All posts tagged privacy

Introducing µTorrent Web for iPhone

by smorris on June 14, 2010 in Announcements with 29 Comments

In our ever-connected world, users want the ability to control their torrents on the go anytime, anywhere. So, in a continued effort to make our products more accessible we are introducing µTorrent Web for iPhone. While µTorrent Web is currently only available as part of our experimental Project Falcon software, we continue to fill out the feature set prior to a large-scale rollout. With today’s introduction, users can now control their torrents from any computer or iPhone via their web browser.

In essence, µTorrent Web for iPhone is a mobile website that allows users to remotely access and control the µTorrent client that is installed on their computer. Before users can employ it on their iPhones they will need to make sure that they have the latest µTorrent client from Project Falcon installed on their computers, which can be found here: https://web.utorrent.com/. (The site also provides detailed instructions about how to download the client and setup remote access.)

After installing the software on a laptop or desktop computer and enabling µTorrent Web remote access, users should point their iPhone web browser to http://web.utorrent.com. At that point, they will be prompted to input their username and password and choose if they want to bookmark the application and add it to their home screen. In doing so, they will add an icon to their iPhone similar to if they had downloaded an app from the App Store. In addition to bookmarking the page, it is also recommended that users check “stay signed in” to ensure quick and easy accessibility in the future.

It is also worth noting that the mobile version offers the same privacy and zero-configuration secure web-access to uTorrent that users would get if you were signing on remotely via a PC. So, users can rest assured that no information about their µTorrent usage is ever exposed to BitTorrent Inc. or any third parties. (Read more about our privacy architecture.)

We are very excited about giving users remote access via their iPhones, and believe this is an important function to continue to make the µTorrent user experience even better.

- Simon -

µTorrent Web Now in Public Beta

by smorris on May 21, 2010 in Announcements with 22 Comments

This January we launched Project Falcon, which introduced on-demand streaming and a secure web access feature called µTorrent Web. The initial release of µTorrent Web was invitation only. Today, we are removing the invitation system for µTorrent Web, and that feature is now in public beta. Users interested in trying the product can download it here.

 

As mentioned, Project Falcon introduces two new capabilities to µTorrent. First, we are creating a more immediate user experience by allowing users to start to play back or stream content before it has finished downloading. This moves BitTorrent towards more of the point-click-watch experience that users have come to expect for Internet media. In order to preserve the efficiency of BitTorrent the majority of the pieces of a file are still downloaded randomly, but it is now configured so that a few pieces download in order and are sent to the player – allowing users to start playback of content much more quickly.

 

Also, for the first time we are opening up our µTorrent Web feature, which enables zero-configuration secure web-access to your µTorrent client. It consists of a simple web service that allows users to manage their torrent clients from anywhere on the Internet. Now it is easy to access your client through the web by just setting up a username and password. The service is designed with privacy in mind, so users can be certain that there is no personal information about their BitTorrent usage that is ever exposed to us or any third parties. (Read more about our privacy architecture.)

 

Project Falcon is one of several projects being incubated in µTorrent Labs, which we unveiled last week. µTorrent Labs is a way for us to share early versions of products with users and solicit feedback. Check out our other projects here.

-Simon-

Distributed Design: Architecting for User Privacy

by smorris on May 19, 2010 in Other with 12 Comments

User privacy has emerged as a red-hot topic in the news lately. Of course, users have long had questions about their privacy as more and more of information about them traverses the Internet, but with the proliferation of social networking tools that broaden how far information travels, users are understandably becoming more nervous.

There is something about a distributed architecture like BitTorrent which makes for a fundamentally different starting point – something we might call “distributed design”. Although some P2P networks have had their own well-publicized privacy problems, BitTorrent is designed in such a way that there are significantly fewer privacy concerns. This is a theme we hope to continue.

Most web-based apps start out with a highly centralized view of the world. That is to say they assume that the app and all its data are going to live on a central server and scale up to millions of users simply by adding more and more racks of servers doing basically the same thing. The data itself is considered a valuable “asset”, and giant new companies are evolving around the central question of how best to exploit it without upsetting users too much. Publicity is assumed, and privacy is just “to be provided for”.

Our approach to distributed design assumes that as much functionality and data are pushed out to the edge as possible. In general this leads to a somewhat higher investment to build the apps, but much lower operating costs. With a good distributed design, most services and data reside on end users’ computers while only a few core services and the bare minimum of the data are ever centralized. Privacy is assumed and publicity is provided for.

When we decided to build uTorrent Web, a super-simple way for users to manage their torrent clients through a browser from anywhere on the Internet, we started with a distributed design philosophy. To enable uTorrent Web, through a careful distributed design, the security starts at your browser where all private data is encrypted and it stays fully encrypted through our servers all the way to your client where data is finally unencrypted. Our servers don’t handle anything private about your client – all they see are your user-name and your IP address. There are many good reasons for this distributed design approach where as much functionality and data as possible are pushed to the edge:

  • - Using distributed resources places the control in the hands of users, not some faceless corporation. Almost everything is private and users control what to reveal rather than what to hide.
  • - Distributed resources are paid for by the consumer, not the application provider. Sharing the operating costs for the app just makes good economic sense.
  • - Distributed resources scale organically with demand – making capacity planning exercises far less critical.
  • - A distributed design reduces the burden to build ultra-high-security into the server infrastructure – if you invest to make the app itself secure, then the security of the infrastructure matters far less (it still matters of course… but less so).

This final point is especially critical when it comes to planning for large-scale growth. Relying on a combination of a “trust me” public position and saying “sorry” when something goes wrongseems like a poor business design. Perhaps it is far better to design for a less worrying failure scenario? With uTorrent Web, in the worst case scenario, even if privacy is compromised and data is exposed, there is nothing in the servers to be discovered.

Utilizing a distributed design philosophy is a way for BitTorrent to do more with less. It is also a radically different way to build a business. Find out more about our uTorrent Web as part of our Falcon project here.

- Simon -