Anonymous Downloading

A lot of users like the idea of being able to download anonymously, whether for privacy reasons or perhaps because they live in a location where internet access is restricted and they would like to circumvent the restrictions.

BiglyBT is a general purpose torrent client with many features. Amongst these features is the ability to connect to/use the I2P and Tor networks.

Before going any further it needs to be said that BiglyBT doesn't make any guarantees regarding anonymous downloading. There may be bugs or design errors in BiglyBT that break anonymity. There may be similar in I2P and Tor. If your anonymity being circumvented is something that would concern you then don't use BiglyBT.

BiglyBT splits things into networks, the public (or "clear") network, I2P and Tor. If you want to use I2P the minimum you need to do is install the "I2P Helper Plugin" and read AND UNDERSTAND the I2P page. Likewise with Tor, you need to install the "Tor Helper Plugin".

The I2P plugin allows BiglyBT to communicate with I2P trackers (tracker URLs that have a domain ending in ".i2p") and I2P peers (I2P peers returned from I2P trackers and found in the I2P DHT)

The Tor plugin allows BiglyBT to communicate with Tor trackers (tracker URLs that have a domain ending in ".onion") and Tor peers (Tor peers returned from Tor trackers)

What BiglyBT can't do is magically use I2P/Tor to connect to public peers, it can only connect to I2P/Tor peers. This is where most people say "oh, that's rubbish, I wanted to download a public torrent anonymously" and go on their merry way.

BiglyBT also can't connect to a public/clearnet tracker over I2P/Tor. If it could it would only receive public peer IP addresses anyway which if connected to would reveal your public address.

Downloads in BiglyBT have a "Privacy" setting that dictates which of the three networks are permitted to be used with the download. Once a download is active in BiglyBT it is inadvisable to change its privacy setting as this can permit cross-network correlation (see I2P). So it is best to either set the privacy settings in the "open torrent options" dialog (set "Options->Files [Default Directory Options]: When opening a torrent, show options dialog:" to "every time"). Alternatively set "Options->Files->Torrents: By default add new torrents in a stopped state" to true to ensure that newly added downloads aren't started.

Ideally download your .torrent files outside of BiglyBT (via a secure route obviously). If you have to use a magnet link to obtain the .torrent then this requires use of a DHT to do so. Only I2P has its own secure DHT so this approach won't work for Tor. To ensure that only the I2P DHT is used configure "Options->Plugins->Magnet URI Handler [Default Networks]:" appropriately. You can also append "&net=I2P" to the magnet URI (and ensure that it doesn't have an existing "&net=Public" somehow)

There is a feature in BiglyBT that can increase the availability of I2P peers for a swarm, see Network Mixing