BitTorrent tracker available for download from the official site. The FLV player program can also be downloaded separately and used independently of the BitComet software. Search engine The search site is google.atcomet.com Controversy and criticism Hash reporting Since version 0.86 BitComet includes discussion and stat-tracking features which send information about torrents to the Bitcomet.com servers, including the torrent hash. DHT exploit During version 0.60, BitComet received bad publicity because its implementation of the DHT feature, which was new at the time, could be exploited to ignore the private flag of a tracker. This allowed users to avoid download and upload ratio restrictions, which are common on private trackers. Some private trackers responded to this by blacklisting version 0.60. BitComet developer RnySmile reverted the client back to version 0.59 in response to the blacklisting. The DHT exploit was fixed in version 0.61. Padding files Starting with version 0.85 (from early 2007), BitComet added a non-standard option to its torrent maker that ensures that no two data files in a multi-file torrent occupy the same BitTorrent "piece." To accomplish this, BitComet includes in the torrent a collection of empty "padding" files which houses the remainder of each file's last "piece". While these files are transparent to BitComet users, they damage the performance of other clients, because peers must devote resources and bandwidth to the padding files, with no benefit to the non-BitComet users. These files can constitute up to 10% of the total data transferred, creating a substantial drain on the swarm. BitComet developers added this feature to allow support of a feature called Long-Term Seeding in which the BitComet client can download files from other BitComet clients who have an identical file but not from the same torrent. It also allows the downloading of individual files from other non torrent sources like ED2K links. The addition of the padding file ensures that a complete version of the file can be obtained rather than being unable to complete the relevant file or last "piece" Creation of padding files has been enabled by default since version 0.85, and as of version 1.36 is still enabled by default. FileHippo controversy The download site FileHippo ceased carrying new versions of BitComet in April 2008, with this announcement. As of April 2008 FileHippo will no longer be updating BitComet. As they have copied the FileHippo site text, files, images and update checker and are passing it