Do you use an anonymous network for downloading?

I2P support anonymous torrents

TOR is good for direct downloads (DDL)

Don't know if others exist...

65 comments

Controversial take: TOR shouldn't be used to download large amounts of pirates stuff. The network is already slow and congested and should be kept available for people that need it to fight censorship or other forms of oppression.
Why not get a VPN? Even a free one like Proton allows DDL and gives you protection. And it's also faster.
- TOR needs to have a lot of 'background noise' legit use, otherwise the folks needing to hide in the weeds stick out like a sore thumb.
  
  What kind of legit stuff can be done on tor?
- Controversial take: TOR shouldn't be used to download large amounts of pirates stuff.
  Maybe only controversial amongst entitled filesharers (read: those who are simply too lazy or cheap to use something else). The Tor project has been recommending against this since even before 2010: https://blog.torproject.org/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea/

I don't since I live in a third world country. Can seed at 1Gbps with no warnings whatsoever, 20€ monthly
- I that case, why not help spread a little freedom in the rest of the world by hosting an I2P node?
  We should make torrenting over I2P the default.
  Any dissidents in places like China who are caught using it could then plausibly claim they were just downloading a movie.
  
  I seed around 5Tb monthly but that sounds interesting
  
  I2P
  isnt hosting a node a very easy way to get the police knocking on your door? i dont want csam flowing through my network
  
  Any dissidents in places like China who are caught using it could then plausibly claim they were just downloading a movie.
  You really think that would stick? Just a couple days ago there was a news article of a guy getting sued for using a VPN for remote work
- I don’t since I live in a third world country. Can seed at 1Gbps with no warnings whatsoever, 20€ monthly
  I read
  I don't since I don't live in a third world country.
  Give your country more credit if you have a 1Gbps connection and it doesn't enforce draconian idiotic laws. Just out of curiosity, can you name the country?
  
  I would guess Hungary. It has fast internet, but it also has idiotic laws.
- You use a VPN, right?
  
  They don't need one. No enforceable copyright law.
  
  Not really necessary everywhere. Still not a bad idea though I'm sure.
- So, that's a "no, I don't use an anonymous network"?
  
  The thing about second/third world countries is that if they don't even care about what you download, they still care about what kind of resources you visit. So, you still have to use various tools for censorship circumvention, and conventional vpn services generally don't work. Thus people often use tor, i2p, etc, but not for downloading (although tor, for instance, often doesn't work without bridges in such countries). And to be honest, downloading via tor is a very bad idea, that's not how it should be used.

I don't like DDL over Tor as it is not really designed for heavy bandwidth. I2P could be the future once more users start using it, right now BiglyBT can crossover on the clearnet and I2P.
- IIRC TOR is OK with a stream from one source (DDLs fit the bill), but isn't made for handling many streams at once. I2P is good for that --> torrenting over I2P doesn't stress the network as much.
  I2P needs more nodes though. It's much slower than TOR
  
  Thank you for the correction, it is true that a DDL is a single connection usually, where as torrenting is many connections and that is what's bad for Tor.

I toyed with i2p several years ago. Back then it was very frustrating - both slow as a snail and hard to find working, non-darknet resources.
I recently saw a c++ implementation, so I will toy with it again.
For now, a VPN is enough for me to be safe, and I can get speeds up to 15 MB on popular torrents.
- I couldn't get past "Firewalled" stage when I tried i2p. Too slow for me back then.

Is TOR good for direct downloads? Isn't it pretty slow?
- TOR now has quite some big nodes. If you're lucky and your path goes through them, you can hit speeds of around 1MB/s - I know I have.
  Plus, with a small linux box that downloads the stuff for you overnight, it's not really an issue. You can use JDownloader with TOR as a proxy. Add links to it to download, go to bed and wake up with everything downloaded 🫰
  
  I could not live with just 1MB/s down…

no, 97% via streaming http and the rest is via streaming torrent directly

Me and a few friends pitch in together and pay for a seedbox. Much more convenient since I don’t need to keep my computer running to download/seed. And you connect to it via encrypted FTP.

Just use Usenet
- Isn't that pay to use? And is it anonymous?
  
  Just as anonymous as a vpn (usenet instead of a vpn). Plus it's the host taking the risk, not the customers; cops/copyright holders are interested in the distribution not the consumption. With torrents, you are the host and a consumer; usenet your just a consumer.
  I pay 8$/mo for the usenet provider and indexer together and get a constant 45-50mbps download speed out of it (mostly limited by disk speed really). I've also found far more content available via usenet and one indexer vs the 18+ torrent indexers I used to use.

Been doing some DC++ over Yggdrasil with good success
- Yggdrasil
  Doesn't seem to be anonymous (emphasis mine)
  Is Yggdrasil anonymous?
  No, it is not a goal of the Yggdrasil project to provide anonymity. Direct peers over the Internet will be able to see your IP address and may be able to use this information to determine your location or identity. Multicast-discovered peerings on the same network will typically expose your device MAC address. Other nodes on the network may be able to discern some information about which nodes you are peered with.
  I hope you aren't relying on it for anonymity.
  
  I should note that I'm not relying on Yggdrasil for anonymity inside the network, rather more for anonymity towards observations from outside the network. And also mostly anonymity towards what I'm communicating when observed from outside the network.

I often use Tribler for torrents. It’s a TOR-like system specialized into torrent, and does work well with any torrents. (I’ll put a warning that the system might not be totally safe against targetted attack, but it should be against standard complaint to ISP)

Define "anonymous". I use Soulseek, but you need an account for that.
- Anonymous as the source doesn't know your real IP and intermediate nodes don't know what you're saying (encryption).
  With I2P and TOR, only the entry nodes know your real IP, but they don't know what you're saying (thus don't know what you're accessing), and the target node or exit node doesn't know who requested the data.

No. I’m in US and just use one tracker, torrent leech. It’s never caused my ISP to flag me and I’ve used it over 10 years now. If you have a good source for torrents you don’t need a VPN

For torrents, a VPN might be the best bet as others have pointed out. But for direct download, just DoH should be enough.

Yeah I seed some printable firearms files torrents over I2P, and seed other stuff I find on tracker2.postman.i2p

Enable full bidirectional encryption in your torrent client and only use reputable private tracker communities, and you won't have these kind of issues
- How does one find private tracker communities?
  
  No idea sorry, I got into mine a decade ago. Know someone is best. Private trackers are hard to get into for this exact reason so yeah
- Some private trackers that I use say that the torrent client should not fully enable encryption due to the tracker not being able to track up/download stats iirc.

65 comments

Is Yggdrasil anonymous?