That’s the question really. I hear the terms metadata and torrents thrown around all the time when talking about internet and privacy, but I don’t really understand them and when I tried googling torrents I was just confused. Can someone explain one or both like I’m 5?
ELI5 for torrents:
Traditionally when you send files, you upload them to a server where someone else can download them. Think of this server like sending a package through postal service.
When you transfer a file via torrent, it’s like driving a package directly to the home of the person you’re sending it to.
The main reason for doing this is because either running the middleman server (postal service) is too expensive, or you want to send something that is not “allowed” on the server (like trying to send something illegal through the postal service).
The risk of torrents is if you don’t know who you’re sending files to, you may be dropping your package of illegal goods on the porch of a police sting house.
Also for torrents, hundreds of people can deliver different parts of the package at the same time to make it faster.
Torrenting is simply a special method of uploading and downloading files. I can elaborate if you wish, but I’ll leave it at that. It’s worth noting that torrenting is typically used to distribute illegal media-- there’s nothing wrong with the act of torrenting itself, but because of the method of which torrenting is achieved, it’s mostly used to download/upload pirated movies, games, music, etc. Lots of legitimate things can be torrented, such as Linux distributions. If you’re ever considering torrenting media which may be illegal, make sure you’re fully informed. (Many will argue about the ethics of pirating media, I think this is beyond the scope of this discussion.)
As for metadata, “meta” means “self-referential”. So Meta data is data about data, which is to say, it’s information about itself. Metadata describes many aspects of a file. If you’ve ever opened the properties of a file and seen that it was “created January 1, 1980”, or “1.2 MB”, or “authored by Big Books Inc”, etc, that’s all metadata. In terms of privacy, some files could possibly have metadata such as the name of the user who created it, their geological location, the device the user used to create it, etc. I personally don’t think it’s something to be extremely paranoid over, but it is something worth looking a bit more into if you care about online privacy. Also worth noting that most image sharing sites and services strip images of their metadata when you upload them.
So - and to be clear, I’m not interested in pirating or sharing illegal data (or even setting up a torrent at this time)- for informational purposes and trying to be better educated, how do you even torrent? Everyone talks about it like it’s some easy thing, but do you have to use a certain server, websites, or what? How do you set up a torrent?
On another note, I wish there was an “internet privacy and general use for dummies guide” that wasn’t just “don’t share your personal info online”. I’m not an idiot, but I wasn’t allowed on the internet as a kid so there’s huge gaps in what I know. I’m in a weird gap where I’m above the average non-tech savvy person (I know enough that I built my PC) but I don’t know enough to begin to understand what tech savvy people are talking about. I’m trying to soak up as much knowledge as I can without looking like a complete idiot.
As others have stated, it’s usually as simple as downloading a torrenting program and finding something to torrent. There are many programs, and many sites dedicated to hosting torrented files, both of which would probably be breaking the rules of this instance if I were to link them. But for the sake of intellectual curiosity, if you look them up, you can find them easily. (If you’re interested in what torrenting is and why it’s different than just downloading, I’ve moved my paragraph to the bottom to ease the wall of text.)
As for internet privacy, there’s no one singular repository of information or “holy bible” as it were to adhere to. Internet privacy is something you just pick up over time as you get used to the Internet and indeed make many mistakes on your own. I’ve done my fair share of clicking shady links and losing access to my accounts in my day, and as they say, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. So don’t be so hard on yourself, you’ll learn in due time, one way or another. Don’t be afraid to ask more questions and make your own mistakes, it’s only human. Right now, as long as you’re partially aware of some of the dangers of the Internet, you’re already leaps and bounds ahead of other people, and that’s a-okay.
Anyway, as for the intricacies of torrenting, it’s actually a very interesting and seemingly complex but actually simple system. Torrenting is also called peer-to-peer transferring, which as the name implies, is done by transfering information between everyone! Like others have said in this thread, you’re not just downloading a file from some server somewhere, but you’re getting many many small pieces of information from potentially hundreds or thousands of different people. It’s like if you tried reconstructing a book by going to your friend John, and he photocopies the first chapter, then you go to your friend Mike, and he photocopies the second chapter, and so on. Files in a torrenting network are broken into small blocks, which are downloaded from other peoples’ computers, and then reconstruted as one file on your own computer! This does imply that, while you are downloading a file while torrenting, you’re also uploading it! When you receive information from others, your computer then also turns around and broadcasts that information to anyone in the torrenting network who still needs it. When you’ve fully downloaded the file, you can also choose to continue uploading and broadcasting the file for other people to download from. (This is called “seeding” and is typically seen as either a nice thing to do, or downright mandatory in some circles.) You can probably see now why piracy is so prevalent here, as it’s downright impossible to squash an entire network of people all sharing files amongst each other, and law enforcement can’t prevent everyone from doing it. (And if you’re taking proper precautions like using a reputable VPN, they won’t even know you’re torrenting anything at all!) It’s a very interesting system, one that I think is super neat, but it does have its positives and negatives. Hope you found this as interesting as I do!
I good example that’s completely legal is Linux distributions. They are licensed in a way that lets you share the file with other people so there is no risk of illegal activity.
You need torrent software installed that can speak the language of the torrenting protocol. Examples would be QBitTorrent, Transmission, and uTorrent, but there are others as well.
For the general process, you would download and install torrenting software, then you would go to a page that has torrent files (like this Ubuntu page), save the
.torrentfile and then from the software open that file, this will begin the download. Once it’s done, you have a full copy of the files on your computer.The only thing unique about torrents is that you are downloading parts of the file from a bunch of other people that have a copy, instead of downloading the whole file from just one single server.
I just want to quickly jot down that a fair bit of torrents are delivered through “magnet links” instead of .torrent files. An example is Arch Linux which has both.
In most cases after you install a torrent client such as Qbittorrent, Deluge, Transmission or what have you, your system will automatically recognize magnet links and will offer to launch the software to handle it properly once you click it.
Yes, thank you. I was going to explain that as well but asl owanted to keep it as basic and simple as possible. Honestly, I can’t recall the last time I actually alsaved and opened a torrent file, I’ve always used magnet links.
If your computer doesn’t automatically open a magnet link when you click on it (usually you’ll just see a 🧲 that you can click on), you should be able to right click that icon to copy the link. Often the client will have an option to enter the magnet link when you select File>Open.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone “CC” someone else outside of business emails. Man, I like it here.
What is the difference between a magnet link and a torrent file?
For actually getting torrents loaded into the client software, there’s basically no difference. They both contain the information needed to start downloading the content.
A torrent file just has the information needed to start the download, kind of like a text file.
A magnet link is similar to any other link, like
http://example.com/SomeFile.torrent. They’re a bit more complicated because the websiteexample.commight remove or change the location ofSomeFile.torrentand then any of the existing links won’t work. Magnet links aren’t affected by that sort of thing. I say this with the caveat that I honestly don’t really know or understand them fully because, like I first said, it doesn’t really matter.
On that topic, know of any good torrent clients for windows that don’t give your computer herpes, then cancer to the herpes?
I can’t speak for the Windows side as I’m one of those Linux users. But the ones I mentioned are ones I know off the top of my head because I see them mentioned often.
- Transmission
- qBittorrent
- Deluge
- Tixati
Wow, that was super informative. Thank you!
All of you commenting have been so much nicer than everyone on the tech pages. I don’t even go there because everyone is all “Linux is God, if you don’t understand everything about it why are you even on lemmy lolololol” and I just want some building blocks to start my knowledge :)
A good example for metadata and privacy that might be applicable to you is photos. Phone cameras attach a ton of useful data to your photos, often including the exact gps coordinates where it was taken. Sharing those files directly with people could potentially leak your home address. Most online photo hosting services (Facebook, imgur, Instagram, Lemmy, etc) strip that data for you but that wouldn’t be the case if you directly emailed it to someone.
Nothing to be super paranoid about but it’s a great example of metadata leaking unintuitive information.
Metadata can include phone model, camera type (aperture, size, other camera stuff idk), gps location, owner’s name, date created, etc. This info can be used to identify you and fingerprint you.
Ok, so I do know about all this, but I guess I never knew this was what it was called
An incredibly generic answer is that metadata is just “data about data”. In the given example, the photo was the data, so time taken, location, phone model, etc is all data about the picture, i.e. metadata. The same can be true of any kind of data. If you’re used to windows file extensions you could even think of those as metadata. “.txt” doesn’t change the contents of a file, but it does tell you that it’s text.
When you take the picture, the picture is the data, the how, when and where of the action of taking the picture is the metadata. Same with other generated information.
Metadata is “data about data”, so if your post is the data, the author, when it was posted, which community it was posted in will count as it’s metadata.
Torrents are a way of distributing files between computers. Without going into the details, everyone who downloads also ends up being an uploader (known as seeders/seeding). Compared to “traditional” direct downloads this makes it both faster (as you can download different parts from multiple uploaders at the same time which makes things a bit more efficient), more resillient (as anyone who has a complete download (or partial enough that you can stitch a whole file from multiple sources) automatically adds one more source you need to get rid of if you want that file completely taken down), and cheaper to run (as you don’t need to pay for a central host everyone must download from)
Metadata is easily said as data about data.
You download ‘file.torrent’
Metadata contains what’s inside file.torrent, it’s size, location (IP address), folders etc…
Any .torrent file is basically a text file that holds information (metadata) and it what you want to download, and who is uploading it/where they are/what files/file size…etc
So, in really simple terms, meta data is like a customs declaration slip on a package?
yeah, that sums it up pretty well.
