Furk review – Close community but no private tracker
Furk.net is a torrent downloader with a closed circle of users, which works from your browser. To access this service, you need an invitation from a user that already uses it or by registration through your social media profile. The currently supported are Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
After registration, you will gain the ability to download torrents to your cloud, in torrent speak we would call it fetching. During fetching phase, you are untraceable, because all the torrent downloading happens on Furks’ servers. This feature creates a layer of security that protects your IP address from IP tracking or IP monitoring. Theoretically, you can use this as a workaround for Geolocation ban. The download wouldn’t be done from your IP, which means that the geo software could see a different location. However, there aren’t many geographically restricted trackers on which you will use this.
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Fetching
Fetching phase can take some time, that depends on the number of seeds, on quality of seeds and on technology that Furk uses to download your torrent. I tested fetching many times with different amounts of seeds to see the full scale because it is the only variable that you can change. The first file that I used had more than 180 seeds at the time of testing. The second file I will mention had around 13 seeds (it was changing from 12 to 15) around my experiment. The results are the speed of 1 MB per second for the first file, and 0.1 MB per second for the second file, which means an average rating. These numbers can vary for you, but I can use them as a sign of the general direction.
The download doesn’t work as other sites. You can upload a .torrent file, with info hash, with link to the .torrent file or paste a magnet link to download a new file. The speed that I mentioned above is from using this download. But Furk has “Download Proxy” option, which is an instant download with one condition. The condition is that someone other downloaded it before you. In that case, the file is in “cache”, and you can grab it as well. The search bar, that Furk uses, goes into the cache to see all stored downloads. Every user is part of this sharing, and currently, it is not possible to turn it off for you if you don’t want to share.
Storage
After fetching you can access your file in various ways in your Furk storage. Unfortunately, it is confusing for newcomers since looks like graphics nightmare. You cannot rename, move or create folders on your cloud storage. The design is responsive for mobile devices, but sometimes you will experience issues with the width of some elements. I tested it with iPhone X, Pixel 2 XL and with Blackberry Playbook to see if Furk supports all possible screen resolutions. I found out that Furk is usable from mobile devices, but I would rather use a computer for it. Speaking of storage, the way Furk storage works is that all space is shared between all users.
That means there is no space limit; however, if another user runs out of the storage, the least popular torrent will be deleted. The only way of preventing it (except downloading to your device), is to lock it. Premium users can lockup to 250 GB of content, but free users don’t have this ability at all. Still, you can always download your files again from Deleted files folder. This version also comes with a 250 GB bandwidth limit for its users to not misuse it.
Furk connectivity
Furk used to have an idea of browser add-ons, but sadly this project was abandoned in the early stage. Currently, the only officially supported extensionFR is XBMC plugin for streaming your videos. There are also three android apps, but there are not official, and they could cause some issues.
Downloading speed is average. This downloading depends only on the power of connection between your device and Furk servers. The location of the server is unknown, but I would guess North America because the connection is the strongest there. The standard dropdowns in speed are in Malaysia and China.
Conclusion
Furk gets 3 out of 5 stars rating for their download and fetching speed. I rate 2 out of 5 stars their service and storage, and their security is 2 out of 5 stars, due to all the sharing policies. Furk has an average rating because it is a standard tool which has its flaws and pros.
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