Post by tomysshadow on Mar 27, 2023 4:05:26 GMT
Preface
Today, I'm going to spill the beans. I'm going to tell you how to find rare files online.
You see, us lost media researchers have a difficult job. It can be hard to tell if a file is truly lost, or already exists online in an obscure place that Google won't dare to go. This has been in the works for a long time: you see, a couple years ago, I read a Lost Media Wiki article called Disney Game Downloads. It was about a series of PC games that you could download online, which had become lost according to the article. However, by using the tricks I'm sharing with you today, I was able to recover all but one of the lost Disney Game Download games on obscure, difficult to find websites. That became the impetus for me to write up this resource.
The goal of this guide is to be excruciatingly comprehensive, to ensure that no stone is unturned when verifying that your lost media is actually lost. I'm going to start with the obvious tips and progressively get into the smaller and lesser known. I'll explain the different places on the internet where you should look for files, and almost anything that doesn't involve reaching out to an actual person and asking them a question is fair game for inclusion. One exception is that I want this guide to be something anyone can use, so I'm not going to be talking about exclusive clubs like private trackers: if you have access, you already know about them, and if you don't, then you're probably not getting in.
Note: I didn't realize until after I wrote this up that Binzy had already written a forum post with a fairly similar premise several years ago. This one is a great deal more in-depth though, so I still thought it was worth sharing.
Important Disclaimers
USE THIS GUIDE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR USE OF THIS INFORMATION.
The internet changes over time, so this guide is bound to become dated eventually. The information in this guide is accurate as of March 2023. If you notice any mistake feel free to comment on it and I'll make a note of it. This is not a piracy guide: this guide is intended so you can be thorough in your research and conclude, for certain, that the media you are writing about is actually not online anywhere.
Searching the web for rare files can be dangerous, so you should take precautions against malware and scams.
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: You should NEVER give out your credit card information online unless you are DEAD CERTAIN that the website you are on is to be trusted with that information. The majority of the websites on this list are free and will NEVER ask for payment information: if they do, it's a scam. The services on this list that genuinely require payment to use will be annotated with a dollar sign ($) symbol in the title.
Even in the event that you're so desperate to find something that you're willing to lose $20 on it to test its authenticity, do NOT give out your credit card information. Once you've given out those details, a fraudulent website can draw any amount of money they want from that card, regardless of their asking price. Instead, use one of the following options:
The key takeaway is this: never give out your personal credit card information to a website you don't already trust.
Search Engines
The basics. In spite of my goal to be "excruciatingly comprehensive," I'm not going to list every search engine because, well, this is beginner stuff and they mostly give similar results, but the key takeaway here is that it may be worth trying more than just one.
Google
You don't need me to tell you about Google, right? I mean, everyone already knows. Well, this is still the best place to start. In case you've just awoken from a 20 year coma, Google is a search engine that you type keywords into and it finds websites based on those keywords. It can't search some social media sites (Facebook and Twitter content usually won't be brought up by Google) but it's still useful for searching most of the web.
You can surround phrases "in quotes" to only search for exact spelling or for multiple words that must be used in sequence (protip: you can search for files in open directories by typing the expected filename along with "index of" in quotes.) You can use the minus (-) sign in front of a word to exclude irrelevant results. You can also use site: to limit results to a particular website, like site:lostmediawiki.com to only include LMW articles in your Google search.
My experience is that Google is still pretty darn good for lost media hunting. However, this is just the baseline: we can do better.
Google as a whole has changed a lot over the years, but their homepage has changed very little.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a search engine with a focus on privacy. However, for the purposes of this guide I care purely about quality of results, and my experience with DuckDuckGo is that it rarely finds stuff that Google cannot. There may be a few websites that are seemingly blacklisted on Google and not on DuckDuckGo but they are rarely useful. I only usually go to this one if I'm desperate.
Either way, usage is pretty similar to Google of course. Just type in the textbox and go.
Yandex
Yandex might be the most underrated search engine for lost media hunting, so long as you don't mind that it's of Russian origin. It tends to pull up pretty different results from Google and I've used it to find sources I otherwise would've never stumbled across on multiple occasions.
While this is impossible to verify, I feel like Yandex's blacklist is a lot smaller than Google's, which is a double edged sword. Exercise some caution, and you'll be fine (see the disclaimer at the start of this guide.)
Archive.org
I don't need to explain to anyone here what Wayback Machine is (which could merit its own entire guide to explain its nuances,) but there's more to Archive.org than just Wayback Machine. It's also a good idea to check Archive.org's libraries of documents, images, sound, videos and software. You may not know that regular users can upload files to Archive.org, categorizing them with publicly searchable titles, tags and descriptions.
When you're searching for something, you should be sure to run a search on Archive.org in addition to Google.
Everyone uses Wayback Machine, but sometimes it's worth scrolling down to the community collections.
Using Free Download Manager With Archive.org
A download manager is an application that downloads files with better speed and consistency than a browser. It accomplishes this by reconnecting automatically if your connection drops and downloading multiple parts of the file at a time.
There are lots of download managers out there, and they're generally useful on the web. However, I bring this up now because Archive.org has a bit of a reputation for slow speeds and connection drops. You can't really complain, it's free for anyone to access and supported by donations. However, I've regularly seen my download speed on Archive.org increase dramatically while using a download manager, and this is especially relevant because many files on Archive.org are quite large.
Personally, I would recommend Free Download Manager. To use it with Archive.org, right click on the link to the file you want to download, and click Copy Link Address. Then, open Free Download Manager and hit the blue plus (+) sign at the upper left. The link on the clipboard is filled in by default, so just hit the Download button, sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that a disconnection won't disrupt your download progress.
Click the button plus (+) sign at the upper left to add a new download to Free Download Manager.
There is also an optional browser extension for Free Download Manager which replaces the download functionality of your web browser. It can be configured to ignore particular websites or ignore files under a certain file size.
YouTube Video Finder
This is by no means 100% reliable: it's mostly just a wrapper on top of Archive.org. Nonetheless, YouTube Video Finder is a neat little utility that can be helpful. Given a Video ID, it'll search various different archives for YouTube videos, and help with recovering videos that have been deleted or made private. If you have the link to a dead YouTube video, try running the Video ID through this tool and see if it finds anything.
Filelockers
A filelocker is a website specifically designed to host user files. There are far too many to list, but some of them are particularly noteworthy so I'll mention them here.
4shared
4shared is the world's largest filelocker and has been around since 2005. What makes 4shared interesting and worthy of inclusion on this list - aside from the fact it's the world's largest filelocker - is that it is searchable. On 4shared's homepage is a search bar you can use to search for files by filename.
Although this statistic may make 4shared sound like a treasure trove, my personal experience is that being the world's largest equates to quantity over quality: I rarely find what I'm looking for on 4shared, and most of the time its search engine just gives you a bunch of garbage. So I wouldn't spend too long there, but once in a blue moon you do find what you want there, and when that happens it's usually on the first page of results.
4shared has a paid plan, but you're not required to use it to download files. You can use 4shared completely free, with the caveat that it incurs a 20 second wait time before downloading a file. Personally, that's a small price to pay for me since I rarely use 4shared anyway. 4shared deletes accounts after 90 days of inactivity, so if you find a file you want on there, download it before it disappears.
MEGA
MEGA is a filelocker which, like the majority of filelockers (and unlike 4shared) is not searchable. Indeed, the main selling point of MEGA is the privacy it offers uploaders. Files uploaded on MEGA are stored encrypted, so not even MEGA themselves can see them unless you share a public link.
MEGA was created by Kim Dotcom as a successor of sorts to Megaupload, a filelocker that shut down in the 2000s. Even though MEGA can't be searched, the ability to share MEGA links means you're likely to run across such links being shared around. My personal experience is that MEGA links usually stay online - not to say they never get deleted.
Using MEGASync
While it is entirely possible to use MEGA in a browser alone, if you're not using MEGASync you are missing out. MEGASync is a desktop application that syncs files between MEGA and a folder on your computer, in a similar fashion to Dropbox. While that is handy, one of the perks of using it is faster download speeds. It's a free download, so I recommend having it for when you come across MEGA links in your online travels.
Avoiding Paywalls
Sometimes for free users MEGA will prevent you from downloading more files for eight hours, and only lets you resume after this period.
If you're in a hurry, and you have a VPN (which you should - we'll discuss that more and which one you should use in the Peer To Peer chapter,) you can circumvent this measure by opening the link in a new private window (such as Google Chrome's Incognito Mode) and changing your VPN server to a different country, and there's not much that MEGA can do to detect this.
However, MEGA's cheapest paid plan comes with 2 TB of space which is not unsubstantial, so unlike a lot of similar sites I actually recommend their paid plan because it has a lot of nice features, in addition to removing the eight hour wait time. Check it out for the next time you run into MEGA online.
MediaFire
MediaFire is another filelocker, founded in 2006 and based in Texas. It is not searchable - at least by official means. However, there does exist an unofficial search engine for MediaFire, namely MediaFireTrend. It scrapes the web for MediaFire links that people have publicly shared on forums and whatnot. This becomes yet another place to check for files.
MediaFire often deletes old files, although I have been surprised before. They've been in the business for a long time, so it's unlikely they'll go away completely any time soon.
Beating The "Dangerous File Blocked" Message
Sometimes MediaFire won't allow you to download a file because it triggered its virus scanner. You should obviously be wary of any files the virus scanner claims is dangerous, but if you want to download them anyway to test them in a Virtual Machine, there is a trick to get around this.
In order to download a blocked file, you'll need a free MediaFire account. The idea here is to import the file to your own MediaFire account. Then, because MediaFire always lets you download files from your own account, you can download the file in spite of the warning.
Ulozto
Ulozto is a Czech-based filelocker which, in my opinion, is a true hidden gem. Like 4shared, Ulozto is searchable by filename. They have a bit of a reputation for being reliable and rarely deleting files. For instance, before O Parádivé Sally (a.k.a. Clockman) made its YouTube appearance, it had previously been sitting on Ulozto since 2014. Ulozto is also the origin of all the currently found episodes of Slniečko. It's not just videos either: images, sound, and software can all be found on Ulozto. Needless to say, it's definitely worth checking for rare files on Ulozto.
Ulozto has a paid plan, with the only difference being faster download speed. Their "slow" download speed isn't that bad, and other than that, it can be used entirely for free, even without an account.
Update December 1, 2023: Ulozto has removed its public search feature. I've learned that Zálohuj.si has become the popular alternative, although I've not yet had a chance to use it myself.
Chomikuj.pl ($)
Chomikuj.pl is a Polish-based filelocker which is, again, searchable by filename - however, it has a few extra rules. Searching requires an account, which is free. When you create an account, you are given 1000 credits. Downloading files costs credits. Eventually you will run out, at which point you can still search, but to download a file you have to pay for more. This means you have to be a bit selective about which files you choose to download on Chomikuj.pl, as you might end up wasting credits on a file that wasn't actually the one you were after.
My experience with Chomikuj.pl is that it occasionally has good stuff but it also has a lot of garbage and scams. It's worthwhile to check, but the amount of sifting you have to do and the credit system means I treat this as more of a last resort option.
Baidu Wangpan
Baidu is a Chinese company which is primarily a search engine, but also offers other products, similar to Google. For our purposes, we're mainly interested in Baidu Wangpan, their Google Drive equivalent. You may occasionally run across links to files on Baidu Wangpan that can't be found anywhere else.
To download files from Baidu Wangpan, you need an account. That wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, except that signing up requires having a Chinese phone number. That means Baidu Wangpan downloads are effectively locked to Chinese residents only.
Now, in actual reality, it's impossible to truly lock a file to a geo-restricted region - there are always ways around it, and it is only ever a matter of time before they leak to the rest of the world. Assuming you don't have a Chinese friend, however, you'll likely have to do some research to determine the current methods of dealing with Baidu Wangpan in other countries, as this is an ever changing space.
Baidu Net Disk App
In the past, the main method of downloading from Baidu Wangpan outside of China was to use the Baidu Net Disk app. Baidu Net Disk was a client software, for Windows and mobile devices, that you could install to download files from Baidu Wangpan without using a browser. People would often share their logins and passwords to Baidu Wangpan for foreigners to use, which you could find by Googling around. Then you could use these to log in via Baidu Net Disk, and download a Baidu Wangpan link through it.
Unfortunately, this is no longer really viable with the addition of a check to the Baidu Net Disk app, which requires the account creator to scan a QR Code with their phone to login on a new device.
OneLeaf (Baidu Wangpan Downloaders)
Most of this guide has been subject to change, but this part is extremely so, as I wouldn't be surprised if it's gone by the end of the year. However, currently there exists an easy method to download from Baidu Wangpan, in the form of OneLeaf. The usage is simple: paste the link you want to download in the first box (which will be shortened to an ID,) and the password if the file is passworded (leave blank otherwise,) then click Submit.
However, who knows how long it will be before whatever exploit abused by OneLeaf is patched by Baidu, or it disappears due to lack of funding. In the past, several such Baidu Wangpan downloaders have existed, and then disappeared, such as pan.naifei.cc or KinhDown to name a couple. So this is an evolving field, and there is always the possibility that no easy option currently exists. You will likely have to do your own research to discover the current methods, if any. Be especially wary of dangerous websites making false claims here.
Other Filelockers
There exist more filelockers out there, but most of them are pretty straightforward and not particularly remarkable. You'll occasionally run across links to them, which you can try, and sometimes they'll work, sometimes they won't. There is no point in listing more out here, as I've already mentioned all the publicly searchable or tricky to use ones that I know of.
FTP Search
FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is an internet protocol similar to HTTP. The key difference is that, unlike HTTP servers which are navigated via webpages, FTP servers are navigated via folders - similar to navigating your own computer's files. This makes FTP servers an ideal place to store files online. FTP servers are typically passworded, but some allow for public access, and there exist search engines for these public FTP servers.
FTP Clients
Although web browsers used to have integrated support for FTP, it has been removed from all the major browsers over time. These days, you'll need an FTP client instead. The good news is, if you've downloaded Free Download Manager from before, it supports downloading files over FTP. You can use it the same way with FTP links that you would with any other link.
However, one of the benefits of FTP is being able to explore around the folder in which the file you found was located, to look for other similar files. Free Download Manager doesn't have the ability to do this, so if you want this ability, I recommend WinSCP: a free client which supports FTP in addition to a few other protocols (including the SCP - or Secure Copy Protocol - it's originally named after, but SCP is largely obsolete in the modern day.)
When WinSCP is your default FTP client, you'll be asked to login upon clicking FTP links. If the FTP server is anonymous - like the ones you'll find via FTP search - just type "anonymous" as the username and hit OK. Sometimes FTP search will bring up servers that aren't online anymore, in which case it will usually time out or fail to login when you try to connect.
When facing the login dialog, try logging in anonymously.
Try it right now, by clicking this link to connect to the official GNU FTP in WinSCP: ftp.gnu.org
The left panel shows the files on your computer, and the right panel shows the files on the FTP server. You can click and drag files from the right panel to the left panel to download them to your computer.
Mamont
Mamont is the world's largest FTP search engine. Using it is straightforward: type in a filename you want to find. The search will pull up all the FTP URLs containing that name that it knows of. Simply click on a link to open it in your FTP client.
Note that the search does not take file contents into account like Google does, only the URL. There aren't many options for sorting, but you can search by the country of the FTP server.
NAPALM
NAPALM is another popular FTP search engine, which sometimes brings up different results to Mamont. Usage is similar: type in the filename you want to find. Clicking Download brings you to a download page. The Direct Link button opens your FTP client. File contents are not searched.
NAPALM also has options to sort by date and file size, which is nice if you know the approximate size of the file you're looking for.
Peer To Peer (P2P)
Up to this point, everything I've talked about involves a direct download, where you download a file from a central server. Peer-to-peer (or P2P for short) is a method of sharing files which is decentralized, and doesn't depend on a single central server. Instead, peer-to-peer requires using a client, which is a program on your computer that downloads the file instead of your web browser. Anyone who downloads the file also uploads the file for others to download from them. The people downloading the file are called peers, and the people uploading it are called seeds.
It's good etiquette to seed - that is, upload - a file for a good length of time after downloading it over peer-to-peer, which is done automatically by simply leaving the client open, and many networks reward you with faster download speeds for doing so. The people who download the file without uploading it are called leechers. Leeching is frowned upon.
I will mainly be covering three peer-to-peer clients: BiglyBT for the BitTorrent network, eMule for the eD2K network, and Shareaza for the Gnutella and Gnutella2 networks. Technically, Shareaza is capable of handling all these networks by itself, but BiglyBT and eMule allow a greater level of customization for their particular protocols which will allow us to increase our chances of getting a download, so I recommend having all three.
Choosing a VPN
In many parts of the world, if your ISP knows you're using peer-to-peer, they are required by law to send you a not-so-friendly, threatening letter about potential charges you could face, even for seemingly innocuous things. This is possible because it's easy for them to spy on which files you are downloading over peer-to-peer. Because of this open nature of peer-to-peer, I strongly recommend getting a VPN. In recent years, VPNs have gained a bit of a bad reputation because of their marketing tactics, but I promise you that this is one area in which you definitely want one. However, you should choose which VPN you use carefully, for the reasons I'll explain.
So, what is a VPN, exactly? The ads would have you believe that VPNs are a "security magic wand" that can automatically protect you from any kind of virus, phishing and online tracking. This is misleading, at best. A VPN, by itself, does none of those things. The reason that companies like NordVPN can claim those features is because they bundle other software alongside their VPN, which add additional security measures. A VPN by itself, however, can't protect you from even the most basic phishing attack, it doesn't employ any malware scan and it doesn't do anything to your browser cookies. In the worst case scenario, some VPNs like Hotspot Shield even inject their own analytics with their own tracking into every page you visit.
So then, what does a VPN actually do? It's quite simple: whenever you download a file, the file is actually downloaded by the VPN service, on your behalf. Then, the file they downloaded is transferred, in encrypted form, to your computer, which decrypts it. If you, say, visit a website with a file on it, there is no way for the website owner to see that you downloaded the file from that website, because the VPN service downloaded it for you, on your behalf. Only the VPN service knows that you are the one who originally requested it, masking your identity.
While this does indeed mean that your ISP can't see which files you are downloading, it also means that you are entrusting the VPN service with that information instead. As such, you should be careful when deciding which VPN to use. Although it should not be cause for alarm if you use one, I would recommend against using the major, mainstream VPNs like NordVPN or Surfshark, which in the past have used shady tactics like fake review scores to promote themselves.
To make matters more complicated, for the purposes of connecting to peer-to-peer, you will want a VPN that supports port forwarding. This feature is not necessarily a given for any VPN, and some of them do support it but with a catch. Here are four VPNs that I recommend which support port forwarding.
Mullvad ($)
Mullvad is the VPN I would probably recommend to new users nowadays. It supports port forwarding out of the box. However, it does not have automatic payments, so you'll have to renew your subscription whenever it expires. You can get a 10% discount by paying with Bitcoin.
Update May 29, 2023: Mullvad has removed support for port forwarding, so you'll want to use one of the other VPNs mentioned below instead.
Windscribe Pro ($)
Windscribe Pro is the VPN I personally use because I bought an unlimited pro plan for it, which was available to purchase for a limited time a few years ago (not an option for new users anymore, though.) Windscribe has a free plan but it doesn't support port forwarding. Their pro plan does, but only for 7 days at a time. To enable port forwarding permanently, you need to buy a Static IP at an extra cost. If you don't have a problem paying an extra $2/month on top of the pro plan, this one is the most convenient.
AirVPN ($)
AirVPN is another VPN option. I've never personally used it, but you can get a sense for what they believe in because they donate to many internet technologies, as can be seen on their Mission page. AirVPN supports forwarding up to 20 ports at a time.
Private Internet Access ($)
Private Internet Access (or PIA for short) is a long standing VPN which has been around for 10+ years, and is generally well liked. It supports port forwarding, with the catch that you can only have a single port forwarded at a time (so you can only use one of these peer-to-peer applications at once,) and it assigns the port number for you (so you'll have to dig into your settings to configure the port number in the client.) As such, I wouldn't strongly recommend this one for peer-to-peer.
VPNs and DNS Leaks
Under some rare circumstances, DNS Leaks can occur. DNS is a system which determines the IP address of a human readable domain (such as one ending in .com, .net, or .org.) A DNS leak occurs when, for one reason or another, DNS does not go through the VPN, revealing which websites you are visiting even though the VPN is in use.
DNS leaks can happen for a variety of reasons, so it's a good idea to mitigate them by not using your ISP's default DNS. One option is the free Google Public DNS that you can use instead.
A Warning About Encryption/Obfuscation
Many of the peer-to-peer clients I will be talking about today have options for Encryption or Obfuscation. You should know that - although I would recommend enabling these options so you can still download files from other people using them - they are not a sufficient replacement for a VPN. They might have been, at one point, but the fact is that anyone who wants to snoop on your downloads - be it ISPs or anyone else - don't need to be able to decrypt your internet traffic to confirm you downloaded a particular file over peer-to-peer.
All they need to do is partially seed the file themselves, and see if any of the peer IP addresses that connect to them match yours. The fact is, encryption only prevents anyone from seeing you downloaded a particular file if they can't also join the swarm. If they can, it is trivial because you will likely connect to them as a peer. This is not a hypothetical: it happens for real.
As such, do not have a false sense of security about BiglyBT's encryption or eMule's obfuscation features. Use a VPN if you do not want the files you download traced back to you.
Port Forwarding
Port forwarding is absolutely essential to get the best results with peer-to-peer. Port forwarding is a setting you can turn on which allows other peer-to-peer users to connect to you over the internet. Unfortunately, setting up port forwarding can be quite difficult because the instructions to do so are different depending on whether or not you use a VPN, or what router model you have.
Technically, it is possible to use peer-to-peer networks without port forwarding - but if you do, you'll get a LowID. If, on the other hand, you take the time to port forward correctly, you'll instead get a HighID.
So the key takeaway is: if you don't port forward, a file that might have otherwise been available won't download because you can't connect to the user who has it - and when the files we want are potentially quite rare, we can't have those kinds of missed opportunities! As such, I strongly recommend that you don't skip past this section, and that you take the time to learn how to port forward.
Finding The Port
The first step before we learn how to port forward is to figure out which port numbers need to be forwarded. You'll need to remember two port numbers: one for TCP, and one for UDP.
Note that if you are using a VPN which assigns a port number for you, such as Private Internet Access, you'll need to edit the port numbers in the textboxes to match. But otherwise, just leave them alone and note down what the port numbers are for later.
BiglyBT
In BiglyBT, the port numbers can be seen, or edited, in the first two textboxes under Tools > Options > Connection.
Note: if there is only one textbox here, the TCP and UDP port numbers are the same number.
eMule
eMule has a setup wizard which allows you to see, or edit, the port numbers when you first launch it. (Note: I don't recommend using UPnP because it is disabled on most current routers due to a vulnerability discovered in 2013, and probably won't work, so your best bet is to port forward manually as is described below.)
You can also find the port numbers under Options > Connection.
Shareaza
When Shareaza is first opened, it will ask if you want to set up ports with UPnP. Again, I would recommend turning this off, so select No.
In Shareaza, click Tools in the top toolbar, then click Shareaza Settings... The port number is under Internet > Connection > Inbound Address. Shareaza uses the same port number for TCP and UDP.
Port Forwarding With A VPN
For the following VPNs, you'll need to port forward twice for each client, creating a rule for both of the port numbers you noted down before: once with the TCP port number, and again with the UDP port number.
Forwarding ports for eMule in Windscribe's Control Panel, by creating rules for TCP and UDP. Note that your port numbers may be different, and you'll have to look in eMule's Options to find them.
For Private Internet Access: Because Private Internet Access determines which port to forward for you, you'll instead need to go into the settings of your client, as seen in the section above, and edit both port numbers to match the one it provides to you. To port forward with Private Internet Access, follow this guide.
When using Private Internet Access, you need to edit the port numbers in the client you use. Note: in BiglyBT, if there are two textboxes on this screen, edit the number in both to match, and if there is only one, just edit the one.
For other VPNs, check the support on their website to see if they offer port forwarding and how to configure it.
Port Forwarding Without A VPN
I strongly recommend using a VPN with peer-to-peer. In addition to being a good idea for the reasons I described in previous chapters, there are a variety of drawbacks to port forwarding without a VPN. Some routers or ISPs disallow port forwarding, so using a VPN is your only option. I only wrote this section for the sake of being thorough, if you can't use a VPN for whatever reason, since it's technically possible to do.
Firstly, note that if you restart your router or lose power, a port forward set up this way may stop working. If you don't want to be setting up the port forward again every time your router restarts, you'll need to set up a Static IP for your machine first. This article describes how to set a Static IP in Windows 10.
Once you've optionally set a Static IP, it's time to port forward. Unfortunately, port forwarding without a VPN is tricky, because the method varies depending on your router model. This video covers a variety of the most used router models. Even if yours isn't specifically covered, you can get a general idea of how to do it. You'll need to port forward twice, creating a rule for both of the port numbers you noted down before: once with the TCP port number, and again with the UDP port number.
Open Port Check Tool
The only way to know if you've successfully port forwarded is to use the Open Port Check Tool. In order for this tool to work you must be running the peer-to-peer application on your computer when you run the test. To use it, type in the TCP port number in the box on the right. The box on the left can be left alone: the default value is your own IP address, which is what you want. Then hit the Check button, and make sure the port is open. If it isn't, something is configured wrong, so go back and double check you did everything correctly.
BitTorrent
BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and has an estimated 250 million active users. There are several torrent clients for BitTorrent, but I will be focusing mainly on BiglyBT (formerly Azureus Vuze) because of its high level of customization and support for features that increase your likelihood of finding a working seed.
When installing BiglyBT, be sure to tick the checkbox for I2P Helper. We will be discussing what I2P is later. Before we get into clients, however, first we need to find a torrent.
Torrent Files, Magnets, and Info Hashes
Torrents come in one of three forms: a Torrent File, a Magnet, or an Info Hash. None of these are the actual file you're after: to use them, you need to open them with a torrent client, which will then begin downloading the result.
Having a Torrent File is the most desirable, because with only a Magnet or Info Hash, the client will need to do a lengthy metadata search which wastes some time. However, if you have a Magnet or Info Hash, it is possible to turn them into a Torrent File yourself.
Info Hashes to Torrent Files
Info Hashes uniquely identify a torrent. You can think of them as similar to ISBN for books, or catalog numbers for records. They consist of 40 numbers and letters A through F. For example, here's the Info Hash for a torrent of the free Ubuntu 14.10 x64 operating system: B415C913643E5FF49FE37D304BBB5E6E11AD5101
If all you have is an Info Hash, you'll need to turn it into a Torrent File before you can begin downloading it. Knowing that you can convert an Info Hash to a Torrent File can be useful if the Info Hash is listed on a webpage where the Magnet/Torrent File buttons are broken (this has surprisingly actually happened to me before.)
Anyway, to turn an Info Hash into a Torrent File, you use a Torrent File Cache, such as iTorrents. You use it by substituting the Info Hash into this URL:
So to download the Info Hash for Ubuntu, you would go to this URL, by copying and pasting it into the address bar, then opening the resulting Torrent File:
Magnets to Info Hashes
Magnets are links that point to particular torrents, which you may encounter while searching for torrents to download. While it is possible to use Magnets to download a torrent, it requires a long, slow metadata search that sometimes fails. Instead, I would recommend copying the Magnet (by right clicking the Magnet link on the page, then clicking Copy Link,) then paste it into a word processor or text editor, and identify the Info Hash in the Magnet (it'll stick out, since it's 40 numbers and letters A - F, remember?) Then turn the Info Hash into a Torrent File with iTorrents.
Here's a Magnet of Ubuntu from before so you can practice. Do you see the Info Hash?
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:b415c913643e5ff49fe37d304bbb5e6e11ad5101&dn=ubuntu-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso&net=Public&net=I2P&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.acg.gg%3A2710%2Fannounce
Note: the Info Hash must be written in all uppercase letters when used with iTorrents to work correctly.
Finding Torrents
While regular search engines like Google can go a long way here, there also exist search engines specifically for torrents which can help narrow down results.
Be especially aware of scams on torrent websites; they tend to be a wild west. Always look for a button labeled Torrent File or Magnet, and avoid "Direct Download" links: torrents are peer-to-peer, so ads claiming to direct download them are scams. Also, be prepared to see some NSFW content: torrent websites often contains ads that are adult or shocking in nature.
TorrentSeeker
TorrentSeeker is a torrent search engine powered by Google, which searches popular torrent sites. Usage is similarly simple to Google: type in the title of what you want to find, and you'll get torrent websites with related results.
BT4G and BitCQ
BT4G and BitCQ are both Chinese torrent search engines which occasionally bring up results that TorrentSeeker doesn't find. I lumped them together because they are so similar. They are once again fairly straightforward, and you can use them if TorrentSeeker doesn't find anything.
Dead Torrents
Torrents may not start downloading right away: the download will usually stay stuck at a certain percentage for days or weeks at a time. Unlike direct downloads which download at a relatively consistent rate, torrents are dependent on a seed currently being online. If nobody has the file in the torrent anymore, the torrent may be dead, meaning it can no longer be downloaded. I usually like to wait at least a week before declaring a torrent dead. Be sure to leave BiglyBT running minimized to the system tray so it can continually look for seeds.
Torrent Clients
It's worth mentioning at this point that, if you downloaded Free Download Manager as was mentioned in earlier chapters, then you already have a basic torrent client. Free Download Manager is able to download torrents, and is perfectly serviceable.
However, if you really want to increase the likelihood of acquiring a rare file - which, in our field, is definitely something you want to do - then BiglyBT has several advantages and is what I recommend, so from now on I will assume you're using it.
Optimizing Your Settings
Mainline DHT
DHT (short for Distributed Hash Table) is a method by which seeds for a torrent are found. When you want to find seeds for a torrent, your torrent client tells peers on the DHT network which torrent you're seeking seeds for. Those peers then ask other peers if they're connected to any seeds for that torrent, in a game of telephone fashion, until the seeds for that torrent are found and provided back to your torrent client.
One of the benefits of BiglyBT is that it supports multiple forms of DHT: its own, which was the first DHT to be implemented for torrents, as well as the "mainline" DHT used by most other clients. This increases the likelihood that you'll find a seed, because other clients that don't support BiglyBT's DHT may not see those seeds. Mainline DHT is enabled by default in BiglyBT.
Some private trackers will tell you to turn DHT off. This is misguided: you should definitely have DHT on, as it will considerably increase your chances of finding seeds. However, you can use Tags to disable it for torrents from private trackers if you need to satisfy their requirements (but most people will not need to worry about this - if you do, you'll know.)
Stable Trackers List
Trackers are another method by which seeds for a download are found. A tracker is a server which maintains a list of all the current seeds for a torrent, so that peers can connect to them. When you become a seed for the torrent, your torrent client tells the tracker that you are a seed, and adds you to the list of seeds that peers can now connect to.
Trackers aren't strictly necessary anymore because of the existence of DHT, which accomplishes the same thing without relying on central servers (technical note: this is not strictly true as DHT uses a server for bootstrapping to the network, but once you've connected once, the server is no longer required for anything.)
However, you'll still probably want to use at least some trackers, because not everyone has DHT enabled, and DHT can be slower than a tracker.
The problem is that relying on too many trackers can be actively detrimental to download speeds. There exist many giant lists of trackers on the web, with the idea being that adding all of them to your torrent client will make downloads much faster. In actual reality, these lists tend to be years out of date. As a result, adding these trackers make your downloads slower, because time is being wasted on trying to connect to dead trackers which aren't online anymore.
All of this to say, it's a good idea to add trackers to your torrent client, but it's important the list of trackers you add is filtered, so only those that are working and reliable are included. To that end, there is the Stable Trackers List. This website measures the performance of trackers and lists the ones that are online and working at least 95% of the time, so none of your time will be wasted on trying to connect to them.
Once you've copied the trackers to your clipboard, the next step is to add them to your torrent client. In BiglyBT, this is accomplished using Tags. The Tracker Templates section of the Tags wiki article explains the steps to create an "AddedTrackers" tag which adds the list of trackers to all torrents. Follow the steps, using the Stable Trackers List, to add the stable trackers to all your torrents and further increase your chances of finding seeds.
Using the AddedTrackers tag to add trackers to every torrent.
I2P
As was previously explained, using peer-to-peer exposes your IP address, allowing others to determine which files you're downloading. The true solution to this problem is to use a VPN, but in the past there have also been other attempts to solve this problem.
One technology which could be used to hide your IP address is Tor, the "Onion Router," which is the basis of the dark web. However, Tor is not well suited for peer-to-peer: although it is technically possible to use with torrents, doing so overwhelms the Tor network, so it isn't a good idea. I2P is an anonymous network which is similar to Tor, but better optimized for peer-to-peer traffic.
Now, the problem with using I2P for torrents, and the reason I don't recommend it over a VPN, is because if you only enable I2P, and disable standard connections - which is the only way to get the anonymity benefits of I2P - then you can only connect to seeds that are also using I2P. Unfortunately, using I2P exclusively will significantly decrease your chances of finding a seed.
As such, I do recommend enabling I2P, but not using it exclusively - that is, to enable I2P, but also leave standard connections enabled. This will forego the anonymity benefits of I2P - but you're behind a VPN anyway so it doesn't matter - and it will allow you to connect to everyone, including those who only use I2P themselves. Doing so will further increase your chances of finding a seed.
I2P is not enabled by default in BiglyBT, but you can enable it by ticking the checkbox labeled "I2P Helper" in the BiglyBT installer.
Avoiding Traffic Shaping
Some ISPs throttle torrent traffic in particular, which can make your downloads slower. This is possible to circumvent, but often with a backwards compatibility tradeoff: that is to say, you can no longer connect to all seeds.
With a VPN, this is largely irrelevant, so I'm not really going to dwell on this, but if you suspect you're facing this problem, you can read the Avoid Traffic Shaping wiki article.
eD2K (eDonkey2000)
eD2K (short for eDonkey2000) is a peer-to-peer network with some key differences to BitTorrent. In fact, it predates BitTorrent by a year. I will be explaining how to use eMule to access eD2K. Most other eD2K clients are just mods of eMule, typically of dubious quality. I recommend using the official eMule client.
One of the best features of eD2K is the ability to search for files right from within the client itself, with no need for a separate search engine. Files on eD2K tend to be available for a long time, which makes it ideal for lost media hunting.
The downside of eD2K is that it's a bit of a hassle to set up for the first time, and although eMule is still actively maintained, the user interface feels dated and stuck in the Windows XP era. Still, I would consider it a must have.
Setting Capacities
You may have noticed that in eMule's Options, there are settings for Upload Capacity and Download Capacity. You should leave these as the default settings.
Setting your Upload Capacity correctly used to be important because eMule would use this information so it wouldn't hog all your bandwidth. For example, if you're watching Netflix on another device, it wouldn't slow to a crawl because both were competing over your Wi-Fi.
However, this is rather antiquated, because if you simply leave the Upload Capacity set to 0 (the default setting) then eMule will automatically determine the correct speed (this feature is called Upload Speed Sense.) This is what I would recommend doing: there isn't much of a reason to measure it out yourself.
On the other hand, it doesn't really matter what Download Capacity is set to, because it's only used for displaying statistics. It does not limit your download speeds, in fact it doesn't affect the behaviour of the program at all.
So, to summarize, just leave the Upload Capacity at 0, and don't worry about Download Capacity. eMule will automatically do the rest. If you accidentally edited the Upload Capacity, you can find it again under Options > Connection.
IP Filter
Once you've finished the setup wizard and have port forwarded (see the Port Forwarding chapter of this guide if you haven't already,) the next thing you'll want to do is add an IP Filter. An IP Filter blocks known bad IP addresses, such as Bogons. To do this, follow the instructions in the IP Filter FAQ from eMule Security.
Servers and Kad
eD2K has two methods of finding seeds, both of which you need to set up yourself: Servers and Kad. Servers are fairly self explanatory: everyone connects to a server, which is responsible for coordinating connections to other users. However, eD2K servers often cease to exist, meaning you will need a Serverlist: a list of currently active servers.
Kad (short for Kademlia) is a decentralized network, where searches are conducted through other peers. The BitTorrent equivalent, DHT, was originally based on Kad. However, setting up Kad at first is a bit more involved: in order to connect to Kad, you need to connect to someone else who is already connected to Kad (called Bootstrapping.) Thankfully, the folks already connected to Kad provide a file called nodes.dat, which allows us to connect to them.
To have access to everything, you'll want to use both Servers and Kad.
To place nodes.dat in the eMule/config folder as described in the Bootstrapping FAQ:
Once you have set up the Serverlist and Bootstrap once, you'll never need to repeat this process again. It will remember for the next time you use eMule.
LowID vs. HighID
As previously explained in the Port Forwarding chapter of this guide, if you don't port forward you'll be given a LowID which puts you at a disadvantage. If you have a HighID, eMule's icon in the system tray will look normal. However, if the eMule icon has sunglasses, you may have LowID.
Although you should be aware of why the sunglasses icon can appear, the indicator can be a little unreliable. If the Open Port Check Tool says you're port forwarded, then you can be sure it is set up correctly and this is just a false alarm.
Searching eMule
After all this setup, we finally get to eMule's main party trick: integrated search. Clicking the Search tab in eMule allows us to search by filename. Not only that, but in the right panel we have many options to only include files with a particular file size, file extension, length, and even fine details like codec or bitrate.
Underneath the search box is a Method dropdown, allowing us to limit our search to only Kad. Don't forget that because Kad is decentralized, and the search uses Kad, the search is also decentralized. In other words, certain files might not show up in search because none of the seeds are currently online. It can be worthwhile to try searching again at different times of day, or even after waiting a week.
Sometimes you may also run across eD2K Links on the web which direct you to a particular file. These can also be opened in eMule.
Be careful when searching for videos on eMule: many of them are adult videos that have been mislabeled.
Note: Shareaza, which we'll be using in a later chapter of this guide, has a bug where it will take over the eD2K link association, even if it is not checked in the installer. If you want to open an eD2K link, open eMule and go to Tools > Paste eD2K Links...
Waiting
Like with torrents, eMule downloads can die if no seeds are around anymore. However, in my experience eMule files often spring back to life basically at random (sometimes months after I added the download.) Even if your download gets stuck halfway done, give it at least a few days to pick back up. Be sure to leave eMule running minimized to the system tray so it can continually look for seeds.
Sometimes you might see that you are "On Queue" for a particular file. This occurs when a seeder has many files that are all in demand and can't seed to everyone at once. Just wait, and eventually you will be through the queue and able to download the file.
Gnutella And Gnutella2
Gnutella was the first peer-to-peer network of its kind. In the 2000s, Gnutella was the protocol used by the LimeWire client. I'm going to be using Shareaza to access Gnutella and the later, improved protocol Gnutella2.
Shareaza also supports BitTorrent and eD2K, but I prefer BiglyBT and eMule for those protocols because of the extra features they provide (as we've now seen.) If you want to use Shareaza together with BiglyBT and eMule, turn off those associations when you first open Shareaza.
Note: Shareaza has a bug where it will take over the eD2K link association, even if it is not checked in the installer. If you want to open an eD2K link, open eMule and go to Tools > Paste eD2K Links...
Searching With Shareaza
Like with eMule, you search from within Shareaza by using its Search tab. There aren't quite as many options here, but one nice feature of Shareaza's search (thanks to Gnutella2) is that it searches not only by filename, but the metadata of the file, like Version Info. You can also select a type of file to search (like Audio, Images, or Video.)
Waiting (Again)
The same rules apply here that apply to eMule. If a file isn't downloading, just wait. Days, or even weeks. Just leave Shareaza running minimized to the system tray.
Japanese P2P
So far I've gone pretty deep into every topic in this guide, but this is an area with which I'm largely unfamiliar, other than I know it exists. Japan has its own sophisticated peer-to-peer networks. Up to this point, I've never needed to use them since I've never been involved with Japanese lost media. If you are, then this may be a good place to look. Unfortunately given the complexity of Japanese peer-to-peer I'm out of my depth here, so if you're interested, you can use the File sharing in Japan Wikipedia article as a starting point for your research.
Usenet ($)
Usenet is one of the oldest systems of communication over a computer network, dating back to the 1980s. Users can read as well as write their own posts, called "news." Usenet is split into newsgroups, with each newsgroup being about a particular topic, similar to a forum or subreddit.
Over time, users realized they could share binary files, such as photos, music, and videos by encoding them into text. This means that Usenet is another place where you can search for files. However, Usenet content is only retained for so long before it disappears. Exactly how long depends on your Usenet provider - in order to access Usenet, you need to pay a subscription to a Usenet provider, or "news server." You also need to have a Usenet client. Some Usenet providers have their own clients.
Searching NZBKing
Before we get into how to download files from Usenet, we can begin by searching for our file. To do this, we can use NZBKing, a search engine for Usenet binaries. Although there do exist other Usenet binary searches, this is the one I've found to give the most results.
Type in the term you wish to search for, and NZBKing will pull up files with matching filenames or contents. Clicking the NZB download button will download a small NZB file, which isn't the actual file you're after. In order to actually download the file you wanted, you need to now open the NZB file in a Usenet client, which will then begin downloading the result. So, the next thing we will need is a Usenet client.
A word of warning: Personally, I've never actually found anything I'm looking for on NZBKing. That's not to say I haven't found files claiming to be what I'm looking for, but the ratio of garbage to legitimate results is higher here than anywhere else I've mentioned: nine out of ten times it's spam or malware. I wouldn't open any file I got off NZBKing outside the confines of a Virtual Machine, even if my virus scanner told me it was safe. I would not recommend its use unless you are particularly tech savvy. Be extra careful here.
Paid Usenet Indexers ($)
You learn something new every day.
In my original edit of this guide, I warned that NZBKing is full of spam and malware. At the time, I didn't know that there are premium search engines as well. There are actually several of these, and all of them incur an additional cost on top of your Usenet subscription, so this is probably the most expensive option in this guide - but although I've never personally tried them, I've heard that they produce much better results. Larsenv, from the LMW Discord server, recommended NZBGeek.
Downloading Usenet Binaries
Next, you'll need to sign up for a Usenet provider. I recommend Newshosting, which has 5335 days of binary retention (the highest in the industry, according to their claims) and a free trial so you can see if you like their service. Immediately after signing up, you'll be offered a link to the Newshosting client, which you should download and install.
To open the NZB file and begin downloading it in the Newshosting client, click on the Open NZB toolbar button. It'll then download if it's still available on Newshosting. Click the Download Folder toolbar button to access the file it downloaded.
URL Guessing
One of the most skill based methods of lost media searching (and paradoxically, also the most luck based) is URL Guessing. It requires some understanding of how websites are put together and having an eye for patterns. Obviously, learning to build a website is outside the scope of this guide, but understanding how websites work is not only useful for making your own, but because it opens opportunities for hunting.
One example of lost media that was found by URL Guessing was the Let Down music video by Radiohead. In early 2016, only a short clip of the music video existed, so Reddit user stanmgk decided to take a closer look at the website of the music video's director, Simon Hilton.
stanmgk noticed a pattern in the way the website was constructed. Each music video Simon Hilton directed had its own page on the site. The URL for each page followed a consistent format. Here's a handful of examples.
Each URL ends with the band name, followed by the initials of the song name (in these cases: Within You Without You, Working Class Hero, and My Plague respectively.) Simon Hilton's website isn't online anymore, but here is a capture so you can examine the list of music videos for yourself.
Now, nowhere on the website is there any link to Radiohead, but stanmgk knew that just because it's not linked, doesn't mean it isn't there. So she made a guess. She figured that Radiohead's Let Down music video, in this format, would probably look like "dRADIOHEAD_LD.html." So she went into the address bar and typed it in:
So if the video was on the website the whole time, why did it not show up on Google or in Wayback Machine? Well, search engines like Google work by using what's called a "spider." They look for links to pages on the web, and when they encounter a new link, they go to the page and look for even more links there, in a repeated process, cataloging all of them along the way. This process is called "crawling."
If there has never been any link to a webpage anywhere online, then there is no way a spider can know it's there. Unlike us, spiders don't have the context that there might've been a Radiohead video on the website nor the ability to reason that there might be such a URL. Shortly after stanmgk linked the page to everyone else, making the link public, Wayback Machine then made a capture of the Radiohead music video's page.
URL Guessing requires a lot of experience, but it's not a hypothetical: it happens a lot. So although I can only touch on it here, it's something to be aware of. Many of the webgames that have been recovered by the BlueMaxima's Flashpoint project have also been found thanks to expert URL guessing.
FromSmash (Bonus)
This is a bonus item since it doesn't really have to do with finding lost media, but since I was talking about filelockers I figured I'd bring up a useful semi-related file sharing service. The catch with FromSmash is that you can upload files without signing up, but the uploads expire after one week. I regularly use this to share files on Discord since I don't have Nitro. Just drag and drop a file onto the page, enter your email, an optional password, copy the link, and you're off to the races.
The Dark Web (Bonus)
I was originally only going to write a single sentence here, saying "there isn't actually any lost media on the dark web, that's just a cliche." However, while I was in the middle of writing this guide, I was talking to someone on the Discord who earnestly suggested we should try looking for lost media on the dark web. I realized this probably warranted an actual in-depth explanation. So, consider this a PSA: there hasn't been any instance, that I know of, where lost media has been found on the dark web.
Think about the kind of person who wants to anonymously share a video. What platform do you think they would use to share that video? Probably peer-to-peer. Torrents. Or filelockers like MEGA and MediaFire. You don't need the dark web to stay anonymous with the existence of these platforms. In fact, they're better options because you pass the buck of hosting off to someone else unrelated to you. On the dark web, you have to deal with the hassle of hosting yourself, and keep your server location a secret.
The reason why illegal drug marketplaces have to be dark web is because it's a service that no business in their right mind would want to be responsible for hosting, but the service of video hosting is common, it's innocuous, it's everywhere already, and with plenty of anonymous options. You could make a new YouTube account that isn't connected to anything and slip under the radar in a sea of videos, or just leak things on 4chan like everyone else, or any variety of alternatives that don't require setting up your own onion site.
At this point, you may think that's all well and good in theory, but why not just try looking anyway, just in case? Well... why don't you try it? You can do it right now: install Tor and take a look. What you'll quickly discover is that asking "why don't we check on the dark web?" is kind of like asking "why don't we check on Google?" It's not just one website: it's vast. Without a specific idea in mind of where on the dark web to go, it gives us zero direction.
On the other hand, there is some creepypasta appeal to the name "dark web," and that has led to its use in hoax lost media like Go For A Punch (which, yes, I consider to be a hoax.) Claiming lost media exists on the dark web is a huge red flag that signals you're trying to make up a believable story, but I must ask then: where are all these dark web video websites? Between the fact that there's no documented case of lost media being found there, and all the theoretical reasons why it's impractical, it doesn't sound very believable to me. At least it's a pretty reliable hoax indicator, though!
You could consider private trackers an exception to this, because they are often hosted on the dark web, but they're usually accessible via a surface web proxy anyway. They're also useless information for hunters. If none of us can get in, what use is it looking in that direction?
Conclusion
Although some of you already might already know a lot of this, I hope you could at least learn something new. Did I miss anything obvious? Have any corrections? Discuss them below! I tried to cover everything, but the internet is a big place.
I don't expect this guide to work for all forms of lost media. It's specifically focused on the digital realm, after all. However, there is definitely a Goldilocks zone where something is just obscure enough that nobody thinks it is online anywhere, when in actuality it is just hiding in a place that Google won't dare to go. Hopefully, this guide will be useful for those scenarios. As a lost media hunter, always be sure to perform thorough checks before deeming something to be lost!
Today, I'm going to spill the beans. I'm going to tell you how to find rare files online.
You see, us lost media researchers have a difficult job. It can be hard to tell if a file is truly lost, or already exists online in an obscure place that Google won't dare to go. This has been in the works for a long time: you see, a couple years ago, I read a Lost Media Wiki article called Disney Game Downloads. It was about a series of PC games that you could download online, which had become lost according to the article. However, by using the tricks I'm sharing with you today, I was able to recover all but one of the lost Disney Game Download games on obscure, difficult to find websites. That became the impetus for me to write up this resource.
The goal of this guide is to be excruciatingly comprehensive, to ensure that no stone is unturned when verifying that your lost media is actually lost. I'm going to start with the obvious tips and progressively get into the smaller and lesser known. I'll explain the different places on the internet where you should look for files, and almost anything that doesn't involve reaching out to an actual person and asking them a question is fair game for inclusion. One exception is that I want this guide to be something anyone can use, so I'm not going to be talking about exclusive clubs like private trackers: if you have access, you already know about them, and if you don't, then you're probably not getting in.
Note: I didn't realize until after I wrote this up that Binzy had already written a forum post with a fairly similar premise several years ago. This one is a great deal more in-depth though, so I still thought it was worth sharing.
Important Disclaimers
USE THIS GUIDE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR USE OF THIS INFORMATION.
The internet changes over time, so this guide is bound to become dated eventually. The information in this guide is accurate as of March 2023. If you notice any mistake feel free to comment on it and I'll make a note of it. This is not a piracy guide: this guide is intended so you can be thorough in your research and conclude, for certain, that the media you are writing about is actually not online anywhere.
Searching the web for rare files can be dangerous, so you should take precautions against malware and scams.
- Use a Virtual Machine such as Oracle VirtualBox. There already exist many tutorials online for how to set one up, so I won't cover that here. You can safely acquire an up to date version of Windows for use in a Virtual Machine via Microsoft's Software Downloads.
- Use a cloud based word processor such as Google Drive to open documents you encounter such as Microsoft Word files or PDFs. These can contain macros or scripts that are dangerous to run on your own machine.
- Ensure your antivirus has realtime protection. Your antivirus should be checking for malware 24/7, not just during scans. I recommend Malwarebytes Premium. Windows Defender is also fine, but it may become disabled if you have another antivirus product installed, disabling its realtime protection - so make sure it is actually enabled in your Windows Settings if you intend to use it.
- Ensure your browser is up to date, is actively maintained and has plugins disabled. Using an outdated browser such as Internet Explorer leaves you vulnerable to security exploits that could damage your computer.
- Use a password manager with a browser extension that autofills passwords, to protect yourself against phishing scams and avoid password reuse. I recommend Sticky Password. There is a free version and a pro version, the only difference being that the pro version has cloud storage (which I wouldn't recommend using anyway.)
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: You should NEVER give out your credit card information online unless you are DEAD CERTAIN that the website you are on is to be trusted with that information. The majority of the websites on this list are free and will NEVER ask for payment information: if they do, it's a scam. The services on this list that genuinely require payment to use will be annotated with a dollar sign ($) symbol in the title.
Even in the event that you're so desperate to find something that you're willing to lose $20 on it to test its authenticity, do NOT give out your credit card information. Once you've given out those details, a fraudulent website can draw any amount of money they want from that card, regardless of their asking price. Instead, use one of the following options:
- Use a Bitcoin wallet, as this puts YOU in control of the amount of money you're spending. Or,
- Use PayPal, and check the amount being charged matches what you intend to spend before checking out. Or,
- Buy a Prepaid Visa card with only the amount you intend to spend loaded onto it. Or,
- Use Privacy.com to create a virtual credit card.
The key takeaway is this: never give out your personal credit card information to a website you don't already trust.
Search Engines
The basics. In spite of my goal to be "excruciatingly comprehensive," I'm not going to list every search engine because, well, this is beginner stuff and they mostly give similar results, but the key takeaway here is that it may be worth trying more than just one.
You don't need me to tell you about Google, right? I mean, everyone already knows. Well, this is still the best place to start. In case you've just awoken from a 20 year coma, Google is a search engine that you type keywords into and it finds websites based on those keywords. It can't search some social media sites (Facebook and Twitter content usually won't be brought up by Google) but it's still useful for searching most of the web.
You can surround phrases "in quotes" to only search for exact spelling or for multiple words that must be used in sequence (protip: you can search for files in open directories by typing the expected filename along with "index of" in quotes.) You can use the minus (-) sign in front of a word to exclude irrelevant results. You can also use site: to limit results to a particular website, like site:lostmediawiki.com to only include LMW articles in your Google search.
My experience is that Google is still pretty darn good for lost media hunting. However, this is just the baseline: we can do better.
Google as a whole has changed a lot over the years, but their homepage has changed very little.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a search engine with a focus on privacy. However, for the purposes of this guide I care purely about quality of results, and my experience with DuckDuckGo is that it rarely finds stuff that Google cannot. There may be a few websites that are seemingly blacklisted on Google and not on DuckDuckGo but they are rarely useful. I only usually go to this one if I'm desperate.
Either way, usage is pretty similar to Google of course. Just type in the textbox and go.
Yandex
Yandex might be the most underrated search engine for lost media hunting, so long as you don't mind that it's of Russian origin. It tends to pull up pretty different results from Google and I've used it to find sources I otherwise would've never stumbled across on multiple occasions.
While this is impossible to verify, I feel like Yandex's blacklist is a lot smaller than Google's, which is a double edged sword. Exercise some caution, and you'll be fine (see the disclaimer at the start of this guide.)
Archive.org
I don't need to explain to anyone here what Wayback Machine is (which could merit its own entire guide to explain its nuances,) but there's more to Archive.org than just Wayback Machine. It's also a good idea to check Archive.org's libraries of documents, images, sound, videos and software. You may not know that regular users can upload files to Archive.org, categorizing them with publicly searchable titles, tags and descriptions.
When you're searching for something, you should be sure to run a search on Archive.org in addition to Google.
Everyone uses Wayback Machine, but sometimes it's worth scrolling down to the community collections.
Using Free Download Manager With Archive.org
A download manager is an application that downloads files with better speed and consistency than a browser. It accomplishes this by reconnecting automatically if your connection drops and downloading multiple parts of the file at a time.
There are lots of download managers out there, and they're generally useful on the web. However, I bring this up now because Archive.org has a bit of a reputation for slow speeds and connection drops. You can't really complain, it's free for anyone to access and supported by donations. However, I've regularly seen my download speed on Archive.org increase dramatically while using a download manager, and this is especially relevant because many files on Archive.org are quite large.
Personally, I would recommend Free Download Manager. To use it with Archive.org, right click on the link to the file you want to download, and click Copy Link Address. Then, open Free Download Manager and hit the blue plus (+) sign at the upper left. The link on the clipboard is filled in by default, so just hit the Download button, sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that a disconnection won't disrupt your download progress.
Click the button plus (+) sign at the upper left to add a new download to Free Download Manager.
There is also an optional browser extension for Free Download Manager which replaces the download functionality of your web browser. It can be configured to ignore particular websites or ignore files under a certain file size.
YouTube Video Finder
This is by no means 100% reliable: it's mostly just a wrapper on top of Archive.org. Nonetheless, YouTube Video Finder is a neat little utility that can be helpful. Given a Video ID, it'll search various different archives for YouTube videos, and help with recovering videos that have been deleted or made private. If you have the link to a dead YouTube video, try running the Video ID through this tool and see if it finds anything.
Filelockers
A filelocker is a website specifically designed to host user files. There are far too many to list, but some of them are particularly noteworthy so I'll mention them here.
4shared
4shared is the world's largest filelocker and has been around since 2005. What makes 4shared interesting and worthy of inclusion on this list - aside from the fact it's the world's largest filelocker - is that it is searchable. On 4shared's homepage is a search bar you can use to search for files by filename.
Although this statistic may make 4shared sound like a treasure trove, my personal experience is that being the world's largest equates to quantity over quality: I rarely find what I'm looking for on 4shared, and most of the time its search engine just gives you a bunch of garbage. So I wouldn't spend too long there, but once in a blue moon you do find what you want there, and when that happens it's usually on the first page of results.
4shared has a paid plan, but you're not required to use it to download files. You can use 4shared completely free, with the caveat that it incurs a 20 second wait time before downloading a file. Personally, that's a small price to pay for me since I rarely use 4shared anyway. 4shared deletes accounts after 90 days of inactivity, so if you find a file you want on there, download it before it disappears.
MEGA
MEGA is a filelocker which, like the majority of filelockers (and unlike 4shared) is not searchable. Indeed, the main selling point of MEGA is the privacy it offers uploaders. Files uploaded on MEGA are stored encrypted, so not even MEGA themselves can see them unless you share a public link.
MEGA was created by Kim Dotcom as a successor of sorts to Megaupload, a filelocker that shut down in the 2000s. Even though MEGA can't be searched, the ability to share MEGA links means you're likely to run across such links being shared around. My personal experience is that MEGA links usually stay online - not to say they never get deleted.
Using MEGASync
While it is entirely possible to use MEGA in a browser alone, if you're not using MEGASync you are missing out. MEGASync is a desktop application that syncs files between MEGA and a folder on your computer, in a similar fashion to Dropbox. While that is handy, one of the perks of using it is faster download speeds. It's a free download, so I recommend having it for when you come across MEGA links in your online travels.
Avoiding Paywalls
Sometimes for free users MEGA will prevent you from downloading more files for eight hours, and only lets you resume after this period.
If you're in a hurry, and you have a VPN (which you should - we'll discuss that more and which one you should use in the Peer To Peer chapter,) you can circumvent this measure by opening the link in a new private window (such as Google Chrome's Incognito Mode) and changing your VPN server to a different country, and there's not much that MEGA can do to detect this.
However, MEGA's cheapest paid plan comes with 2 TB of space which is not unsubstantial, so unlike a lot of similar sites I actually recommend their paid plan because it has a lot of nice features, in addition to removing the eight hour wait time. Check it out for the next time you run into MEGA online.
MediaFire
MediaFire is another filelocker, founded in 2006 and based in Texas. It is not searchable - at least by official means. However, there does exist an unofficial search engine for MediaFire, namely MediaFireTrend. It scrapes the web for MediaFire links that people have publicly shared on forums and whatnot. This becomes yet another place to check for files.
MediaFire often deletes old files, although I have been surprised before. They've been in the business for a long time, so it's unlikely they'll go away completely any time soon.
Beating The "Dangerous File Blocked" Message
Sometimes MediaFire won't allow you to download a file because it triggered its virus scanner. You should obviously be wary of any files the virus scanner claims is dangerous, but if you want to download them anyway to test them in a Virtual Machine, there is a trick to get around this.
In order to download a blocked file, you'll need a free MediaFire account. The idea here is to import the file to your own MediaFire account. Then, because MediaFire always lets you download files from your own account, you can download the file in spite of the warning.
- Sign up for a free MediaFire account (it's a fairly straightforward process.)
- Once you have signed in, and are on your dashboard, click the Create Folder button in the top toolbar, and create a new folder called "New Folder."
- Select the New Folder by clicking on it in the dashboard, then click Copy Link in the top toolbar.
- Open a text editor or word processor such as Microsoft Word, and paste the link you just copied into it. It'll look similar to this, but in place of [Personal Key] will be your own key:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/[Personal Key]/New+Folder - Now go back to the MediaFire page with the blocked file you want to download. Look in the address bar, and you will see a parameter which looks like quickkey=[Blocked Key], but in place of [Blocked Key] is a second, different key.
- If there is an ampersand (&) sign after the blocked key, copy everything between the equals (=) sign and the ampersand (&) sign. Otherwise, copy everything after the equals (=) sign.
- Now, in the link you pasted before, add a comma after your personal key, and then paste the blocked key. Now the link will look like this, but with the keys you found:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/[Personal Key],[Blocked Key]/New+Folder - Now copy this new link and paste it into your browser's address bar. You will now see the blocked file, alongside the folder you created. Click the three dots in the right hand column for the blocked file, but don't click Download. Instead, click Copy File To...
- Now click Copy Files/Folders, and the file will be copied to your own MediaFire account. Now click the file in your own dashboard to download it.
Ulozto
Ulozto is a Czech-based filelocker which, in my opinion, is a true hidden gem. Like 4shared, Ulozto is searchable by filename. They have a bit of a reputation for being reliable and rarely deleting files. For instance, before O Parádivé Sally (a.k.a. Clockman) made its YouTube appearance, it had previously been sitting on Ulozto since 2014. Ulozto is also the origin of all the currently found episodes of Slniečko. It's not just videos either: images, sound, and software can all be found on Ulozto. Needless to say, it's definitely worth checking for rare files on Ulozto.
Ulozto has a paid plan, with the only difference being faster download speed. Their "slow" download speed isn't that bad, and other than that, it can be used entirely for free, even without an account.
Update December 1, 2023: Ulozto has removed its public search feature. I've learned that Zálohuj.si has become the popular alternative, although I've not yet had a chance to use it myself.
Chomikuj.pl ($)
Chomikuj.pl is a Polish-based filelocker which is, again, searchable by filename - however, it has a few extra rules. Searching requires an account, which is free. When you create an account, you are given 1000 credits. Downloading files costs credits. Eventually you will run out, at which point you can still search, but to download a file you have to pay for more. This means you have to be a bit selective about which files you choose to download on Chomikuj.pl, as you might end up wasting credits on a file that wasn't actually the one you were after.
My experience with Chomikuj.pl is that it occasionally has good stuff but it also has a lot of garbage and scams. It's worthwhile to check, but the amount of sifting you have to do and the credit system means I treat this as more of a last resort option.
Baidu Wangpan
Baidu is a Chinese company which is primarily a search engine, but also offers other products, similar to Google. For our purposes, we're mainly interested in Baidu Wangpan, their Google Drive equivalent. You may occasionally run across links to files on Baidu Wangpan that can't be found anywhere else.
To download files from Baidu Wangpan, you need an account. That wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, except that signing up requires having a Chinese phone number. That means Baidu Wangpan downloads are effectively locked to Chinese residents only.
Now, in actual reality, it's impossible to truly lock a file to a geo-restricted region - there are always ways around it, and it is only ever a matter of time before they leak to the rest of the world. Assuming you don't have a Chinese friend, however, you'll likely have to do some research to determine the current methods of dealing with Baidu Wangpan in other countries, as this is an ever changing space.
Baidu Net Disk App
In the past, the main method of downloading from Baidu Wangpan outside of China was to use the Baidu Net Disk app. Baidu Net Disk was a client software, for Windows and mobile devices, that you could install to download files from Baidu Wangpan without using a browser. People would often share their logins and passwords to Baidu Wangpan for foreigners to use, which you could find by Googling around. Then you could use these to log in via Baidu Net Disk, and download a Baidu Wangpan link through it.
Unfortunately, this is no longer really viable with the addition of a check to the Baidu Net Disk app, which requires the account creator to scan a QR Code with their phone to login on a new device.
OneLeaf (Baidu Wangpan Downloaders)
Most of this guide has been subject to change, but this part is extremely so, as I wouldn't be surprised if it's gone by the end of the year. However, currently there exists an easy method to download from Baidu Wangpan, in the form of OneLeaf. The usage is simple: paste the link you want to download in the first box (which will be shortened to an ID,) and the password if the file is passworded (leave blank otherwise,) then click Submit.
However, who knows how long it will be before whatever exploit abused by OneLeaf is patched by Baidu, or it disappears due to lack of funding. In the past, several such Baidu Wangpan downloaders have existed, and then disappeared, such as pan.naifei.cc or KinhDown to name a couple. So this is an evolving field, and there is always the possibility that no easy option currently exists. You will likely have to do your own research to discover the current methods, if any. Be especially wary of dangerous websites making false claims here.
Other Filelockers
There exist more filelockers out there, but most of them are pretty straightforward and not particularly remarkable. You'll occasionally run across links to them, which you can try, and sometimes they'll work, sometimes they won't. There is no point in listing more out here, as I've already mentioned all the publicly searchable or tricky to use ones that I know of.
FTP Search
FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is an internet protocol similar to HTTP. The key difference is that, unlike HTTP servers which are navigated via webpages, FTP servers are navigated via folders - similar to navigating your own computer's files. This makes FTP servers an ideal place to store files online. FTP servers are typically passworded, but some allow for public access, and there exist search engines for these public FTP servers.
FTP Clients
Although web browsers used to have integrated support for FTP, it has been removed from all the major browsers over time. These days, you'll need an FTP client instead. The good news is, if you've downloaded Free Download Manager from before, it supports downloading files over FTP. You can use it the same way with FTP links that you would with any other link.
However, one of the benefits of FTP is being able to explore around the folder in which the file you found was located, to look for other similar files. Free Download Manager doesn't have the ability to do this, so if you want this ability, I recommend WinSCP: a free client which supports FTP in addition to a few other protocols (including the SCP - or Secure Copy Protocol - it's originally named after, but SCP is largely obsolete in the modern day.)
When WinSCP is your default FTP client, you'll be asked to login upon clicking FTP links. If the FTP server is anonymous - like the ones you'll find via FTP search - just type "anonymous" as the username and hit OK. Sometimes FTP search will bring up servers that aren't online anymore, in which case it will usually time out or fail to login when you try to connect.
When facing the login dialog, try logging in anonymously.
Try it right now, by clicking this link to connect to the official GNU FTP in WinSCP: ftp.gnu.org
The left panel shows the files on your computer, and the right panel shows the files on the FTP server. You can click and drag files from the right panel to the left panel to download them to your computer.
Mamont
Mamont is the world's largest FTP search engine. Using it is straightforward: type in a filename you want to find. The search will pull up all the FTP URLs containing that name that it knows of. Simply click on a link to open it in your FTP client.
Note that the search does not take file contents into account like Google does, only the URL. There aren't many options for sorting, but you can search by the country of the FTP server.
NAPALM
NAPALM is another popular FTP search engine, which sometimes brings up different results to Mamont. Usage is similar: type in the filename you want to find. Clicking Download brings you to a download page. The Direct Link button opens your FTP client. File contents are not searched.
NAPALM also has options to sort by date and file size, which is nice if you know the approximate size of the file you're looking for.
Peer To Peer (P2P)
Up to this point, everything I've talked about involves a direct download, where you download a file from a central server. Peer-to-peer (or P2P for short) is a method of sharing files which is decentralized, and doesn't depend on a single central server. Instead, peer-to-peer requires using a client, which is a program on your computer that downloads the file instead of your web browser. Anyone who downloads the file also uploads the file for others to download from them. The people downloading the file are called peers, and the people uploading it are called seeds.
It's good etiquette to seed - that is, upload - a file for a good length of time after downloading it over peer-to-peer, which is done automatically by simply leaving the client open, and many networks reward you with faster download speeds for doing so. The people who download the file without uploading it are called leechers. Leeching is frowned upon.
I will mainly be covering three peer-to-peer clients: BiglyBT for the BitTorrent network, eMule for the eD2K network, and Shareaza for the Gnutella and Gnutella2 networks. Technically, Shareaza is capable of handling all these networks by itself, but BiglyBT and eMule allow a greater level of customization for their particular protocols which will allow us to increase our chances of getting a download, so I recommend having all three.
Choosing a VPN
In many parts of the world, if your ISP knows you're using peer-to-peer, they are required by law to send you a not-so-friendly, threatening letter about potential charges you could face, even for seemingly innocuous things. This is possible because it's easy for them to spy on which files you are downloading over peer-to-peer. Because of this open nature of peer-to-peer, I strongly recommend getting a VPN. In recent years, VPNs have gained a bit of a bad reputation because of their marketing tactics, but I promise you that this is one area in which you definitely want one. However, you should choose which VPN you use carefully, for the reasons I'll explain.
So, what is a VPN, exactly? The ads would have you believe that VPNs are a "security magic wand" that can automatically protect you from any kind of virus, phishing and online tracking. This is misleading, at best. A VPN, by itself, does none of those things. The reason that companies like NordVPN can claim those features is because they bundle other software alongside their VPN, which add additional security measures. A VPN by itself, however, can't protect you from even the most basic phishing attack, it doesn't employ any malware scan and it doesn't do anything to your browser cookies. In the worst case scenario, some VPNs like Hotspot Shield even inject their own analytics with their own tracking into every page you visit.
So then, what does a VPN actually do? It's quite simple: whenever you download a file, the file is actually downloaded by the VPN service, on your behalf. Then, the file they downloaded is transferred, in encrypted form, to your computer, which decrypts it. If you, say, visit a website with a file on it, there is no way for the website owner to see that you downloaded the file from that website, because the VPN service downloaded it for you, on your behalf. Only the VPN service knows that you are the one who originally requested it, masking your identity.
While this does indeed mean that your ISP can't see which files you are downloading, it also means that you are entrusting the VPN service with that information instead. As such, you should be careful when deciding which VPN to use. Although it should not be cause for alarm if you use one, I would recommend against using the major, mainstream VPNs like NordVPN or Surfshark, which in the past have used shady tactics like fake review scores to promote themselves.
To make matters more complicated, for the purposes of connecting to peer-to-peer, you will want a VPN that supports port forwarding. This feature is not necessarily a given for any VPN, and some of them do support it but with a catch. Here are four VPNs that I recommend which support port forwarding.
Mullvad ($)
Update May 29, 2023: Mullvad has removed support for port forwarding, so you'll want to use one of the other VPNs mentioned below instead.
Windscribe Pro ($)
Windscribe Pro is the VPN I personally use because I bought an unlimited pro plan for it, which was available to purchase for a limited time a few years ago (not an option for new users anymore, though.) Windscribe has a free plan but it doesn't support port forwarding. Their pro plan does, but only for 7 days at a time. To enable port forwarding permanently, you need to buy a Static IP at an extra cost. If you don't have a problem paying an extra $2/month on top of the pro plan, this one is the most convenient.
AirVPN ($)
AirVPN is another VPN option. I've never personally used it, but you can get a sense for what they believe in because they donate to many internet technologies, as can be seen on their Mission page. AirVPN supports forwarding up to 20 ports at a time.
Private Internet Access ($)
Private Internet Access (or PIA for short) is a long standing VPN which has been around for 10+ years, and is generally well liked. It supports port forwarding, with the catch that you can only have a single port forwarded at a time (so you can only use one of these peer-to-peer applications at once,) and it assigns the port number for you (so you'll have to dig into your settings to configure the port number in the client.) As such, I wouldn't strongly recommend this one for peer-to-peer.
VPNs and DNS Leaks
Under some rare circumstances, DNS Leaks can occur. DNS is a system which determines the IP address of a human readable domain (such as one ending in .com, .net, or .org.) A DNS leak occurs when, for one reason or another, DNS does not go through the VPN, revealing which websites you are visiting even though the VPN is in use.
DNS leaks can happen for a variety of reasons, so it's a good idea to mitigate them by not using your ISP's default DNS. One option is the free Google Public DNS that you can use instead.
A Warning About Encryption/Obfuscation
Many of the peer-to-peer clients I will be talking about today have options for Encryption or Obfuscation. You should know that - although I would recommend enabling these options so you can still download files from other people using them - they are not a sufficient replacement for a VPN. They might have been, at one point, but the fact is that anyone who wants to snoop on your downloads - be it ISPs or anyone else - don't need to be able to decrypt your internet traffic to confirm you downloaded a particular file over peer-to-peer.
All they need to do is partially seed the file themselves, and see if any of the peer IP addresses that connect to them match yours. The fact is, encryption only prevents anyone from seeing you downloaded a particular file if they can't also join the swarm. If they can, it is trivial because you will likely connect to them as a peer. This is not a hypothetical: it happens for real.
As such, do not have a false sense of security about BiglyBT's encryption or eMule's obfuscation features. Use a VPN if you do not want the files you download traced back to you.
Port Forwarding
Port forwarding is absolutely essential to get the best results with peer-to-peer. Port forwarding is a setting you can turn on which allows other peer-to-peer users to connect to you over the internet. Unfortunately, setting up port forwarding can be quite difficult because the instructions to do so are different depending on whether or not you use a VPN, or what router model you have.
Technically, it is possible to use peer-to-peer networks without port forwarding - but if you do, you'll get a LowID. If, on the other hand, you take the time to port forward correctly, you'll instead get a HighID.
- When you have a LowID, you can't connect with users on the network who also have a LowID: you can only connect with others who have a HighID.
- When you have a HighID, you can connect with any users on the network, even if they have a LowID.
So the key takeaway is: if you don't port forward, a file that might have otherwise been available won't download because you can't connect to the user who has it - and when the files we want are potentially quite rare, we can't have those kinds of missed opportunities! As such, I strongly recommend that you don't skip past this section, and that you take the time to learn how to port forward.
Finding The Port
The first step before we learn how to port forward is to figure out which port numbers need to be forwarded. You'll need to remember two port numbers: one for TCP, and one for UDP.
Note that if you are using a VPN which assigns a port number for you, such as Private Internet Access, you'll need to edit the port numbers in the textboxes to match. But otherwise, just leave them alone and note down what the port numbers are for later.
BiglyBT
In BiglyBT, the port numbers can be seen, or edited, in the first two textboxes under Tools > Options > Connection.
Note: if there is only one textbox here, the TCP and UDP port numbers are the same number.
eMule
eMule has a setup wizard which allows you to see, or edit, the port numbers when you first launch it. (Note: I don't recommend using UPnP because it is disabled on most current routers due to a vulnerability discovered in 2013, and probably won't work, so your best bet is to port forward manually as is described below.)
You can also find the port numbers under Options > Connection.
Shareaza
When Shareaza is first opened, it will ask if you want to set up ports with UPnP. Again, I would recommend turning this off, so select No.
In Shareaza, click Tools in the top toolbar, then click Shareaza Settings... The port number is under Internet > Connection > Inbound Address. Shareaza uses the same port number for TCP and UDP.
Port Forwarding With A VPN
For the following VPNs, you'll need to port forward twice for each client, creating a rule for both of the port numbers you noted down before: once with the TCP port number, and again with the UDP port number.
To port forward with Mullvad, follow this guide.Update May 29, 2023: Mullvad has removed support for port forwarding. You'll need to use a different VPN instead.- To port forward with Windscribe, follow these guides, depending on which method you'd like to use (since they offer multiple ways to do it.)
- To port forward with AirVPN, follow this guide.
Forwarding ports for eMule in Windscribe's Control Panel, by creating rules for TCP and UDP. Note that your port numbers may be different, and you'll have to look in eMule's Options to find them.
For Private Internet Access: Because Private Internet Access determines which port to forward for you, you'll instead need to go into the settings of your client, as seen in the section above, and edit both port numbers to match the one it provides to you. To port forward with Private Internet Access, follow this guide.
When using Private Internet Access, you need to edit the port numbers in the client you use. Note: in BiglyBT, if there are two textboxes on this screen, edit the number in both to match, and if there is only one, just edit the one.
For other VPNs, check the support on their website to see if they offer port forwarding and how to configure it.
Port Forwarding Without A VPN
I strongly recommend using a VPN with peer-to-peer. In addition to being a good idea for the reasons I described in previous chapters, there are a variety of drawbacks to port forwarding without a VPN. Some routers or ISPs disallow port forwarding, so using a VPN is your only option. I only wrote this section for the sake of being thorough, if you can't use a VPN for whatever reason, since it's technically possible to do.
Firstly, note that if you restart your router or lose power, a port forward set up this way may stop working. If you don't want to be setting up the port forward again every time your router restarts, you'll need to set up a Static IP for your machine first. This article describes how to set a Static IP in Windows 10.
Once you've optionally set a Static IP, it's time to port forward. Unfortunately, port forwarding without a VPN is tricky, because the method varies depending on your router model. This video covers a variety of the most used router models. Even if yours isn't specifically covered, you can get a general idea of how to do it. You'll need to port forward twice, creating a rule for both of the port numbers you noted down before: once with the TCP port number, and again with the UDP port number.
Open Port Check Tool
The only way to know if you've successfully port forwarded is to use the Open Port Check Tool. In order for this tool to work you must be running the peer-to-peer application on your computer when you run the test. To use it, type in the TCP port number in the box on the right. The box on the left can be left alone: the default value is your own IP address, which is what you want. Then hit the Check button, and make sure the port is open. If it isn't, something is configured wrong, so go back and double check you did everything correctly.
BitTorrent
BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and has an estimated 250 million active users. There are several torrent clients for BitTorrent, but I will be focusing mainly on BiglyBT (formerly Azureus Vuze) because of its high level of customization and support for features that increase your likelihood of finding a working seed.
When installing BiglyBT, be sure to tick the checkbox for I2P Helper. We will be discussing what I2P is later. Before we get into clients, however, first we need to find a torrent.
Torrent Files, Magnets, and Info Hashes
Torrents come in one of three forms: a Torrent File, a Magnet, or an Info Hash. None of these are the actual file you're after: to use them, you need to open them with a torrent client, which will then begin downloading the result.
Having a Torrent File is the most desirable, because with only a Magnet or Info Hash, the client will need to do a lengthy metadata search which wastes some time. However, if you have a Magnet or Info Hash, it is possible to turn them into a Torrent File yourself.
Info Hashes to Torrent Files
Info Hashes uniquely identify a torrent. You can think of them as similar to ISBN for books, or catalog numbers for records. They consist of 40 numbers and letters A through F. For example, here's the Info Hash for a torrent of the free Ubuntu 14.10 x64 operating system: B415C913643E5FF49FE37D304BBB5E6E11AD5101
If all you have is an Info Hash, you'll need to turn it into a Torrent File before you can begin downloading it. Knowing that you can convert an Info Hash to a Torrent File can be useful if the Info Hash is listed on a webpage where the Magnet/Torrent File buttons are broken (this has surprisingly actually happened to me before.)
Anyway, to turn an Info Hash into a Torrent File, you use a Torrent File Cache, such as iTorrents. You use it by substituting the Info Hash into this URL:
http://itorrents.org/torrent/[Info Hash].torrentSo to download the Info Hash for Ubuntu, you would go to this URL, by copying and pasting it into the address bar, then opening the resulting Torrent File:
http://itorrents.org/torrent/B415C913643E5FF49FE37D304BBB5E6E11AD5101.torrentMagnets to Info Hashes
Magnets are links that point to particular torrents, which you may encounter while searching for torrents to download. While it is possible to use Magnets to download a torrent, it requires a long, slow metadata search that sometimes fails. Instead, I would recommend copying the Magnet (by right clicking the Magnet link on the page, then clicking Copy Link,) then paste it into a word processor or text editor, and identify the Info Hash in the Magnet (it'll stick out, since it's 40 numbers and letters A - F, remember?) Then turn the Info Hash into a Torrent File with iTorrents.
Here's a Magnet of Ubuntu from before so you can practice. Do you see the Info Hash?
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:b415c913643e5ff49fe37d304bbb5e6e11ad5101&dn=ubuntu-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso&net=Public&net=I2P&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.acg.gg%3A2710%2Fannounce
Note: the Info Hash must be written in all uppercase letters when used with iTorrents to work correctly.
Finding Torrents
While regular search engines like Google can go a long way here, there also exist search engines specifically for torrents which can help narrow down results.
Be especially aware of scams on torrent websites; they tend to be a wild west. Always look for a button labeled Torrent File or Magnet, and avoid "Direct Download" links: torrents are peer-to-peer, so ads claiming to direct download them are scams. Also, be prepared to see some NSFW content: torrent websites often contains ads that are adult or shocking in nature.
TorrentSeeker
TorrentSeeker is a torrent search engine powered by Google, which searches popular torrent sites. Usage is similarly simple to Google: type in the title of what you want to find, and you'll get torrent websites with related results.
BT4G and BitCQ
BT4G and BitCQ are both Chinese torrent search engines which occasionally bring up results that TorrentSeeker doesn't find. I lumped them together because they are so similar. They are once again fairly straightforward, and you can use them if TorrentSeeker doesn't find anything.
Dead Torrents
Torrents may not start downloading right away: the download will usually stay stuck at a certain percentage for days or weeks at a time. Unlike direct downloads which download at a relatively consistent rate, torrents are dependent on a seed currently being online. If nobody has the file in the torrent anymore, the torrent may be dead, meaning it can no longer be downloaded. I usually like to wait at least a week before declaring a torrent dead. Be sure to leave BiglyBT running minimized to the system tray so it can continually look for seeds.
Torrent Clients
It's worth mentioning at this point that, if you downloaded Free Download Manager as was mentioned in earlier chapters, then you already have a basic torrent client. Free Download Manager is able to download torrents, and is perfectly serviceable.
However, if you really want to increase the likelihood of acquiring a rare file - which, in our field, is definitely something you want to do - then BiglyBT has several advantages and is what I recommend, so from now on I will assume you're using it.
Optimizing Your Settings
Mainline DHT
DHT (short for Distributed Hash Table) is a method by which seeds for a torrent are found. When you want to find seeds for a torrent, your torrent client tells peers on the DHT network which torrent you're seeking seeds for. Those peers then ask other peers if they're connected to any seeds for that torrent, in a game of telephone fashion, until the seeds for that torrent are found and provided back to your torrent client.
One of the benefits of BiglyBT is that it supports multiple forms of DHT: its own, which was the first DHT to be implemented for torrents, as well as the "mainline" DHT used by most other clients. This increases the likelihood that you'll find a seed, because other clients that don't support BiglyBT's DHT may not see those seeds. Mainline DHT is enabled by default in BiglyBT.
Some private trackers will tell you to turn DHT off. This is misguided: you should definitely have DHT on, as it will considerably increase your chances of finding seeds. However, you can use Tags to disable it for torrents from private trackers if you need to satisfy their requirements (but most people will not need to worry about this - if you do, you'll know.)
Stable Trackers List
Trackers are another method by which seeds for a download are found. A tracker is a server which maintains a list of all the current seeds for a torrent, so that peers can connect to them. When you become a seed for the torrent, your torrent client tells the tracker that you are a seed, and adds you to the list of seeds that peers can now connect to.
Trackers aren't strictly necessary anymore because of the existence of DHT, which accomplishes the same thing without relying on central servers (technical note: this is not strictly true as DHT uses a server for bootstrapping to the network, but once you've connected once, the server is no longer required for anything.)
However, you'll still probably want to use at least some trackers, because not everyone has DHT enabled, and DHT can be slower than a tracker.
The problem is that relying on too many trackers can be actively detrimental to download speeds. There exist many giant lists of trackers on the web, with the idea being that adding all of them to your torrent client will make downloads much faster. In actual reality, these lists tend to be years out of date. As a result, adding these trackers make your downloads slower, because time is being wasted on trying to connect to dead trackers which aren't online anymore.
All of this to say, it's a good idea to add trackers to your torrent client, but it's important the list of trackers you add is filtered, so only those that are working and reliable are included. To that end, there is the Stable Trackers List. This website measures the performance of trackers and lists the ones that are online and working at least 95% of the time, so none of your time will be wasted on trying to connect to them.
Once you've copied the trackers to your clipboard, the next step is to add them to your torrent client. In BiglyBT, this is accomplished using Tags. The Tracker Templates section of the Tags wiki article explains the steps to create an "AddedTrackers" tag which adds the list of trackers to all torrents. Follow the steps, using the Stable Trackers List, to add the stable trackers to all your torrents and further increase your chances of finding seeds.
Using the AddedTrackers tag to add trackers to every torrent.
I2P
As was previously explained, using peer-to-peer exposes your IP address, allowing others to determine which files you're downloading. The true solution to this problem is to use a VPN, but in the past there have also been other attempts to solve this problem.
One technology which could be used to hide your IP address is Tor, the "Onion Router," which is the basis of the dark web. However, Tor is not well suited for peer-to-peer: although it is technically possible to use with torrents, doing so overwhelms the Tor network, so it isn't a good idea. I2P is an anonymous network which is similar to Tor, but better optimized for peer-to-peer traffic.
Now, the problem with using I2P for torrents, and the reason I don't recommend it over a VPN, is because if you only enable I2P, and disable standard connections - which is the only way to get the anonymity benefits of I2P - then you can only connect to seeds that are also using I2P. Unfortunately, using I2P exclusively will significantly decrease your chances of finding a seed.
As such, I do recommend enabling I2P, but not using it exclusively - that is, to enable I2P, but also leave standard connections enabled. This will forego the anonymity benefits of I2P - but you're behind a VPN anyway so it doesn't matter - and it will allow you to connect to everyone, including those who only use I2P themselves. Doing so will further increase your chances of finding a seed.
I2P is not enabled by default in BiglyBT, but you can enable it by ticking the checkbox labeled "I2P Helper" in the BiglyBT installer.
Avoiding Traffic Shaping
Some ISPs throttle torrent traffic in particular, which can make your downloads slower. This is possible to circumvent, but often with a backwards compatibility tradeoff: that is to say, you can no longer connect to all seeds.
With a VPN, this is largely irrelevant, so I'm not really going to dwell on this, but if you suspect you're facing this problem, you can read the Avoid Traffic Shaping wiki article.
eD2K (eDonkey2000)
eD2K (short for eDonkey2000) is a peer-to-peer network with some key differences to BitTorrent. In fact, it predates BitTorrent by a year. I will be explaining how to use eMule to access eD2K. Most other eD2K clients are just mods of eMule, typically of dubious quality. I recommend using the official eMule client.
One of the best features of eD2K is the ability to search for files right from within the client itself, with no need for a separate search engine. Files on eD2K tend to be available for a long time, which makes it ideal for lost media hunting.
The downside of eD2K is that it's a bit of a hassle to set up for the first time, and although eMule is still actively maintained, the user interface feels dated and stuck in the Windows XP era. Still, I would consider it a must have.
Setting Capacities
You may have noticed that in eMule's Options, there are settings for Upload Capacity and Download Capacity. You should leave these as the default settings.
Setting your Upload Capacity correctly used to be important because eMule would use this information so it wouldn't hog all your bandwidth. For example, if you're watching Netflix on another device, it wouldn't slow to a crawl because both were competing over your Wi-Fi.
However, this is rather antiquated, because if you simply leave the Upload Capacity set to 0 (the default setting) then eMule will automatically determine the correct speed (this feature is called Upload Speed Sense.) This is what I would recommend doing: there isn't much of a reason to measure it out yourself.
On the other hand, it doesn't really matter what Download Capacity is set to, because it's only used for displaying statistics. It does not limit your download speeds, in fact it doesn't affect the behaviour of the program at all.
So, to summarize, just leave the Upload Capacity at 0, and don't worry about Download Capacity. eMule will automatically do the rest. If you accidentally edited the Upload Capacity, you can find it again under Options > Connection.
IP Filter
Once you've finished the setup wizard and have port forwarded (see the Port Forwarding chapter of this guide if you haven't already,) the next thing you'll want to do is add an IP Filter. An IP Filter blocks known bad IP addresses, such as Bogons. To do this, follow the instructions in the IP Filter FAQ from eMule Security.
Servers and Kad
eD2K has two methods of finding seeds, both of which you need to set up yourself: Servers and Kad. Servers are fairly self explanatory: everyone connects to a server, which is responsible for coordinating connections to other users. However, eD2K servers often cease to exist, meaning you will need a Serverlist: a list of currently active servers.
Kad (short for Kademlia) is a decentralized network, where searches are conducted through other peers. The BitTorrent equivalent, DHT, was originally based on Kad. However, setting up Kad at first is a bit more involved: in order to connect to Kad, you need to connect to someone else who is already connected to Kad (called Bootstrapping.) Thankfully, the folks already connected to Kad provide a file called nodes.dat, which allows us to connect to them.
To have access to everything, you'll want to use both Servers and Kad.
- To set up a Serverlist, follow the instructions in the Serverlist FAQ from eMule Security. Be sure to read all the instructions so that you can set it up to auto-update the Serverlist.
- To Bootstrap to Kad, follow the instructions in the Bootstrapping FAQ from eMule Security.
To place nodes.dat in the eMule/config folder as described in the Bootstrapping FAQ:
- Right click on the nodes.dat file you downloaded, and click Copy.
- If eMule is already open, exit eMule.
- Press Windows Key + R on the keyboard.
- In the Run dialog which appears, type %localappdata%/eMule/config into the textbox, then click OK. The eMule/config folder will open.
- Right click on the eMule/config folder which opened, then click Paste.
- If a prompt appears when you click Paste, choose the option to replace the existing file.
- Open eMule.
- Don't forget to go to the eMule Kad tab and click Connect.
Once you have set up the Serverlist and Bootstrap once, you'll never need to repeat this process again. It will remember for the next time you use eMule.
LowID vs. HighID
As previously explained in the Port Forwarding chapter of this guide, if you don't port forward you'll be given a LowID which puts you at a disadvantage. If you have a HighID, eMule's icon in the system tray will look normal. However, if the eMule icon has sunglasses, you may have LowID.
Although you should be aware of why the sunglasses icon can appear, the indicator can be a little unreliable. If the Open Port Check Tool says you're port forwarded, then you can be sure it is set up correctly and this is just a false alarm.
Searching eMule
After all this setup, we finally get to eMule's main party trick: integrated search. Clicking the Search tab in eMule allows us to search by filename. Not only that, but in the right panel we have many options to only include files with a particular file size, file extension, length, and even fine details like codec or bitrate.
Underneath the search box is a Method dropdown, allowing us to limit our search to only Kad. Don't forget that because Kad is decentralized, and the search uses Kad, the search is also decentralized. In other words, certain files might not show up in search because none of the seeds are currently online. It can be worthwhile to try searching again at different times of day, or even after waiting a week.
Sometimes you may also run across eD2K Links on the web which direct you to a particular file. These can also be opened in eMule.
Be careful when searching for videos on eMule: many of them are adult videos that have been mislabeled.
Note: Shareaza, which we'll be using in a later chapter of this guide, has a bug where it will take over the eD2K link association, even if it is not checked in the installer. If you want to open an eD2K link, open eMule and go to Tools > Paste eD2K Links...
Waiting
Like with torrents, eMule downloads can die if no seeds are around anymore. However, in my experience eMule files often spring back to life basically at random (sometimes months after I added the download.) Even if your download gets stuck halfway done, give it at least a few days to pick back up. Be sure to leave eMule running minimized to the system tray so it can continually look for seeds.
Sometimes you might see that you are "On Queue" for a particular file. This occurs when a seeder has many files that are all in demand and can't seed to everyone at once. Just wait, and eventually you will be through the queue and able to download the file.
Gnutella And Gnutella2
Gnutella was the first peer-to-peer network of its kind. In the 2000s, Gnutella was the protocol used by the LimeWire client. I'm going to be using Shareaza to access Gnutella and the later, improved protocol Gnutella2.
Shareaza also supports BitTorrent and eD2K, but I prefer BiglyBT and eMule for those protocols because of the extra features they provide (as we've now seen.) If you want to use Shareaza together with BiglyBT and eMule, turn off those associations when you first open Shareaza.
Note: Shareaza has a bug where it will take over the eD2K link association, even if it is not checked in the installer. If you want to open an eD2K link, open eMule and go to Tools > Paste eD2K Links...
Searching With Shareaza
Like with eMule, you search from within Shareaza by using its Search tab. There aren't quite as many options here, but one nice feature of Shareaza's search (thanks to Gnutella2) is that it searches not only by filename, but the metadata of the file, like Version Info. You can also select a type of file to search (like Audio, Images, or Video.)
Waiting (Again)
The same rules apply here that apply to eMule. If a file isn't downloading, just wait. Days, or even weeks. Just leave Shareaza running minimized to the system tray.
Japanese P2P
So far I've gone pretty deep into every topic in this guide, but this is an area with which I'm largely unfamiliar, other than I know it exists. Japan has its own sophisticated peer-to-peer networks. Up to this point, I've never needed to use them since I've never been involved with Japanese lost media. If you are, then this may be a good place to look. Unfortunately given the complexity of Japanese peer-to-peer I'm out of my depth here, so if you're interested, you can use the File sharing in Japan Wikipedia article as a starting point for your research.
Usenet ($)
Usenet is one of the oldest systems of communication over a computer network, dating back to the 1980s. Users can read as well as write their own posts, called "news." Usenet is split into newsgroups, with each newsgroup being about a particular topic, similar to a forum or subreddit.
Over time, users realized they could share binary files, such as photos, music, and videos by encoding them into text. This means that Usenet is another place where you can search for files. However, Usenet content is only retained for so long before it disappears. Exactly how long depends on your Usenet provider - in order to access Usenet, you need to pay a subscription to a Usenet provider, or "news server." You also need to have a Usenet client. Some Usenet providers have their own clients.
Searching NZBKing
Before we get into how to download files from Usenet, we can begin by searching for our file. To do this, we can use NZBKing, a search engine for Usenet binaries. Although there do exist other Usenet binary searches, this is the one I've found to give the most results.
Type in the term you wish to search for, and NZBKing will pull up files with matching filenames or contents. Clicking the NZB download button will download a small NZB file, which isn't the actual file you're after. In order to actually download the file you wanted, you need to now open the NZB file in a Usenet client, which will then begin downloading the result. So, the next thing we will need is a Usenet client.
A word of warning: Personally, I've never actually found anything I'm looking for on NZBKing. That's not to say I haven't found files claiming to be what I'm looking for, but the ratio of garbage to legitimate results is higher here than anywhere else I've mentioned: nine out of ten times it's spam or malware. I wouldn't open any file I got off NZBKing outside the confines of a Virtual Machine, even if my virus scanner told me it was safe. I would not recommend its use unless you are particularly tech savvy. Be extra careful here.
Paid Usenet Indexers ($)
You learn something new every day.
In my original edit of this guide, I warned that NZBKing is full of spam and malware. At the time, I didn't know that there are premium search engines as well. There are actually several of these, and all of them incur an additional cost on top of your Usenet subscription, so this is probably the most expensive option in this guide - but although I've never personally tried them, I've heard that they produce much better results. Larsenv, from the LMW Discord server, recommended NZBGeek.
Downloading Usenet Binaries
Next, you'll need to sign up for a Usenet provider. I recommend Newshosting, which has 5335 days of binary retention (the highest in the industry, according to their claims) and a free trial so you can see if you like their service. Immediately after signing up, you'll be offered a link to the Newshosting client, which you should download and install.
To open the NZB file and begin downloading it in the Newshosting client, click on the Open NZB toolbar button. It'll then download if it's still available on Newshosting. Click the Download Folder toolbar button to access the file it downloaded.
URL Guessing
One of the most skill based methods of lost media searching (and paradoxically, also the most luck based) is URL Guessing. It requires some understanding of how websites are put together and having an eye for patterns. Obviously, learning to build a website is outside the scope of this guide, but understanding how websites work is not only useful for making your own, but because it opens opportunities for hunting.
One example of lost media that was found by URL Guessing was the Let Down music video by Radiohead. In early 2016, only a short clip of the music video existed, so Reddit user stanmgk decided to take a closer look at the website of the music video's director, Simon Hilton.
I found Simon Hilton's portfolio, which used to be a very 90s like website. I opened one videoclip and the URL had a pattern like BAND_SONGINITIALS.
stanmgk noticed a pattern in the way the website was constructed. Each music video Simon Hilton directed had its own page on the site. The URL for each page followed a consistent format. Here's a handful of examples.
http://simonhilton.tv/Directing/Pages/dBEATLES_WYWY.htmlhttp://simonhilton.tv/Directing/Pages/dLENNON_WCH.htmlhttp://simonhilton.tv/Directing/Pages/dSLIPKNOT_MP.html
Each URL ends with the band name, followed by the initials of the song name (in these cases: Within You Without You, Working Class Hero, and My Plague respectively.) Simon Hilton's website isn't online anymore, but here is a capture so you can examine the list of music videos for yourself.
Now, nowhere on the website is there any link to Radiohead, but stanmgk knew that just because it's not linked, doesn't mean it isn't there. So she made a guess. She figured that Radiohead's Let Down music video, in this format, would probably look like "dRADIOHEAD_LD.html." So she went into the address bar and typed it in:
http://simonhilton.tv/Directing/Pages/dRADIOHEAD_LD.htmlThen there was a .mov clip there that couldn't open in my browser, but did open on VLC and I was astonished: it was the whole clip!!
So if the video was on the website the whole time, why did it not show up on Google or in Wayback Machine? Well, search engines like Google work by using what's called a "spider." They look for links to pages on the web, and when they encounter a new link, they go to the page and look for even more links there, in a repeated process, cataloging all of them along the way. This process is called "crawling."
If there has never been any link to a webpage anywhere online, then there is no way a spider can know it's there. Unlike us, spiders don't have the context that there might've been a Radiohead video on the website nor the ability to reason that there might be such a URL. Shortly after stanmgk linked the page to everyone else, making the link public, Wayback Machine then made a capture of the Radiohead music video's page.
URL Guessing requires a lot of experience, but it's not a hypothetical: it happens a lot. So although I can only touch on it here, it's something to be aware of. Many of the webgames that have been recovered by the BlueMaxima's Flashpoint project have also been found thanks to expert URL guessing.
FromSmash (Bonus)
This is a bonus item since it doesn't really have to do with finding lost media, but since I was talking about filelockers I figured I'd bring up a useful semi-related file sharing service. The catch with FromSmash is that you can upload files without signing up, but the uploads expire after one week. I regularly use this to share files on Discord since I don't have Nitro. Just drag and drop a file onto the page, enter your email, an optional password, copy the link, and you're off to the races.
The Dark Web (Bonus)
I was originally only going to write a single sentence here, saying "there isn't actually any lost media on the dark web, that's just a cliche." However, while I was in the middle of writing this guide, I was talking to someone on the Discord who earnestly suggested we should try looking for lost media on the dark web. I realized this probably warranted an actual in-depth explanation. So, consider this a PSA: there hasn't been any instance, that I know of, where lost media has been found on the dark web.
Think about the kind of person who wants to anonymously share a video. What platform do you think they would use to share that video? Probably peer-to-peer. Torrents. Or filelockers like MEGA and MediaFire. You don't need the dark web to stay anonymous with the existence of these platforms. In fact, they're better options because you pass the buck of hosting off to someone else unrelated to you. On the dark web, you have to deal with the hassle of hosting yourself, and keep your server location a secret.
The reason why illegal drug marketplaces have to be dark web is because it's a service that no business in their right mind would want to be responsible for hosting, but the service of video hosting is common, it's innocuous, it's everywhere already, and with plenty of anonymous options. You could make a new YouTube account that isn't connected to anything and slip under the radar in a sea of videos, or just leak things on 4chan like everyone else, or any variety of alternatives that don't require setting up your own onion site.
At this point, you may think that's all well and good in theory, but why not just try looking anyway, just in case? Well... why don't you try it? You can do it right now: install Tor and take a look. What you'll quickly discover is that asking "why don't we check on the dark web?" is kind of like asking "why don't we check on Google?" It's not just one website: it's vast. Without a specific idea in mind of where on the dark web to go, it gives us zero direction.
On the other hand, there is some creepypasta appeal to the name "dark web," and that has led to its use in hoax lost media like Go For A Punch (which, yes, I consider to be a hoax.) Claiming lost media exists on the dark web is a huge red flag that signals you're trying to make up a believable story, but I must ask then: where are all these dark web video websites? Between the fact that there's no documented case of lost media being found there, and all the theoretical reasons why it's impractical, it doesn't sound very believable to me. At least it's a pretty reliable hoax indicator, though!
You could consider private trackers an exception to this, because they are often hosted on the dark web, but they're usually accessible via a surface web proxy anyway. They're also useless information for hunters. If none of us can get in, what use is it looking in that direction?
Conclusion
Although some of you already might already know a lot of this, I hope you could at least learn something new. Did I miss anything obvious? Have any corrections? Discuss them below! I tried to cover everything, but the internet is a big place.
I don't expect this guide to work for all forms of lost media. It's specifically focused on the digital realm, after all. However, there is definitely a Goldilocks zone where something is just obscure enough that nobody thinks it is online anywhere, when in actuality it is just hiding in a place that Google won't dare to go. Hopefully, this guide will be useful for those scenarios. As a lost media hunter, always be sure to perform thorough checks before deeming something to be lost!
