shit, guess I am eastern European despite never having left North America. My ISP just doesn't give a shit.
shit, guess I am eastern European despite never having left North America. My ISP just doesn't give a shit.
This comment is hilarious. It has a poetic quality to it.
@Alextheacceptable In Germany, there are lawyers specialised on torrents. They collect German IPs from the peers list and mass-sue them over distributing copyrighted material. They always ask for a settlement payment of more than 5000€. It can usually be escaped by taking it to court, but I recommend not going through that.
So, depends on your location. Over here, download one movie without a VPN and you have a shit ton of legal crap coming your way.
@SolOrion They don't deal with ISPs outside the country, because they can't sue them at a German court.
So they need to know it's a German ISP beforehand so they can request personal information accordingly. But maybe they could still figure it out from IPv6 address ranges... I'm not entirely sure.
Yes you can do that easiely with a ripe whois query. And they definitely do.
You get an IPv6 prefix from your ISP. This way you have thousands of public addresses for yourself, but they still can identify you by the prefix.
Maybe even better as with IPv4. Because nowadays most people have DualStack Lite which means you have unique public IPv6 addresses but only a shared IPv4 address.
I've always seen this as a question of risk. What you're asking is the digital equivalent to "Do I really need to wear my seatbelt when driving?"
You can drive around your car two hours a day, every day, without a seatbelt, and be fine for years. You can say you live in a calm neighborhood and say no one ever drives recklessly there. Everyone is still going to tell you to always wear your seatbelt.
You can be very careful about what you torrent. You could possibly torrent lots of things with no problems at all. All it takes is one person at one other endpoint grabbing your IP from one torrent and reporting, to cause a lot of problems.
It's up to you if you want to take that risk, but when you're asking for advice no one is ever going to tell you that you don't need one, and if they are they're probably giving bad advice. There are enough horror stories that many don't think it's worth the risk.
I'm on a bicycle and am wearing a helmet though
How else would I use them anyway xD
I live in 3rd world country where the government doesn't care much about torrent/piracy too. So far there's no problem.
I guess it depends more on the country you live. If nobody is using VPN, you will probably be fine.
Do you live in a country where the authorities are taking action against torrenting? Yes, you should absolutely be using a VPN, because otherwise you're presenting your identity on a silver platter.
Do you live in a country where the authorities don't give a fuck? Then no, a VPN won't be necessary.
That ultimately depends on what jurisdiction you're in and what laws apply. It varies wildly country to country.
I can only give my experience. I live in the US and thought my ISP didn’t care, but when I got nasty letters about me torrenting Rick and Morty, I started using a VPN.
You don't technically need a VPN for torrenting, but unless you live in a country that is known to not care about piracy, then you should use one.
Alternatively if price is an issue (NEVER use a “free” VPN) you could torrent over I2P, which is free and very safe (at least as safe as tor, if not moreso).
Also the next release of qbittorrent is about to have built in I2P support (but also standard I2P comes with its own torrenting software).
What else are they useful for?
You can use them to unlock tons of file locker sites.
Depending who you use (the main 3 are real debris, all debris and premiumize) they can all unlock a ton of file locker services
If you use Kodi or something like stremio you can use your sub to unlock a mass of video streaming options for shows/movies
Premiumize (which granted 2x the price of real debrid) also has Usenet support
I personally use RD for torrent, Kodi, and download PlayStation roms from 1fichier
I've been torrenting in the US for a decade and a half without a VPN, including as a kid on my parents network LOL, and only got warnings, maybe once every couple years. Tons of copyrighted materials. ATT then Charter, YMMV.
If you live in third world country then you definitely don't need one.
What I've learned overtime is high profile things like movie releases will see a nice email from your ISP. Anime relating thing that are under the radar won't have much trouble. A little risky, but that what I've learned on that side.
In France it is not very necessary, the hadopi will send you warnings. You need to stop at least 6 month after you receive a mail warning.
Then you are good to go.
I use stremio for ages without any problems.
Still i recommend vpn usage for torrents. You can share accounts with multiple persons to lower the price.
In Belgium, I torrented for a decade when I was younger, and I recently (about a year ago) switched back to torrenting as streaming services get more fragmented and more expensive.
I've never had any letter or email from anyone for torrenting. Some of my friends torrent much more than me and haven't either.
My coworkers from NL and UK are terrified of me even mentioning torrenting.
It depends very much on the copyright laws on where you live. You said you don't live in the US, which already makes you better off than a lot of people here -However, Europe also has very strict © laws. So it is always recommended.
If your ISP doesn't care then you are good.
Depends how the laws are where you are, as /u/fell@ma.fellr.net explained some people join torrents just to grab a list of ip's and sue them. I know in canada your statement is true the isp is legally required to send you the legal notice, but if they dont care then your service will continue as the notice is as far as they can take it (AFAIK).
I think it depends on the country. In the US, ISPs tend to be fairly strict so using a VPN is necessary (at least with Comcast). After 6-7 DMCAs, I've heard of people getting their accounts and service terminated. Best to use one and not take the chance with them. With 3rd world countries, most ISPs don't care about DMCAs so I can see there not being a need to use one in those situations.
Wow times have changed for sure. This thread convinced me to get a VPN of some kind at least
I find that most VPNs are so heavily shilled that by that very nature, makes them suspect. Since the days of Napster, WinMX, Bearshare and the like, I've gotten exactly 2 "Hey, knock it off" letters from my ISP. And they were both from new-release, mouse-affiliated movie releases from a public tracker.
Get in with some of the private trackers and 99.9% of the worry disappears. Try not to upload terabytes of data, and the majority of ISPs (I mean, two of the 3 that seem to have the monopolies at least) wont even bother sending the notices.
Totally doesn't take "terabytes of data". I'm in the US, and one time I got a notice from my ISP (Comcast) for a file that took all of 7 seconds to download. It was an episode of an HBO show so no mouse affiliation, and also pretty sure I was using a private tracker (can't remember exactly, though, since it's probably been 10 years, and I've been using a VPN ever since).
"pretty sure I was on a private tracker" - well there's your problem right there. You probably weren't. Not saying that you're lying or the like, but just so we're clear, Im differentiating between "Demonoid private" wherein everybody could create an account damned near whenever, and "UHD private" wherein it relies on a system of invites and/or interviews.
Hell I got one from a 90's tv show, they are in torrents where you least expect them
A VPN is not necessary for torrent usage.
But if you live in a country that enforces copy right etc online, it's highly recommended, as a VPN will make it almost impossible to track you down.
A VPN is like a costume. You don't need to wear one to do something illegal, but wearing one will make it much harder for authorities to identify you.
A VPN is like a costume that makes you look just like some other guy and you need his permission to wear the costume, and he also may know everything that you do in the costume, and may say he's not keeping track of what you're doing in the costume but still be lying and later compelled to tell others what you were doing in that costume.
It's a minor protection, but depending on where your VPN provider is located, it may not even be "minor protection".
Last time i did this, i got a nice email from my isp giving me a warning that they may turn off my internet.
My country only sees an issue if I'm producing and sitributing pirated content and is really behind on digital laws, and mostly they dont give a fuck. In universities they encourage you to pirate books even show you how, especially with scientific papers and stuff, back when playstation games where only physical there where whole stores dedicated to selling pirated games. Latin america I guess. But on top of that VPNs are freaking expensive. Depends on your situation thou
In the UK, torrent sites are blocked by the ISPs, so you would need a VPN to access the sites.
i live in ny and i have gotten letters from spectrum in the past. havent gotten one since i went vpn (referral?) and seedbox. im not torrenting, as i am logging into the seeedbox (referral?) via ftp and transferring the files over that way. so far so good.
Why not get a seedbox? Most come with Plex and Jellyfin so you can stream the content of the seedbox. Also they generally provide VPNs.
I got one of Hetzner's "used" servers with 60TB of space for $45/mo (they had smaller too, but I'm building hella ratio). Just make sure you encrypt. I also only do private trackers through it, which definitely helps with ISP snooping. If I was going to use public trackers I'd probably still use a VPN or I2P.
yes. sorry. it's cheaper then buying countless games and software, whatever you use it for. think of it as getting a massive discount on things you'd have been forced to buy otherwise. overtime, you'd spend thousands of dollars in games, etc. VPN monthly cost is a small price to pay comparibly
worst that can happen is your ISP sends you a letter to stop, then get a VPN.
For a private tracker no, for public trackers it depends on your country. Some countries the worst you might get is an email or letter in the mail, other countries you will be sued. I even use a VPN for private trackers, let alone public trackers.
I would recommend using a VPN.
I personally wouldn't take the chance. Mullvad is €5 a month, and is worth it to me. My ISP completely shut off my service before ever giving me a notification. I had to completely restart service after going full Karen and blaming it on "my kids." I would do a few searches and find posts or info relevant to your area or ISP.
+1 for Mullvad! They were raided with a search warrant by Swedish Police who ended up leaving empty handed because the customer data they wanted simply does not exist
Mullvad stopped providing port forwards, so they're not ideal for torrenting anymore. They were great before.
American here, I've torrented movies and anime for a few years now and only got one warning (For downloading "The Big Short" of of Pirate bay). I have since stopped seeding on that site, though a seed on smaller ones. I have had no issues with lawyers since.
VPN that I use is about 50USD for a two year cycle, pretty cheap if you commit for a while. Even beyond torrents just not letting your ISP scoop up all your browsing data is worth the price.
Depends of the country and your ISP. In Argentina for example, piracy is so common that nobody bothers to ban or create regulation for it.
Can you use real debrid to automatically grab torrents from a private tracker (maybe through autobrr)?
Not as far as I know.
You manually add Torrents (or with Kodi , stremio etc it adds them). Thing with these services if another user has already added them then they are cached already and you can just download them straight off.
Sorry, do you mean using it in place of BitTorrent wouldn't be good? Does it not seed back?
I think the issue is often getting other people to download them. Unless you have very specific filters for which torrents to download, you could end up with a bunch of garbage.
VPNs are only really necessary if you use public trackers. Private trackers are generally viewed as small enough and not worth the bother by copyright holders to pursue. Like someone else said earlier, it’s a matter of risk. I tend to view private trackers, especially those seen as “elite” and difficult to enter as being very safe.
Private trackers tend to have better quality control and selection. They also have stricter rules about ratio, seeding, and behavior. An invite is required. Sometimes you can go through an interview process to get an invite. Usually once you get started in a decent private tracker you can get into others through recruitment. I won’t name names, but it’s not hard to find info.
Nope! The server provider will definitely be monitoring your activity and probably will report you for torrenting. VPNs shift trust, even self-hosted ones. Do you trust Amazon AWS or Google Cloud or whatever provider you're using? I certainly hope not.
@Vitaly
Then yeah you're probably good actually.
Look, if you want peace of mind use it, but it is also true that you will most likely be fine with it.
I personally use NordVPN, and I have been always torrenting with pretty good speed. I am pretty sure there are cheaper alternatives.
Good luck to You. :-)
There are a lot of self-hostable VPN services out there which are free. There is also Mullvad as previously mentioned and I myself use Nord (I don't necessarily recommend it for privacy, but it was convenient when I got it).
It (possibly) adds a layer of security. Of course you're just passing your traffic through them. Should they get summoned to court or ordered they could turn over your information and show you were trafficking through them. I'd say to read into how your nation persecutes copyright. How strict are they, how often have people been legally attacked cause of it, etc. If you're in Japan for example, I'd say 100% use a VPN. Copyright is extremely serious there.
Right. I keep having to remind myself and others all a VPN does is pass traffic elsewhere. Still at the whims of whatever security measures your VPN does or doesn't do.
Very true. Not all VPNs are created equal and it's important to research, but ultimately you are putting your trust in them with your data. They provide anonymity but you need to trust them that they don't compromise your security. And of coruse you should still do everything else you can to maximise your security on the internet.
You're probably fine, but I recommend just getting a free VPN to keep your ISP at bay. I don't like Proton, but they do have a free VPN. Google around and you can find some others too, if that one is too slow
Look into a seedbox. They can be had for very cheap in some places and then you're not torrenting anything at all to your local network, you're just transferring everything over an encrypted ftp connection. I use whatbox and absolutely love it. I'm sure there are cheaper options though.
It really depends on how likely you are going to be caught and what the consequences are. Your ISP may not care but copyright holders generally band together and have legal set ups in most countries both trying to take down servers and end users, lobby for legal changes including trying to criminalise copy right infingement.
Generally a trustworthy VPN is a very good idea not just for torrenting but for maintaining privacy and security when you are doing other things such as banking, or even just browsing. A VPN is about protecting all your data and internet traffic, not just protecting you when torrenting.
In terms of Torrenting, a Proxy may be enough and a lot of the best VPN providers do provide Proxy servers (that anonymise the detail of your Torrenting use but the rest of your computer use would be on the open internet) in addition to full VPN connections that secure your whole PC for P2P and non-P2P uses.
If a VPN seems too expensive, then there are companies that also only provide Proxy connecftions. BTGuard.com is an example; the Proxy only option is 30% cheaper than the full VPN option.
EDIT: Note though, a VPN is about anonymity. You need to trust your VPN provider as you're passing your data through them, and it is not a substitue for secure practices on the internet. You still need to be secure on the internet including only downloadling from trustworthy locations, using antivirus and malware protection, not installing software from insecure places, using HTTPS and securing your internet browser, turning on tracking protection & ad blocking, and even considering using virtualisation to protect yourself even more.
My suggestion is to looks for a seedbox service, there are plenty to choose from (some better then others). From there you can download content and use something like FTP or Rsync to bring it over to your local drive.
The bonus is your download times will be fairly quicker in most instances.
You are fine without a VPN until you aren't anymore. Torrenting was fine in basically every country until it wasn't anymore. And then some people got burned without a warning.
So you can roll the dice, it might take years until people start caring in your country and you are fine until then. Or they might start caring in a few months. If you aren't, there is a chance you will have time to react to the news when other people first get hit in your country or you will be one of the first. If you are already using a VPN you can rest assured that you won't be one of the first.
It is unfortunately a Reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/index
My recommendation is to subscribe to Eweka when it's on promotion. I pay around $3/month since I pay for a year up front, and it recurs for that price.
Secondly, pay for NZBGeek.
Between those two you're mostly set. If you really start using your subscriptions a lot, you can look into alternate backbones and indexers.
You can automate all of this with Radarr and Sonarr. They are my favourite pieces of software ever.
If you're open to paying a few bucks, look into Real-Debrid.
Yes but it's not quite as easy. For example, QxR generally releases everything on 1337. On Usenet you're going to get a mix of re-ups, remixes from various groups, new groups you haven't heard of, and they might be on various indexers. Generally speaking, I have no issues finding a good quality x265 rip, but I might have to try a couple if I haven't heard of the release team. For this reason I've configured preferences in Radarr and Sonarr which will preference QxR, for example. I also include public torrent trackers.
I used to be all over usenet. Starting about 10-12 years ago most of the indexers turned to shit; either that or takedowns have eviscerated the back catalog of content from providers. I've yet to find a good tracker that can find anything (that's more than 12-24 hours old).
I use usenet, but I find that I have a lot of issues finding content in other language than English. Also, finding rarer content is harder too. So I also use torrents to complete what I can't find over usenet. To this day I would like to get content in French, but it's hard.
This means that I still need a torrenting setup with VPN.
Yeah this is my setup. Sure it does mean you have to pay for a couple of things, but I find its the best way. Plug a Usenet provider and a couple of indexers into the aars, set it as highest priority, then some decent torrent trackers as lower prio.
Usenet will handle grabbing the majority of your requests without having to worry about seeding, ratio and such and the torrent trackers act as a fallback and for stuff like season packs which don't tend to get uploaded to Usenet and anything older or rarer that might not be available on usenet. So far though I've found it's not too much that doesn't get grabbed by usenet, but the torrent trackers are a nice backup.
Long ago, you could get away with block lists, but no longer. Unless your country doesn't gaf, a VPN is a must. I suggest Mullvad (you'll never see them advertising on podcast/YT videos which should tell you something). There's no signing up, no emails they store, and they assign you a 16 digit code which serves as your login credentials. If you pay with crypto or send cash, you're super safe.
You'll need a VPN that allows portforwarding:
here's an unfortunately reddit link:
I was with mullvad but they stopped allowingport forwarding so using Airvpn - they had a deal of 2 years for $75 or something.
Works well.
Definitely should have one. Highly recommend Proton VPN personally. I love their software suite.
Not sure if works well
You can check if something appears on https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/
@SpaceCadet2000 holy shit i didnt know this existed! also if i see something here that i didn't torrent does that mean someone in my apartment be torrenting?
Yes, if you have a static IP address. If you have a dynamic IP address you can just be seeing the other people who previously had that IP address. It will depend on your ISP.
hahaha I guess it doesn't work well then XD
Edit: Although, it doesn't have everything so maybe it works a little bit
For information on it: Anonymous Mode
Someone in my neighbourhood appears to be downloading an archive of reddit: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/...
@Hyolobrika @lamp @KingPyrox @SpaceCadet2000 @Alextheacceptable I am a very boring man
Anonymous mode is NOT enough. It is just meant to enhance protections by anonymising your traffic as much a possible. But your data still leaks and is enough for people to persue you. For example, if you live in a flat share and you and your flatmate torrent, by turning on Anonymous mode your client's unique "finger print" is not shared, so it would be difficult to determine which of you did the downloading if you both use it. But you're still leaking information on what you're downloading so it can still be traced to your flat.
You need to use either a Proxy service or a full VPN service. And if you're sharing with other people then encourage them to do the same, or secure your internet connection at the source (you can set up VPNs to work on your router so ALL internet traffic is secured)
You all seem to be starting from the basis that downloading a torrent is illegal. It is not, it is only distribution/upload that's an issue. If you behave as a leech and kill it after you're done the worst you're going to get is a complaining letter from your ISP.
I torrent without a VPN and haven't had a single email from my ISP, but I presume it's because I'm a business customer.
Never had a letter from my ISP and I’ve been torrenting for 20 years.
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
I was brought up thinking I live in a central europe. The "heart of europe" they called it. Only once I realized that I torrent without a VPN without consequences, I accepted the fact that I'm eastern european AF.
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