A lot of us use torrents to download stuff - some legal and even more of the pirated kind.

We all know torrents are not really anonymous. Your IP addresses of get sent to the torrent tracker as well as to other torrent clients downloading a file from you. But this is ok as no body tracks who is sharing or downloading what... right?

Well YOU ARE JUST BUSTED. A website called youhavedownloaded.com maintains a huge database of millions of IP-addresses and even worse - the torrents that these IP addresses have been downloading. Shocked?

The site claims they track more than 20% of all public bittorrent downloads. Just visit the site and you will be immediately shown a history or your recent bittorrent file downloads.

Obviously if you use dynamic IP-addresses, NAT or a router, the site is going to show you content someone else has downloaded. All these hide your actual IP behind a public IP-address and the site will show you all files that have been downloaded using the public IP-address by different users.

According to Suren Ter, one of the sites founders, the service doesn't separate dynamic IPs to differentiate users. However, the download timestamps are recorded. That means if there is a record of IP-address 2.2.2.2 downloading a file at a particular time, the same can be used to pin-point the actual person, by finding out whom the IP was alloted at that time by your Internet service provider.

Ok relax. The site is not really created not to bust people, but to make people aware of the public nature of torrent technology. From the site's privacy policy -

Baby, this is the Internet. There is no such a thing as privacy around here. You are sitting in the privacy of your own house, clicking links, reading stuff, watching movies — it seems like you are pretty much alone. But smart nerds are watching you. They watch your every move. You are not human to them. You are a target — a consumer. And, most importantly — a potential consumer! This magic word opens a hunt on you.

The site also allows you to remove your IP records with a single mouse click. They added it in after email requests to remove records started piling up. Some of the interesting ones include a guy who claimed he downloaded Harrold & Kumar only because his grandmother was ill and he wanted to cheer himself up. Another kid requested to have his information removed because he was downloading porn and was afraid his parents would find out.

The website is a wake up call for many of us. Torrents really did usher in a new era of file sharing, but you are not anonymous when it comes to downloading pirated stuff. youhavedownloaded.com itself has recorded nearly 52,902,000 users and 113,200 torrents. Others could also be recording sitting in the dark!!!