Visibility
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Limiting the visibility of a swarm
OneSwarm allows users to specify which parties that can see that the user is downloading/sharing a specific swarm.
Default groups
Public Internet
If a swarm has Public Internet visibility it will be downloaded using normal BitTorrent. This means that it is possible for third parties to monitor the swarm and tie downloading and seeding to a specific IP.
All Friends
If a swarm has All Friends visibility it means that it will be downloaded using the OneSwarm friend-to-friend network. The fact that you are downloading the swarm will be visible to your friends but not to limited friends or anyone else. It is very hard for external parties to monitor who is downloading what (see the attacks section in the paper). IP-addresses and other identifying information get rewritten at each friend hop hiding the original source and destination of content.
Additional groups
OneSwarm also allows users to specify per-swarm per-user visibility. Users can create custom friend groups to get fine-grained control over the visibility of particular swarms. When adding custom visibility to a swarm the following occurs:
- The swarm is only included in file lists sent to friends that have permission to see the swarm.
- Friends that download the swarm will by default set the visibility to only the one friend that was source of the data.
- It is no longer possible to find the swarm using text search
Note: There are subtle attacks that allow directly connected friends to query whether your have a specific swarm if they know the swarm hash. Don’t rely on limited visibility for content that is sensitive. See attacks section in the paper for more information.
