Non-private torrents

Dear users,

There has been an old issue with jpopsuki torrents which has recently reared its head again.

A significant number of early torrent files uploaded to jpopsuki lack the private flag. Currently, the upload procedure automatically adds this flag and other details if they are missing. In the past, however, this was not automatic. We do not have a way of ameliorating this issue in an automated fashion due to a lack of access to the torrent database on part of staff.

Absent the private flag, a torrent client with DHT feature supported and enabled will publish the torrent's infohash to the DHT network. In this manner the torrent becomes effectively a public one which can allow participation of clients not registered with jpopsuki tracker.

Since jpopsuki is a ratio-counting private tracker the participation of unregistered clients in its swarms will cause at least the following problems:

1. it skews the tracker's statistics in unexpected ways;

2. it engages the upload bandwidth of registered clients in an unpredictable manner;

3. it adds potential security and privacy risks to torrent file sharing.

Considering these, and issues we probably have not thought of yet, we ask of you to take the following actions at your own convenience:

1. check your loaded torrents from jpopsuki for cases you can find where the private flag on a torrent is missing;

2. explicitly disable DHT in your client, or disable DHT per-torrent only for jpopsuki torrents if your client allows this;

3. report torrents based on torrent files that you notice miss the private flag, whether or not you have them loaded in your client;

4. if you notice such report on any given torrent and you have the files for that torrent locally, re-create that torrent file with private flag set, upload it using Add Format feature in the same group as the reported torrent, and report the old torrent again for it to be removed.

As you can tell from (4), this is an opportunity for you to increase your upload volume and uploaded torrent count using files that are already provided by other users to you. It is also a helpful service to jpopsuki's general health as a private tracker.

Thank you!