Pirate Bay's new censorship-dodging browser 'not secure'

[Katzenfreund]

The new browser was released on Saturday, the notorious file-sharing site's 10th anniversary.

The Pirate Bay said: "Do you know any people who can't access TPB or other torrent sites because they are blocked? Recommend PirateBrowser to them. It's a simple one-click browser that circumvents censorship and blockades and makes the site instantly available and accessible."

PirateBrowser, features a bunch of torrent sites already bookmarked, natch – is based on Firefox Portable and comes bundled with proxy-management toolset Foxyproxy and the Tor client Vidalia.

The Pirate Bay has released a bundle of add-ons to help people search for and access bits of the internet that governments and ISPs have locked away. The only hitch is: despite the fact that it contains a Tor client, security experts have said that it doesn't completely anonymise internet traffic.

This has raised concerns about users' security.

In its FAQ, The Pirate Bay says:
Does it [allow me to] surf the net anonymously?

No, while it uses Tor network, which is designed for anonymous surfing, this browser is intended just to circumvent censorship — to remove limits on accessing websites your government doesn't want you to know about.

If you are looking for something more secure you may want to try a VPN like PrivacyIO.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/12/pirate_bay_releases_new_privacyminded_browser/

Well, it seems to me they only did half a job. Would it have been too difficult to make it safe for torrents?

 

[bum4evr]

Every day thousands of people new to the warez scene try and figure out how it all works - and they are met with fake download buttons that will try to install Ilivid and other programs packed full of viruses, trojans and malware, they are met with fake warez sites that promise thousands of free movies and games if you just give them your credit card info and pay a $2 trial fee, and anyone who does not know any better will discover their card gets charged a lot more then $2 for access to nothing more then a search engine. We have come to expect this type of behavior from filehosts, but Pirate Bay does the exact same thing on their site, their ads are targeted at people new to the warez scene who don't know any better and who will click on a big button that says DOWNLOAD or PLAY.

So would I trust a browser from a site that tries to make money in any way possible and takes advantage of people who are new to warez? No. I am sure they want to make it appear that they want to help the warez community and "down with the man" and all that crap - but the truth is, they have their own agenda and its called MONEY so I don't trust them a bit and I am sure this "browser" has some sneaky tricks that come with it, to direct people to more of their ads or to their site, so more people who are new to warez get caught up in them, and pirate bay makes more money.

 

[chrasna]

I install and trust anything, as long as they say "you can trust me"

-Chris

 

[Katzenfreund]

In theory, this browser is a good idea and has the potential of success. But it started on the wrong foot. It incorporated a facility for bypassing government restrictions, but its anonymiser is weak and won’t protect effectively against detection. This attracted negative criticism, though the browser is not worse than any other out of the box, in fact it’s a little better.

There are many free anonymising tools and services. They could incorporate one in a new version of the browser. It would also be practical to incorporate a simple torrent client for directly downloading the torrent content without needing another tool.

With these two additions, I believe the browser can succeed.

As for catching malware thru torrents, this is independent of the browser used and depends on the torrent content. What they could do though, is incorporate direct access to a scanning facility for malware.

Pirate Cat agrees.