How to download releases…27
Following on from the recently added FAQs and a few email requests, I’ve written some info summarising the most common ways people download releases. There’s a lot of discussion, and differing opinions out there when it comes to the best way of downloading releases. Many people have their own preferences, but lots of people don’t fully understand all the available options - with these posts I hope to change all that.
I will try and be unbiased as possible, and just give my honest opinion along with useful info for each of the main ways you can download a release posted here at ZeroSec. 
Main Download Options:
You can access this FAQ and all the others from the Extras menu, but I wanted to make a main site post for this one so we can hear your opinions, tips and experiences in the comments. As always if you see any problems, or think I’ve missed something drop an email to pandaking[AT]zerosec.ws, or just leave a comment in this post.
December 17th, 2009 at 12:19 am
just thought id let you know it says mediafire only allows one dl at a time but as far as i know it allows unlimited ive had 8 to 10 going at one time off MF at least.
December 17th, 2009 at 12:22 am
ThanX. Everyone starts as a noob. What you are doing has far reaching consequences. I wish I had spotted something like this back in those days.
(Then again, naah. Life would have been really boring then
The fun of finding something on your own is really indescribably awesome and even more awarding IMO. I’d rather be comfortably noob. 
)
December 17th, 2009 at 12:26 am
IMHO SABnzbd is by far the best Usenet downloading application checks par files for you and automatically extracts zip and rar archives.
http://www.sabnzbd.org
December 17th, 2009 at 12:31 am
Or you can use my rapidleech server to download your releases
And then download them to your PC
Fast Free Public Rapidleech Server
http://ileech.co.cc/
December 17th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Excellent and very useful article.
Thanks guys.
December 17th, 2009 at 12:46 am
I would add if downloading from torrents, try using Peer Guardian 2 in conjunction with what ever torrent prog your using.
http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
December 17th, 2009 at 12:50 am
Great stuff, just thought I’d let you know Vuze is banned from a lot of private trackers… ever since Azureus got bought by that company the client is shit. Stick to uTorrent or plain old BitTorrent
December 17th, 2009 at 12:57 am
PeerGuardian is now defunct, the developers have pretty much abandoned the project and have communicated this fact in their fourms. However, PeerBlock has picked up the source code, fixed the many bugs present, actually paid to sign the driver and is committed to continuing development. PeerBlock has been recognized by the phoenixlabs guys as a valid replacement to PG and confidently recommend it.
December 17th, 2009 at 1:00 am
mediafire.com (#62):
Free: No wait time / Max 200MB per file / Uncapped speed (I got ~50-60kB/s) / 1 download at a time.
Premium: No wait time / Max 2GB per file / Uncapped speed / Unlimited simultaneous downloads.
WTF? 1 download at a time being free user? Mediafire gives unlimited simultaneous downloads even for free users, that’s why I really love MF.
I hope you correct it.
December 17th, 2009 at 1:06 am
@ 1 (Juz) & 9 (joaco): Yep, my bad. I wrote most of this on very little sleep and when testing them all at once seemed to have missed that. Cheers and fixed!
@ 3 (Unknown): I’ll take a look at it, thanks.
@ 6 (Buzz) & 8 (JAT): Yep good plan, I forgot about that. I’ll add it shortly…
December 17th, 2009 at 2:58 am
someone forgot to add IRC to the list of places to dl stuff from.
December 17th, 2009 at 3:29 am
My ISP aliant.net gives me 300+ days retention that’s pretty good for an ISP.
December 17th, 2009 at 3:32 am
I was just about to post that. Have done that in the past, using mirc with dccassist. There are also softwares like xdcc catcher, that are supposed to make it a bit easier to work with. Currently mostly download from usenet, or bittorent if I can’t find there, what I’m looking for.
And of course the gnutella network still exists, with clients like frostwire. It does still work, but is infested with virusses and fakes.
Another p2p network is edonkey/kad, with clients like emule edonkey2000. Never really used it, but it seems there’s less junk.
December 17th, 2009 at 3:34 am
@Buzz / PandaKing
Actually you should (and everyone else) be using PEERBLOCK, that is the program that replaces PEERGUARDIAN2. Torrent downloaders - protect yourself (well to an extent anyways, nothing is foolproof!) - http://www.peerblock.com
Here is a direct quote from the PEERBLOCK FAQ:
>>>What is PeerBlock’s relationship with the old PeerGuardian program?
PeerBlock is actually based on the same code used to create PeerGuardian - specifically, the "PG2 RC1 Test3" Vista beta version. That code had a LOT of bugs in it, and hadn’t been updated for about two years. So I started up this PeerBlock project to fix all those things that’d been annoying me for so long. A bunch of other people decided to pitch in and help out, some with development, some with testing, and now we’re where we are today.
So compared with old PeerGuardian software, PeerBlock is much more stable, doesn’t require nearly so many hacks/workarounds to get working on Vista/Win7, and is actually under active development . . . so we can (and will!) actually respond to new bug reports or feature requests.
>>>Can I run PG2 and PeerBlock at the same time?
No! As PeerBlock and PG2 both operate the same way, and in fact share a lot of code, they could conflict with one another and cause all sorts of strange behavior (including Windows crashes). In fact the two programs should not allow themselves to run at the same time, to protect you from these sorts of potential problems.
>>>Is there any reason to leave PG2 installed on my system?
Only for nostalgia’s sake. After you have PeerBlock running well on your system, there really is no point to leaving PG2 installed. Just note that you’ll need to close PeerBlock before uninstalling PG2, due to some stuff we had to put in there to prevent PG2 from trying to run at the same time as PeerBlock.
December 17th, 2009 at 4:05 am
Avoid all IP blocking software that claims to block out the bad guys. The software itself is fine….they do what they are designed to do….block IPs.
The problem is the IP lists. Peer Guardians list blocks well over a billion IPs…..so that means the RIAA and MPAA is in control of over a billion IPs?
Secondly, the MPAA/RIAA or similar organizations can see the lists of blocked IPs in Peer Guardian or other IP blocking software. Because they can see the blocked IPs, one would assume that they would get new, non-blocked I.P.s to use.
Thirdly, a while ago emails from Media Defender or some similar company were leaked. In these emails contained many of the I.P.s that Media Defender used. Someone compared those I.P.s to the list of Peer Guardian 2. Know what they found? Very few of the I.P.s were actually blocked. Most were not blocked by PG2 which makes PG2 useless.
I am sure PG added those I.P.s to the list but I am also sure they company replaced those I.P.s with new ones. Not only that but in those emails they found that Media Defender was just laughing at the PG2 block list.
In short: PG2 and other I.P. blocking software is useless for blocking out people monitoring the swarms. I am sure people can discover which I.P.s are POISONING the swarms in torrents, but there is NO way to discover who is simply MONITORING the swarm in torrents since ANYONE can monitor the swarm of a torrent.
PG2 and other I.P. blocking software= False Sense Of Security.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:08 am
It appears that depositfiles also allows more than 1 file at a time for free users. I’m currently downloading two, averaging about 100 kB/s each.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:15 am
@16. Interestingly, when I tried to start a third download, depositfiles said you are only allowed one at a time to the same IP address. Looks like it can’t count.
December 17th, 2009 at 7:04 am
@ 15. LadiesMan217
so how can i download a torrent without the "authorities" knowing?
or is it just impossible?
ive been told download from file hosts and its annonymous,
unlike a torrent were the swarm can keep track of me or sombody keeps track of me.
December 17th, 2009 at 8:26 am
I am so sad that my favorite MegaShares wasn’t included in the file hosts list :/ Other than that, thx for the article
December 17th, 2009 at 8:38 am
@ 14 (Jessica Nerd Girl): Ahh thx for the heads up, as to PG2, I only suggested it because I used to recommend it to friends who used p2p, used to be a handy little prog, but if it’s been surpassed by something else, nice to know:D
December 17th, 2009 at 11:05 am
There is a limit of 5gb a day for Prem users on Rapidshare. Their download manager only allows 5 downloads at a time, I have tried to change it but without any success.
Used Megaupload last month and found it to be faster than Rapid, which I am using this month. They, mega, also have unlimited download amounts, which is handy when a game is 5gb+.
More files seem to be easily available on Rapid than Mega which is why I decided to try it this month.
December 17th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
File Hosts (free):
Rapidshare - I haven’t gotten a download speed over 130K/s in a long time.
Hotfile - Normally starts out around 70-100K/s, but usually drops to around 50K/s fairly quickly. Depends on the time of day…
Usenet:
Another good search site is;
http://nzbindex.nl/
Defaults to Dutch, but has an option to switch to English. Seems to have a slightly longer retention than Binsearch, also indexes some groups that most others (besides Binsearch) don’t.
December 17th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
FTP - P2L IS NOT THE ONLY WAY…. there is a search engine called NAPALM,
http://www.searchftps.com/indexer/search.aspx
Granted it may not be as current for listing but still very usefull.
As well there is FTP channels on mIRC for those who know how to use mIRC, which btw is also very easy to learn, in these channels they will post "free lists" and for those who post ftps to the channel can get axx to the "toplist" channel.
Plus there are many warez forums out there with ftp sections for members to post in. Allthough many warez sites can be malicious, forums are generally safe.
For those who like mIRC, here is a great mIRC search engine:
http://www.packetfind.com/
Just my opinion, hosting sites such as rapidshare, hotfile etc, are garbage, and becomming hotspots for law enforcement, warez was not meant to be paid for, for those of us who been around since the early days of warez remember the "FREEDOM"
December 18th, 2009 at 1:03 am
metaal mike perth:
Not sure about other ways to download as I have only used torrents. But there is no safe way to download a torrent without the possibility that the MPAA/RIAA or other company might catch you. They could be monitoring any torrent at any time. Them monitoring older movies/shows/apps/games etc. is less likely but still possible. I am sure they don’t care about monitoring the movie The Blob anymore but movies like Star Wars is a different story.
The only way to be 100% safe is to not download copyrighted material at all. Either that or just accept that you might get caught and just take that chance. I have been torrenting for years…..movies old and new, music old and new, etc. and have never had a warning email or anything. I guess I have been lucky.
December 18th, 2009 at 4:30 am
cheers LadiesMan217.
my friends and myself hav had some warnings even tho we downloaded the torrents from "trusted" users on TPB.
it is a risk i spose.
thanx.
December 19th, 2009 at 7:27 am
@ 25 (metaal mike perth): You do know how torrent work, right? Just because the torrent was added to the site by a trusted user (meaning the torrent is really what it says it is, and doesn’t have viruses), doesn’t mean everyone you connect to isn’t (MP|RI)AA.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:06 pm
what about irc?