Are Torrent Websites Blocked in Pakistan? For Time Being, Yes!

Torrents

While we are not sure about the fate of Torrents’ websites in Pakistan, it is clear that top torrent websites are snipping in and out during past 25 hours here in this country.

Right now all top torrent websites are inaccessible in Pakistan. However, there are some torrent websites which are still accessible, hinting that the blockade is manual and not automatic.

As reported by over a dozen users in last 24 hours, Torrent websites were reportedly blocked last evening but were re-opened late night. ISPs, including PTCL didn’t clarify on the issue.

Apparently, same has happened today again. Just moments ago access to all torrent websites was blocked in all major cities of Pakistan.

It is interesting to note that P2P connections are running smoothly, its just the torrent websites that are inaccessible.

It maybe recalled that PTCL had capped P2P connections earlier in March this year. Which were later restored by saying that company had to limit the bandwidth usage during submarine cable outage.

PTCL, on its official twitter account, confirmed that Torrent websites are blocked but hinted that they might get reopened. Company said that there are some issues which are being worked out. PTCL didn’t detail the issues.

It is too early to speculate if torrents are permanently blocked in Pakistan or its just a test run to make sure ISPs’ ability to block things. We will keep you posted with updates.

Tech and telecom reporter for over 15 years


  • Yeah its true. PTCL has slowed down all its funcitons. Even browsing has been slow since last 2 days + the torrents are not working correctly as well !!! I thought that I used up all my 50 GB but then the speed was restored after that and then now again the speed is like dead slow ! Not happening in Qubee though ! Kickass.to is still accessible on both but really slow download speed on PTCL !!!!!

  • it’s nearly impossible to block all torrent websites or stop P2P traffic altogether. i think only few public torrent sites are blocked.

    PS: Government don’t know even 5% of total torrent sites.

  • PLUS AAMIR BHAI PTCL INDUCED 20% TAXES & ALSO INCREASED ITS RATES TO 3000RS + 600 TAX !!!!!!!!!! THAT WAS A SILENT KILL AS WELL FROM PTCL AND NO NOTIFICATION WAS ISSUED ! DAMN PTCL ! MOVING OVER FROM PTCL NITRO !!!!!!

    • rite on. i am gonna do the same thing. i don’t wont have trouble paying extra 4/5 hunder RS if the service is good from this SuckTCL

      • Yeah. I wouldn’t have any problem paying 6oo rs extra but first of all I cant stand a 50 gb limit and then I cant stand low speeds from PHATI SEE LAY (PTCL).

        • Saad : kuch sharam kro. ‘P’ stands for Pakistan and you are saying ‘P’ for phati. Plz learn some manners and be patriotic.

          • Uncle Sharam mujhay nahi un PTCL walon ko ani chahiyai jo hum pakistanion ko bewakoo bana rahay hain aur hum se hi paisay loot rahay hain wohbhi bghari kisi announcements k ! Plus sharam apko ani chahiyai k ap PTCL k workers hain ! DISGUSTING !

            • mne evo usb serf torrent ke lee lie ha our ptcl torrent band krdiya ab mra net ks kam ka???????????????????????

          • Huh? Which Pakistan? Had you gone to even pre-school, you would have known that Pakistan died in 1971. What is left is just ashes.

            Go look up, who is Bangladesh. A surprise awaits you.

        • Guys this is not a advertising portal so please calm down :P Everyone has the right to select what suits him/her best so chill ;)

    • Bro you dont have the proper knowledge or info. Taxes are imposed by the Govt. not by the companies. So make it clear.

      • That I know brother. But they increased the charges as well. Taxes were there even when I was receiving the bill of total 3k but now they have increased the charges to 3k and then induces the taxes on them which equals to 600 rs totalling to 3600 Rs. Where is the justice over here ? & I have made it clear in my previous posts !!!!!

  • isohunt looks fine in fsd over evo …it faced issues few days ago but nothing now

    • Isohunt, kickass, extratorrent, torrenthound all are working on my side.
      EVO Wingle

  • they are now blocking file sharing websites also. first they blocked Zedge.net and now 4shared.com is also blocked.

    • Well 4Shared had adult content and advertisement on their site. It had to be banned.
      Whereas Zedge.net is working smoothly.
      PTCL BB

    • But the site is working ek dum OK. I just downloaded a ringtone from zedge. Clear your browser cache and then check the sites.

    • how did you contact? coz there are few torrent sites blocked. bitsnoop, piratebay, bittorrent and few more.

      • My cuzn is in ptcl. he told me that ptcl or government of Pakistan has not pass any orders to pta to block torrent sites it was a temporary issue of gate way which is now resolve i was facing this problem too but not more than 4to5 hours currently i am downloading wwe Monday night raw from kat
        i am commenting on what is right and what is wrong i am not taking any side of ptcl as they don’t paid me to do so.

      • Torrents now back to normal speed and downloading all stuff.You can try it on your computers, will be working.

  • What is PTCL alternative. I think its time to move on from PTCL. They had their fair share of monopolized dictatorship. Lets give someone else a chance.

        • I think PTCL is trying to sniff packets & might resort to recording keystrokes on its customers system without their consent.

          Now’s really the time to think hard about whether you want to sacrifice your civil liberties, or invest in a more permanent solution to this problem ?

          I went from 4Mbps to 2Mbps, and if things like these persist, 1Mbps is not far, which would eventually lead to termination of service from my end.

          I don’t want these retards, mentally deranged people to decide on my behalf what I can or can’t watch online. I’m paying you my hard earned money for your service, so its non of your goddamn business about the activities I do or don’t do online.

          We really ought to sue these mofo’s in consumer courts. This is getting way out of hand as it is.

          • agree with you 100%

            but..

            “sacrifice your civil liberties, or invest in a more permanent solution to this problem ?”

            can you plz elaborate this? plz

          • They cant sniff packets on a massive scale. Besides, they cant record key strokes even if they wanted to. A hardware, or a software keylogger is needed to do that.
            And forget consumers leaving PeeTCL broadband. Had this been a possibility/risk, PeeTCL would have shit their pants already.

      • Yes I agree to that. PTCL is like becoming a pain in the ass. When the Government was unable to put ban PTCL came forward to put ban. Im also against the ban of YouTube. You tube only offers what users search for. Why cant the government people understand this simple rule?

        I use youtube to watch Dr Israr’s lectures, tafseer, Learn sharepoint, sometimes cooking and other stuff. Even watched the Mr. Bhutto’s speech in UN in 1970 where he tore away the papers and left the meeting. Zia ul Haq’s first speech when he promised to hold elections within 90 days (ho ho ho). There is so much there. and these idiots banned it just because it contains the film Fitna? Well Fitna wont appear on your screens unless you search for it and click it to see it.

        It’s not just the youtube. There are certain shaitte sites and the site of Harun Yahya (whose ideas were copied by Shahid Masood for His Ary program End of Time). Why? co Etisalat hold shares in PTCL. since Etisalat is Saudi company where Harun yahya’s sect is not acceptable, PTCL has banned his site for Pakistanis also.

        If you dial their helpline and ask them why certain sites which are not anti-islamic or prono graphic are banned their simple lame answer is “Sir hamari taraf se ye sites banned nahi hain. ye to PTA ne band ki hain, aap PTA se baat karain”. We all know that PTCL imposing ban even more than PTA wants it to,

        How can we stop the PTCL? well if we boycott the PTCL and that way they get a heavy financial punch. writing on twitter and else where doesn’t matter because typical pakistani mentality doesn’t care even, the simple reaction is “Sanu kee!” (who cares). That is the mentality you can see from President, Prime Minister, whole government, big companies down to the level of shopkeepers and bus conductors.

        “Ye Qaum dande ki qaum hai … silent protest pe koi kaan nahi dharta jab tak 4 shops na burn ho jain ya 15, 20 log na mar jain”.

        almost every 3 months the bus fare is changed. does official take notice? Secretary public transport in every city is bribed by transporters. does anyone get fired? protests on tweeter ? …. no no it just wont work!

    • IF you are in Karachi …….. try callin connect or your local area.

      I am getting myself local area cable connection and I have a Qubee wireless as a backup plan.

    • There is no match of the organization in Pakistan.
      Best packages on best affordable rates and diverse range of speeds ! We have our reasons to stick to PTCL

      • Agree Shakir !
        PTCL is far much better than Nayatel and Witribe -_-
        I have used both and trust me, I reverted back to PTCL because is above all these micro organizations.

  • Please block google, facebook, twitter, torrents, dailymotion, Tune, gmail, hotmail. and all other websites that are entertaining us.

    also block all electricity, water, gas and cng.

    And ALLOW terrorism, geo network, sectarianism, MQM, Target killing, snatching etc

  • If you supported porn block (I am asking readers), then you have no reason to complain about torrent block. Everyone knows there are few torrent sites with no porn. The big ones all have porn.

    Remember, PTCL has deep packet inspection and monitoring software. They can simply allow torrent SITES to work while blocking torrent PROTOCAL. What will you do if you are not permitted to seed? That’s right, no one will send data to you fast.

    • I don’t think po*n is the reason to block torrent websites. If they are that serious about blocking po*n than why some po*n sites are up and running again.
      PTCL is blocking torrent sites because they don’t want people to use internet for downloading. Also they don’t want people to watch videos online this is why they blocked youtube..Just browsing is allowed.

      • Their own entertainment portal is biggest example of illegal file hosting. They are openly challenging digital copyrights. Lets start send emails to movies studios asking them to sue PeeTCL’s a$$ for billions of USD so that these scumbags Pee in their pants all the time.

  • Well i dont think so that only PTCL has blocked it. I am using Qubee and Witribe as well. Torrents are not working on these ISPs too. As far as browsing is concerned it is going fine. I am also an Evo user. Speed is good.

    • Well I’m a PTCL user, but I’m not facing any speed-down problems. It’s working fine as it was before. I get 235kbps down speed through IDM (using 2mb package).

      And.. nothing is blocked for me. I can download any torrents. Even PirateBay is working fine to me.

      PTCL might have blocked torrents for some of it’s customers or anything else.

  • How can you say that it is Official account ?? I follow the other PTCL account which seems official and does not tweet anything like that.
    Admin roza laga hua hai kia.

  • I tried to run torrents on nayatel in my office and witribe in my home, but it did not work, but then downloaded movie via my EVO.

  • Hurray, Torrents are working and now back to my movie download. Issue resolved guys :)

  • We have now a habit to blame anyone without seeing reason, that is the case with torrents blockade issue. Torrents by the way are working in lower speed than previously.I have PTCL broadband and it works smoothly.

  • I would say blocking torrent would be blocking piracy if Pakistan.
    So stop crying for something which you do not deserve and stop being criminal.
    Buy the stuff which you want.
    Anyhow ! I just checked. All torrents sites are working and torrents are being downloaded as well. -_-

  • What is the purpose of high speed internet if almost everything is being blocked?

    I say downgrade your connections at once to teach these morons a lesson.

  • Wow. Admin before writing this you should check whether torrents are working or not. Because my torrents are working and downloading the files like normal. So this article has no value for me.

  • yeah im also facing that slow browsing issue but pirate bay is working fine at my side ..

  • How pathetic that an important matter is being discussed on this forum, but cheap de-marketing & marketing skills are being employed to change our opinion. OK PTCL may not the best ISP in the world but Wi-Tribe is no saint either. I have had the gruesome experience of a wi-tribe connection at home, it was more like prehistoric tribe if you ask me. I also see some PTCL Casanovas defending them like Mother Russia, please guys accept when you are wrong.

    • Yeah exactly. ProPakistani should only allow registered members to post comments (The one with the green names)

    • PeeTCL, Yateem, Wi-Shit, Quppi, MayBeLink – all are rubbish ISPs. I hope they die a gruesome death in technological terms.

  • Torrents websites as well as P2P connections are working fine on Wateen Network in Islamabad.

    • Han logo sunoooo…..ahem elaan………Yateem ka network kaam kar raha hi. Unky ek tout ny bataya hi.
      Ye wo nakaam company hi jo kuch he arsy mein logo k paisy ly kar bhag jaey gi.

  • I am using PTCL and i my area torrents are working fine. Just downloaded complete season. I wonder why you people are blaming.

  • Not sure if this initiative is from PTA or not, however PTCL have the worst services, worst ever.

    No one knows better than me, used their
    – Land Lines (Dial up back then)
    – V-Fone
    – Evo Nitro

    Always came across staff who had no idea about most common things, worst support and pathetic services. Not what they had promised.

    I noticed that blockade at my office’s ptcl connection, however on my home LinkDotNet connection all torrent sites are working perfectly.

    • There must be some other kind of technical problem dear. If you having any issue contact the helpline.

  • @ptclcares is the best telecom support ever in Pakistan, someone smart is behing that twitter account.

    And Torrent sites are working fine for me, they were working fine last time also when people were complaining that their torrents are blocked.

  • I am using EVO wingle and so far all torrents site is working fine at my end with proper speed.. But as far as overall speed of PTCL its not stable from few weeks

  • all the inappropriate advertisement servers should be banned, but there is not need to ban torrent websites.

    I use ad-blocker software in my pc, I brows almost any torrent and other FREE SOFTWARE PROVIDER websites time to time and I never see any nude or inappropriate content.

    Torrents are good, torrent websites are good, inappropriate contents are mostly pulled from external servers. Luckily I am not in PK to be disturbed by such foolish actions by punks

  • They don’t necessarily have to watch our key strokes when we use unecrypted sites all the time. They know where we go to so they can build a profile of us.

    Also, do note that all traffic goes through the PIE gateway which they control. So no matter which ISP you switch to your packets can be snooped there.

  • How to download torrents now: Yes websites are blocked but you can use a proxy software e-g spotflux. it will open the desired site Piratebay etc. download torrent. Disable/close proxy software and open the torrent file in your client. Enjoy

  • This is shit! What is the point of blocking torrent sites? do they want us to purchase things like softwares, movies etc? PTCL workers have gone mad now. First youtube, then proxies, and now torrents.. d fuck they think they r doing. . i guess after blocking torrents they’ll turn to social media.. that’s what we have left. Insane.

  • Dont worry about torrent block or seeding. seedbox is here in cheap price start with 1200rs pkr PM me


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