uTorrent, a leading software for all torrent fans out there, is being downloaded by millions around the world monthly. The small torrent client has grown into a world-wide phenomenon over the years, becoming the most popular bittorrent client, due to its small client size (just a smudge over 1 MB), ease of use and general performance. However, while the uTorrent client is completely free to download and is not malware in itself, torrent files used by the software and found around various websites on the internet can be often blocked by antivirus programs.
More recently, it seems that Google’s own browser, Chrome, is blocking the uTorrent client for thousands of users, labeling it malicious software. Google Chrome is one of the most used browsers in the world, offering to be a strong alternative for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox. The news about Chrome blocking out downloads of the uTorrent client was picked up by TorrentFreak, a popular hub for people using torrents. Multiple users across several forums and boards have been complaining about the inability to download uTorrent’s free client through Google Chrome, having to resort to alternative browsers to get and instal the program. However, this might be a temporary issue, as the uTorrent client is completely safe to download and install.
The browser also does not block all versions of uTorrent. Issues have only been reported with the client’s latest stable version, the 3.4.2 build 38429, released on the 2nd of February. The client size of the uTorrent installer is 1.66 MB. We’ve looked into the matter and did some extensive antivirus checks to see whether or not the file is malicious or not, and we can state that it’s completely safe to download the client, despite issues with Chrome. If you can’t use Google’s browser to get the latest stable version for the uTorrent client, we recommend you use another browser for this purpose. We still emphasize that while the client in itself is malware-free, torrent files around the web might not be, so as always, tread carefully. Also, keep in mind that while torrent files can be used to transfer and download all sorts of data, copyrighted content download is still considered piracy, so make sure you know what you’re downloading with it.