Student Life: The Student's Guide to File Sharing

File sharing is swarming with controversy these days. But regardless of whether you use it legally or not, here is a brief selection of tips and articles to get you up-and-running in no time.

Methods
There are several different downloading options available to you. The 3 most popular methods are BitTorrent, Direct Connect and One-Click Hosting; a guide detailing these various methods can be found here.

Privacy
A great little tool to help protect your downloading privacy, especially with BitTorrent, is PeerGuardian 2. Available for MacOS X and Linux, as well as Windows, this software helps block any connections to organisations that might want to spy on your downloading habits. While this doesn't completely guarantee your anonymity, it certainly helps. You can download the software here.

Another line of defence is use something called a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Basically, a VPN routes your downloads through another network which hides your IP address, which is a very effective way of hiding your tracks. For more details on exactly how this works, check out the Wikipedia article here. There are many different services available online but one of the free ones is called ItsHidden. The only disadvantage of VPNs is that it usually will make your donwloading or uploading slower than usual. You have to weigh up the cost of anonymity against bandwidth. However, with some paid services, the speeds are so high, this shouldn't be a problem.

Another method for keeping your BitTorrent activities hidden is to encrypt your BitTorrent traffic. A great article explaining how you can do this for the most popular BitTorrent clients can be found here.

One final method is to use BitBlinder. This works by passing your request for data encrypted through multiple peers whereby each peer in the chain only knows the IP address of the next person in the chain instead of the original downloader or uploader.

So instead of this:



you have this:



You can download this software here.

ISPs
Something else that is very important to consider is your Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you are living on campus, this should not be an issue but off-campus, you need to look very carefully at ISPs if you are planning on downloading. As well as checking the obvious things, such as connection speeds, you also need to check out each provider's Fair Usage Policy (FUP). Some providers claim to offer you unlimited downloads when in actual fact, this is not true and you are limited by how much you can download each month. Other providers don't let you download large quantities during peak times. This is something you should definitely watch out for and consider so that you can find the right deal for you.

That concludes this guide. I hope you find the above information of some use.

UPDATE - Changes to Tesco Coupon Policy

Unfortunately, I have some bad news regarding the loophole in the Tesco Coupon Policy that I posted about in August here.

As of 2nd October, they will only accept coupons being redeemed against the correct item being promoted. This is going to be a 4-week trial before the final policy is made but it looks unlikely that the loophole will still be usable. This is sad news but I hope you had fun exploiting it to save money while it lasted.

You can read more about this news here.

Free Stuff - Cinema Tickets

Want to go and see a movie but can't spare the money on a student budget? Sign up to these sites and you will sometimes be offered free tickets for screenings of films, some of which have not been released to the general public yet! It is definitely worth it. I have lost count of the number of free tickets I have got from these websites.

Earn Money - Join Quidco and earn as you shop

A great way to earn some cashback as you shop online is to use Quidco. All you have to do is sign up and then shop at a retailer using their link on the Quidco website. Different retailers offer different amounts of cashback but this is definitely a worthwhile service to sign up to. The only catch is that the website take anything under the first £5 you earn each year in order to keep the site running. Anything that you earn over £5 is yours to keep!

Some of the sites that offer this cashback are Play.com, Argos.co.uk, HMV, Tesco.com, GAME, Waterstones, iTunes and more!

Even better still, you can earn cash for doing free things, such as requesting SIM cards or taking part in a Lovefilm DVD trial.

To sign up, just click the link below:

http://www.quidco.com

Get Rewarded - For searching the web

A great little site where you can earn Swag Bucks when you use their search engine that aggregates results from Google and Ask. You can then spend these Swag Bucks in their online store to buy products, ranging from iTunes tracks to DVDs, iPhones and more.

You can also earn Swag Bucks through promotional codes, Facebook, shopping online and more.

I know, it does sound like a scam but it really isn't. See these Youtube videos for proof.

To sign up, just click the banner below and start earning!



A great tip: set Swagbucks as your homepage so that you never forget to use it.

Let me know how you get on.

Save Money - Take advantage of Tesco's coupon policy

Take advantage of a little known part of Tesco's coupon policy. Basically, you can use ONE of each coupon for a non-Tesco product for free, providing that Tesco stock it. You can save a ton of money this way.

However, some stores limit the vouchers in some way by, for example, only allowing you to pay for a certain proportion of your shopping with vouchers. Others have no limits so give it a try at your local store.

Here is a copy of the policy:

Earn Money - Apply for a Tesco Clubcard

I know that many of you will already have one of these but for those of you who don't and shop at Tesco regularly, it is well worth spending the time applying for one.

It is absolutely free and you will earn money each time you shop in the form of vouchers with your monthly statement. You can use these in-store as well as online at standard value or use one of the deals on the Tesco Clubcard website to increase their value up to 4 times! As well as this, you will also get some other money off vouchers that are exclusive to you.

You can apply for a tesco Clubcard here:

http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/clubcard/