Hi all...I've been away a long time from posting, I apologize.

If anyone remembers the BitTorrent Bible from the pre-lokitorrent-shut-down days, that was me. Anyway...

I've been using Tor for some time, and I really, really like it. I've been using azureus for quite a while too, but I'd like to use the two in conjunction.

I do NOT want to route traffic across Tor, I just want to use Tor to connect anonymously to the tracker. I've read over the azureus wiki about 10 times and it keeps referring to "same instructions as above", but there's about 5 pages of instructions above that point, so I'm stuck.

I'm fairly sure I need to start a hidden service w/ torcp, but I'm not sure.

If there's anyone out there with a good link or a good tutorial about how to use Tor and Azureus WITHOUT routing traffic across Tor, please, please post it.

Tor isn't for large files, I just don't want the tracker to know where I am.

Thanks!

All right, well, I figured it out, I was making it way to difficult.

It's easy to connect anonymously to the tracker but not-anonymously to peers, which is what I wanted to do.

If anyone ever needs help w/ this, let me know.

Ok, well, here's the tutorial.

Why anonymize your connection to the tracker? Well, several reasons.
1. Another layer of protection. Site goes down to feds, whomever, nobody has any record of where you were.
2. Once you learn how to anonymize yourself w/ the tracker, you can learn how to do it for several applications.
3. It's fun.
4. If you should ever get banned...you can reregister.

Before I start, I just wanted to say that you must ABSOLUTELY NOT route your peer-to-peer traffic across Tor. That's not what it's for, and you ruin it for all of us if you do.

Now, here we go.

If you don't already, you should be using Tor. (http://tor.eff.org/)

Once you install the bundle, the BUNDLE, torcp, tor, and privoxy, go here for instructions about how to incoporate it with firefox:
http://zargon.hobbesnet.org/~squires/torbutton/
That's simply the easiest way, basically, install that and press "tor disabled" on the bottom of your browser...and it's enabled!

I won't go into how it works, but basically your computer is broadcasting that it's somewhere else in the world now. Neat.

All you have to do for azureus (and ANY other program you want to use via a proxy...email, browser, whatever), is this:
Go to your options, click "connection", then "proxy options".
Check "Enable proxying of tracker communications"
Check "I have a SOCKS proxy".
(Note...whatever program you use...tell it you have a socks proxy. 4a is the most secure, 5 is the next generation, but can leak. Tor supports all of them, so pick a winner.)
Host is: 127.0.0.1 (localhost should work too, but not guaranteed)
port is: 9050.

It will always be 9050, unless you start another service w/i Tor...which I don't recommend, because you don't need to.

Save...restart...done.


Notes:
1. If you are downloading from a private tracker (registration required), you MUST be using the proxy to download the original torrent. Example: Start browser. Click "tor disabled" to turn on your proxy connection. Go to your favorite private tracker, like www.filelist.org . Login...browser around, find your torrent. Download it. I suggest keeping the window open until the d/l starts in whatever client you like.

Failure to do this first will prevent the tracker from letting your client connect...and besides, logging into the site anonymously gives you another layer of protection.

2. The initial download will take longer to key up...but then it should be normal.

3. Make SURE you disable Tor before you take down large files w/ your browser. Tor cannot support high bandwidth traffic.

4. THIS DOES NOT PROTECT YOU FROM THE MPAA/RIAA. You are NOT anonymously connected to peers with this! For any protection at all, and it's not guaranteed, you need peerguardian 2 and an active block list!!!

I think that's it...any more questions, let me know!