www.utorrent-deutsch.de/downloads/utorrent-1.5.1-beta-build-454.exe


Old and out of date clients are banned at BMTV.

[enviouz]

ive updated to 1.6.1 and find no disadvantages nor advantages from 1.6. only change i noticed is web ui

[Prilost]

I'm using utorrent 1.6.1.
No problem

[trevorob]

I think you should upgrade,best client out,you can always go back.Azureus is to fickle,utorrent 1.6.1 has a couple of new things go to options/auto shutdown windows, also right click the torrent in utorrent go to bandwidth alloction/set up&download limit,& maybe there might be more.
scratch you later.

[Timer]

Thanks everyone, I upgraded and find no problems....

[nvidia6800]

ive updated to 1.6.1 and find no disadvantages nor advantages from 1.6. only change i noticed is web ui

:yup: :yup: :yup: :yup:

[Melvinmeow]

I think there was a thread about the uTorrent having exploits so hackers can get in. I can't really remember how it goes though.

Correct. If you entered an announce url over x amount of chars it would cause the client to illegaly crash and thus allow hackers to get into your system.




Advantages
- ease of use
- interface

Disavantages
- closed source
- uTorrent was bought by BitTorrent Inc. and BT Inc. had to cooperate with MPAA and Major Movie Studios because it was threatened with legal action (so uT is practically owned by the aforementioned)

I loved uT but now I'm seriously thinking of switching to another client.

Not so fond of Azureus, 'cause they kept the phone-home feature (i.e. Azureus reporting your total UL, total DL and ISP name and info to AZ) hidden for one year. It is fixed now though.

According to their coders they state that the phone home option was not working on any other torrents other than ones directly downloaded off their own site.
EX: You download from their site it phones home.
EX2: You download from a site like F*N, SCT, ect... It is said to have not phone home.

Whether this is true or not is debatable. But thats the info the coders themselves provided to a couple of staff from torrent sites who had been asking and giving feedback about certain options lately.


ive updated to 1.6.1 and find no disadvantages nor advantages from 1.6. only change i noticed is web ui

They made a few changes... however the major update was to block/ommit the hacks from happening through their client.

[crossfade]

Not so fond of Azureus, 'cause they kept the phone-home feature (i.e. Azureus reporting your total UL, total DL and ISP name and info to AZ) hidden for one year. It is fixed now though.

According to their coders they state that the phone home option was not working on any other torrents other than ones directly downloaded off their own site.
EX: You download from their site it phones home.
EX2: You download from a site like F*N, SCT, ect... It is said to have not phone home.

Whether this is true or not is debatable. But thats the info the coders themselves provided to a couple of staff from torrent sites who had been asking and giving feedback about certain options lately.


That might be right but my point was that Azureus sent data packets without the knowledge of their users for a whole year. It might not be the only thing they held back, you know...

[dollyoops]

That might be right but my point was that Azureus sent data packets without the knowledge of their users for a whole year. It might not be the only thing they held back, you know...

When the version check client does a check, it does send a whole bunch of information. The version check client is actually used as a convenient way of being able to pass certain settings back to the client from the Azureus developers. As for the ISP information - that was sent by the client because it meant less work for the version check server to find out what the ISP is (the version check server doesn't have to figure out what your ISP is from your IP address).

And why does that server want to know what ISP you have? So that it can automatically switch on traffic encryption for your installation if your ISP is listed as one that throttles BT traffic - that's all. Even if it didn't send your ISP name in the information, it wouldn't stop that server from figuring out who your ISP is.

There's not been anything harmful sent to the version check server in any Azureus release. Even the total of how many bytes you ever uploaded / downloaded in your Azureus instance doesn't identify what torrents you have been using.

[reachnet]

That might be right but my point was that Azureus sent data packets without the knowledge of their users for a whole year. It might not be the only thing they held back, you know...

When the version check client does a check, it does send a whole bunch of information. The version check client is actually used as a convenient way of being able to pass certain settings back to the client from the Azureus developers. As for the ISP information - that was sent by the client because it meant less work for the version check server to find out what the ISP is (the version check server doesn't have to figure out what your ISP is from your IP address).

And why does that server want to know what ISP you have? So that it can automatically switch on traffic encryption for your installation if your ISP is listed as one that throttles BT traffic - that's all. Even if it didn't send your ISP name in the information, it wouldn't stop that server from figuring out who your ISP is.

There's not been anything harmful sent to the version check server in any Azureus release. Even the total of how many bytes you ever uploaded / downloaded in your Azureus instance doesn't identify what torrents you have been using.

Brilliant - I wish more people would try to understand that.
The Devs of these products DO know what they're doing - it's their baby/their product and yes they do probably become protective and obsessive about it -why because they actually CARE.
That said, I don't particularly like the idea of Azureus Devs automatically turning on anything without telling me first (even if their intentions are good) - I've never actually experienced this scenario so I'm not too sure what actually happens - but one thing I DON'T want them doing is what MS have done in the past with certain updates - i.e. use it as a mechanism to install updates which meet THEIR Corp agenda and start infringing on individual rights.
AFAIK, that hasn't happened yet but when the "machine" becomes that big it's easy for oversights to happen - whether intentional or not.

[crossfade]

I still feel like you're not getting my point here.
It's not that important what information AZ actually sent or in which specific cases it does, it's that the feature was hidden and staff from a BT tracker had to report it before they did something about it.
If the phone home feature was not discovered by that staff, then it would continue sending data for years, woudn't it?

I'm not claiming that AZ devs do want anything bad to happen to their users but if the report home function was there it means they implemented it on purpose, right?

[reachnet]

I still feel like you're not getting my point here.
It's not that important what information AZ actually sent or in which specific cases it does, it's that the feature was hidden and staff from a BT tracker had to report it before they did something about it.
If the phone home feature was not discovered by that staff, then it would continue sending data for years, woudn't it?

I'm not claiming that AZ devs do want anything bad to happen to their users but if the report home function was there it means they implemented it on purpose, right?

Yeah I hear ya'. Thanks. :)
Any good links on this Az behaviour ?
I've not actually been interested in that aspect of Az up till now - but I'd like to "backtrack" to figure out the history of it.

[freakyflow7]

I don't believe what you're saying is true crossfade. Az had that up on their website stating that information was being sent back.. they even gave you the chance to select "no" to sending anonymous info at install.

[dollyoops]

it's that the feature was hidden
Hidden?

Well that depends. The source code that does it isn't hidden away, the data in the transmitted packet is encrypted to hide what is being sent.

What we do have is poorly maintained checkbox text in the Options -> Interface page ("Allow Azureus to send anonymous version number and random ID while checking for new version"). It did used to do just that - then as time has passed and things have been added to it, the text for the option hasn't changed. So something should probably be done about that.

There's a good wiki link indicating what is sent to the server - hopefully the Options page will link to it in future to make it clearer what's going on:
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Version.aelitis.com


and staff from a BT tracker had to report it before they did something about it.Well - yes. The only reason the upload / download stats were removed were due to a few complaints from people. Not that there was anything wrong with sending the statistics, but the developers took it out just to keep them happy, even though they know it has no real benefit to anyone at all.


If the phone home feature was not discovered by that staff, then it would continue sending data for years, woudn't it?Until the developers took it out, yes. I'm not entirely sure what difference that makes, given that it's not reporting anything confidential or incriminating.


I'm not claiming that AZ devs do want anything bad to happen to their users but if the report home function was there it means they implemented it on purpose, right?report home?

Look - this functionality does two things. One is how the software is being used - things like what operating system people are using, what version of Java, what screen size - this helps development of the program. Not a bad thing.

The second is to pass on information which the server can send back to the user. Running an older version - get this new version! Got a crappy ISP using traffic throttling - set the encryption settings like this! And so on.

So., err... what's the problem again - I mean, apart from the poor labelling of an option (which something should be done about it)? That it could potentially do something bad even though it doesn't?

By the way - this functionality certainly hasn't disappeared. The only thing taken out was the byte counts.

[dollyoops]

Any good links on this Az behaviour ?
I've not actually been interested in that aspect of Az up till now - but I'd like to "backtrack" to figure out the history of it.

I could point you to the source code in question if you really want. :D
You could read a post by "tuxpaper", one of the Azureus devs if you like:
https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=4160592

[reachnet]

Any good links on this Az behaviour ?
I've not actually been interested in that aspect of Az up till now - but I'd like to "backtrack" to figure out the history of it.

I could point you to the source code in question if you really want. :D
You could read a post by "tuxpaper", one of the Azureus devs if you like:
https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=4160592

Thanks m8 - you've given me more than enough to "do my own digging" as it were. ;)

[enahmadbs]

it's good

[tem]

no problems with 1.6.1
Everything works fine

[gino77]

it's very good release it's fast than old. and u must upgrade because Old and out of date clients are banned for most trackers

[Eazil]

Work fine in my computer.

[placebocrazy]

on mine too

[neros22]

this sucks bitornet

[Liked]

great Bittorrentclient

[tintin123]

im still using 161 beta and no problems
so why upgrade lol

[Army]

i love ut but i still usin' v1.6