uTorrent Continues to be Flagged as ‘Severe Threat’ and It’s Not alone

upnorth

Moderator
Thread author
Verified
Staff Member
Malware Hunter
Well-known
Jul 27, 2015
5,454
Popular BitTorrent client uTorrent is again being flagged as problematic by anti-virus vendors. This includes Microsoft's Windows Defender, which simply removes the application from the operating system. According to reports, the software is categorized as 'riskware,' 'malware,' and 'potentially unwanted software.' In addition to uTorrent, rival client qBitTorrent is also facing similar problems.
Over the past few years, uTorrent has been repeatedly flagged as ‘malicious’ software. This issue flared up again recently and at the time of writing several anti-virus tools, including Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, label the torrent client as dangerous. We ran the latest installer through a Virustotal scan which shows that uTorrent is flagged by 19 separate companies. The reasons differ from “riskware,” through “Trojan.BtcMine,” to “bundled installer.” Microsoft, for example, categorizes uTorrent as a “Potentially Unwanted Application” (PUA). In fact, the company has had a dedicated uTorrent page in its malware database for years, labeling the software as a severe threat.
 

sg09

Level 2
Verified
Apr 3, 2019
70
uTorrent has long become buggy and crappy adware. Pity, because it used to be a lightweight useful tool. Had I to use a dedicated torrent downloader I would now use Transmission or Deluge. These are cross platform, lightweight and free from adwares. However, I nowadays use Free Download Manager for all kind of large download tasks.
 

EndangeredPootis

Level 10
Verified
Well-known
Sep 8, 2019
461
Considering what torrent clients are capable of doing (i.e illegal downloading of software, which can result in the nastiest of infections) im not surprised they are being flagged.
 

The_King

Level 12
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Aug 2, 2020
540
Considering what torrent clients are capable of doing (i.e illegal downloading of software, which can result in the nastiest of infections) im not surprised they are being flagged.
You can illegally download software even ransomware with any browser as well so we should not be surprised if they too start be flagged. :p

I use torrents for my Linux distro downloads and its awesome!
 

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