In addition, they attempt to make traffic harder to identify by third parties including internet service providers (ISPs).
However, encryption will not protect one from DMCA notices from sharing illegal content, as one is still uploading material and the monitoring firms can merely connect to the swarm.
Similar protocol obfuscation is supported in up-to-date versions of some other (non-BitTorrent) systems including eMule.
Protocol header encryption (PHE) was conceived by RnySmile and first implemented in BitComet version 0.60 on 8 September 2005.
In late January 2006 the developers of Vuze (then known as Azureus) decided to design and simultaneously implement a new, open protocol obfuscation method, called message stream encryption (MSE).
After negotiations between different BitTorrent developers, a new proposal was written and then implemented into the Azureus and μTorrent betas within days.
To ensure compatibility with other clients that don't support this specification, users may also choose whether unencrypted incoming or outgoing connections are still allowed.
[citation needed] Notably, when μTorrent was purchased by BitTorrent, Inc. and then became the next mainline release, the ability to originate encrypted connections was retained, but it became turned off by default.
In an interview in 2007, Cohen stated "The so-called 'encryption' of BitTorrent traffic isn't really encryption, it's obfuscation.