Does a vpn really matter when torenting? Do people care?
I know this is a dumb question... But i cant really aford a vpn like at all, is it possible to torrent without using a vpn in the USA or will i get in some trouble and go to jail if i torrent without a vpn?
The reason i cant get a vpn is because im just broke and im young enough to live with family so i cant really get a job.
Don’t go tormenting without a VPN.
But im broke which is why i want to pirate, Do i just use a bunch of free trials?
r/whoosh
That sucks but if you do it you'll just be broke without internet access.
You can use a free VPN, they're just going to log and sell all your internet traffic data.
You can earn Microsoft Rewards points by using Bing search egine in the US, redeem them for gift cards, for personal use or to sell/trade for cheap cash. I think in the US you can earn up to 15-20k points per month, a $10 gift card costs like 9k points.
...depending on your country. Some countries don't give a flying fuck: in that case, don't waste money on VPNs if you don't need it.
On behalf of whoever is paying for your internet connection, do not torment without a VPN.
If you ignore this advice, be aware that the aformentioned person will get a nastygram in the mail, complete with the exact title of the torment you downloaded. They have no qualms with outing your darkest perversions to the breadwinner(s) in your household.
In my experience the nastygram accused me of downloading a ton of different things but I there was only maybe one thing I actually did? They’re very bad at figuring out what you’re torrenting only that you are
Those letters originate from the rights holders, who have leechers in the swarm, verifying that you are actively uploading data to them. Your ISP doesnt care if you torrent, or who you torrent to. They wont originate a letter unless a rightsholder requires them to.
The rightsholder has your IP address, and the name of the file you sent them. Data for those files was sent to their leechers by your IP address, perhaps not by you, but by some machine operating on your network, or through it.
It is possible that the letter to your ISP included a list of both IP addresses belonging to several of their customers, and filenames sent from all of those customers. It is possible that the ISP sent out letters to each of the individual subscribers, and just attached the full list of files from the original complaint.
Depends on jurisdiction and what you torrented. Is the US uniformally militant on torrents?
I mean I torrented without a VPN on comcast/xfinity and nothing happened besides a few emails, eventually they stopped even sending those emails. I mean I had my own unlimited mobile data plan, and everyone in my household is abusive to me so I just decided to test what happens, worse case scenario, their internet gets shut off and I'd just have to use my own mobile hotspot connection. (Don't judge, I'm just very petty about being on the receiving end of abusive behavior and I would sabotage my own family for revenge) Welp, after like 6 months of downloads, nothing happened, I eventually stopped doing that and used a VPN because I wanted to watch some weird tv shows and movies that I didn't want them know about.
But this is anecdotal, don't test this at home.
Save your lunch money for however long it takes to be able to buy a year of VPN like Mullvad in your country.
You aren't paying for your internet so you'd be an asshole to put the account holder under scrutiny for torrenting without protection. Especially when they are also covering your rent, elecricity, gas, food, clothing, etc. Don't be a selfish asshole.
If you can't get VPN don't be entitled and go off torrenting because other people say it is fine. You aren't paying for internet so you don't get the privilege to decide if it is fine or not.
Mullvad stopped allowing port forwarding, sadly, which complicates torrenting. They had valid reasons for dropping support, but it makes it much harder to complete a solid connection via Mullvad.
Still sad about this. Mullvad feels like the best privacy-centric choice and I've been using them for a year, but once I set up my media server I realized how vital port forwarding is. Ended up switching to Proton, who I'm still uncomfortable with due to their CEO's political comments earlier this year, but they're arguably the best choice right now.
Yeah mullvad is great for certain use cases but torrenting is not one of them
Just keep any torrent you download seeding after you finished the download and you will easilly get a seed/download ratio of 2 or more.
Even without static port-forwarding, the NAT translation done by the Mullvad router will automatically keep track of external machines to which your own machine has connected to recently, in order to forward to it any connections back, and since the torrent protocol pretty much connects to the whole swarm during the download stage (even if it doesn't download from most of them, it still connects to each swarm participant to check which parts they have), which means that after your download stage for a torrent is over, for a while (hours, in my experience) if any of those machines tries to connect back the connection gets properly forwarded by the Mullvad router to your machine because it still recognizes them as associated with your host and forwards the connection correctly.
What won't work without static port-forwarding is starting seeding from scratch, resuming seeding after you stopped it for a while (a day or more) and very small size torrents (because the swarm changes very fast when the download size is very small and is quickly done, and the new machines in the swarm which your own machine did not connect to during your own download stage, won't be associated in the Mullvad router with your machine so it can't do automatic routing of their connection attempts).
The point being that it's perfectly fine to torrent with a VPN without port-forwarding and you can do it without being a leecher as long as you're not just downloading tiny torrents and you make sure to leave the torrents to seed for a while after the download stage is over. What you can forget about is seeding from scratch or to remote machines you did not download any data from, which is a problem if you're trying to get a good ratio for private trackers since you can't just fire up a torrent for seeding alone and all uploading can only happen following your downloading of that same torrent.
Private trackers.
In the USA when you are caught torrenting copyrighted material it is because a firm hired by copyright owners sits in the public swarm logging IPs. They then send a warning to your ISP, who in turn sends you a warning.
Private trackers are by their nature a club that tries their damnedest to prevent people working for those kind of companies from joining the site to begin with.
It is still smart to use a VPN but your ISP isn't generally targeting your data in transit itself. It's usually a third party company hired out who cannot see your data streams directly. Thus a private tracker reduces the need for such measures since you are less likely to run into a hired hand logging your IP from a private tracker swarm.
This guy torments.
Seriously though, if you are cautious and stick to actual communities instead of just public or private trackers run for glam, you will usually be fine. Communities clamp down really fast if there's a report of virus etc.
The quality of releases typically is far better, since uploading crap like virus or video covered in ads is a dick move™️
It would be incredibly stupid to still not use a vpn in the states. If a kid who has never tormented before can get an invite to a private tracker, so can a consultant with an antipiracy group. And with a corporate fiber connection and limitless storage budget they could easily sit on thousands of torrents from private sites without having to worry about ratio. The site moderator would never know anything is up until all their users start getting piracy notices, and even then itd be hard to track down the one doing the logging.
Which is I why I used words like "usually" and "less likely." It's not any sort of guarantee of safety. For example, xFinity/Comcast owns NBCUniversal, and as such is technically the rights-holder for NBC content and as such they have a vested interest in potentially inspecting your traffic directly for torrents they have ownership of. In other words, I agree with your assessment here.
Private trackers usually have a limit of active torrents you can have depending on your ratio tier. Sitting on every torrent in a private tracker for one user would be a huge red flag, so the only way to have it work would be to have many accounts. Even then, unless they're seeding content, they will probably be kicked if their upload is 0 bytes after a month or whatever interval accounts are purged.
Sure, there are probably some studios going after high profile torrents on private trackers, but thinking they would be monitoring thousands of torrents is a stretch.
If you are broke and cannot afford a VPN, I suggest you use I2P.
I2P is basically an internet protocol that treats all kinds of internet activity in the manner a torrent works.
Basically, you run a local node.
Traffic is routed around in a bunch of anonymized, encrypted chunks, from many different users, which are then bunched up together into packets and encrypted again.
As a client, you can only decrypt the parts of a packet that pertain to you...
But as a node, you help move packets along to every other person who is running a node, in a sort of meshnet like fashion.
The result is a free, but very slow, but also pretty well anonymized way of passing net traffic around...
...and it is also arguably more private/secure than a VPN, which can simply hand over its server logs if legally asked to...
...and it is also arguably more private/secure than TOR, which can have de-anonymization attacks run on it if enough onion nodes, or your entry/exit nodes, are either comprimised or just outright run as honey pots, which is a thing various law enforcement agencies do.
However, another downside to I2P is that it is... considerably more technically complex for most users to actually set up and use properly, than just a basic VPN for switching your geoip to watch Brazillian netflix or w/e.
But, it does allow torrenting and portforwarding, and is totally free.
Don't expect to be able to stream any media with it though, it is again very slow.
Couldn't you potentially have the same thing you describe for tor happening with i2p?
In some sense yes, but:
If your TOR entry exit node is comprimised, you are basically fucked.
I've seen estimates that roughly 1/3 of them are comprimised, run by State actors of some kind.
People seem to forget that TOR was originally invented by the US Navy and used by them and the CIA and shit to move sensitive data around in the early 2000s, possibly late 90s.
Then they handed it off to the public.
Do you really think they do not know how to defeat it, when they really want to?
...
Also... I2P traffic is more anonymized/encrypted than TOR traffic is, in that each chunk in each packet is anonymized and encrypted... each packet is kind if a sausage of a bunch of people's data being moved around all at once, the whole point is you can't tell whose data ia whose.
IIRC, TOR packets do not work this way, they're specifically addressed to a single encrypted and anonymized person.
So, its easier to reverse engineer who is the actual person using the network.
Whereas with I2P, you're always routing for others as well as receiving your own data, albeit much, much more slowly.
But tor is not built to torrent.
What you were doing online is being watched. It is being recorded. Right now, some ISPs will will protect your identity and send warnings to you, to a point. Some ISPs will just give up your information.
They are currently working on legislation to force ISPs just shut you off If piracy is reported.
Right now, for every ISP that I'm aware of in the US, No action is actually taken against you for reports of piracy. But that doesn't mean that this will stay the same, or, that they won't retroactively go on a witch hunt.
You can find VPNs for a couple bucks a month. Make it a birthday request.
All I'm going to say is that my ISP used to send me notices from the MPAA about what I was downloading and that I should:
Since I setup a VPN, I do not get those notices.
Do I need to say more?
Do I need to say more?
Yes. Did the notices cost you anything, or did you ignore them without consequences?
They were mostly threatening. For me the peace of mind of knowing that they can't really track what's being downloaded to my ISP/my account/me, is enough.
I don't know if the MPAA is going to lose its mind like the RIAA did with the whole Napster thing. I don't want to get caught up in it if they do.
For that peace of mind, I pay for my VPN.
If that's not valuable to you, then you'll make different choices. I'm not here to tell anyone what to do, I'm just giving my experience and opinion.
Good luck out there.
And no, I wasn't charged either for the notice, nor legally charged as the result of a notice.
Don't subject your family to nasty letters in their mail from your ISP. You won't go to jail, but you might risk your internet service getting canceled, which won't be a fun conversation with your parents.
If you're 18 and healthy, go donate plasma at a local clinic. In the USA depending on where you are, you can make $40-$80 per week, sometimes even more if they have a big shortage. Takes about 90 minutes a session, and you just chill with a needle in your arm and browse on your phone, super easy.
Proton VPN's most expensive plan is $108 for 2 years, you can afford that. Go to your friends or neighbors and offer to do some yard work for cash. Mow their lawn, shovel bark, dig up dead shrubs, whatever. That's the main way I made money when I was in my teens. People will pay 20-30 bucks an hour in most places for that kind of work, so a few hours of that in a week or two and you've got your $108 for Proton VPN, or whatever other VPN you want to use.
Sell some crap on eBay, FB marketplace, Craig's List, etc. Old clothes, computer parts, consoles, weights, people will buy anything. You'd be surprised how fast I've gotten rid of junk buy posting it online for 10 bucks.
Proton smells bad for me, too much of a walled-garden and corporate restriction aesthetic with their services. I would recommend Mullvad or NordVPN
I only mentioned it because it's what I've been using for a while and it's been a good experience so far. Cheap, runs well on Linux, and is one of the few that still allows you to port forward.
There are several good ones to pick from, defs would stay away from Nord because of their advertising practices, but Mullvad is solid. I think they removed port forwarding though.
Why would you recommend Nord over Proton?
Proton take cash payments and xmr just like Mullvad and IVPN.
I'm in a country where there's no legal precedent against torrenting, so it's somewhat safe, but it's still better to use one anyways. You never know when the laws might change, and it's best if there's no record of your IP/timestamp torrenting.
Either way, there's a risk-reward tradeoff of not using one, but the risk is much higher in the US, and if you're made an example of, it could be life ruining. You'll have to decide for yourself if it's worth paying to mitigate the risk.
Do your ISP a favor and use a VPN when torrenting. They will know you're torrenting based on traffic patterns, but they won't know what you're torrenting. That way they don't have to serve you a notice or kick you off their service at the behest of movie or music studios. Your ISP may not care what you're doing, but those businesses do, and the law is on their side.
VPN makes it extremely difficult for your ISP to spy on you, which is the whole point.
Unless you use a VPN that supports traffic pattern obfuscation. Mullvad VPN does this https://mullvad.net/en/blog/introducing-defense-against-ai-guided-traffic-analysis-daita.
How will they know you're torrenting if all they see is a lot of wireguard traffic? You could be uploading backups to a remote location for all they know
The nature of uploads/downloads happening with torrents coming and going from disparate sources. Apparently it has a certain network signature that can be identified fairly reliably. ISPs don't really give a shit about WHAT you torrent, but they will try to traffic shape it so it doesn't affect other users on the ISP much.
Let's just get a VSP from Ethiopia and stop worrying about it.
Use i2pd with qbittorrent
Note that the official documentation says that it’s experimental and may leak your IP address.
Its also a (nearly?) 10 year old paradigm at this point.
TOR is 'experimental' in the same way I2P is.
I2P works, though it is more technically complex for an average user to properly set up than most VPNs.
Yeah they're gonna need qBittorment* for this though
Nah, only the people you're tormenting will care, and what are they going to do about it? cry?
Edit: OP edited the title and ruined this joke
Jail probably not... however you will probably get a sternly worded letter from your ISP saying "We know you were torrenting (name of one show or movie you torrented"), This is your first warning.
In short, you won't go to jail, but your ISPs will usually give a few warnings, and then cut off your internet.
Its not zero-effort, but you can safely torrent without a VPN using I2P. You'd have to have an I2P router running on the backend and use something like i2psnark to connect. Out of the box, I2P won't work, you have to adjust the config, but after that you could go VPN-less. Two things to consider though: 1. Torrents will run slower. 2. Only trackers inside the I2P network would be reachable.
So here's the deal is you "really" can't afford $30 a YEAR:
I use a VPN called windscribe. You can buy this 1 year VPN for $30. You can buy it through the Google play store.
I also have the "Google Rewards" app that pays you in Google play store credit for taking short surveys or taking pictures of receipts.
I get $50 to $100 per year in play store credits to spend on Google play.
See where I'm going with this? I pay for my yearly subscription with my "free" play store credits I get.
=Free VPN. Like right now I've got almost $40 in play store credits (the free credits you earn have to be spent in a year. It spends the oldest credits first) and I have like 4 months left before I have to renew my VPN subscription. Since I never enjoyed any pay to win styles of games, at this point I practically run out of things I even want to buy with my credits before they start to expire. I've bought probably a thousand dollars worth of apps and games over the years and haven't ever spent a single cent of my own money on any of them. Nothing but the reward app credits. I buy the "pro" versions of apps I use to remove ads, even if the ads don't bother me or I don't use that particular app very much.
This, and something to note is never lie to Google Rewards as you'll then stop getting surveys altogether if they catch you out with their trap questions
Have you ever visited XYZ waterpark
If you haven't, even if it's a real place just say no and wait for the next survey because they'll trip you up trying.
Stick to private trackers, the risk of being caught is dramatically lower (harder to get it, smaller user base, companies target the big public ones)
How do you go about finding and joining such a venture
Info:
Private tracker security is, at best, security theater. You (a random nobody) can get an invite with nearly no effort. You really think a billion dollar industry can’t manage to get in and spoof as a legit user? There are entire companies that specialize in corporate espionage. Use a VPN (or seed box) even on private trackers.
They absolutely can of course. However, its easier for them to go after the easier fish that are public and advertise/make profit off work, much the same way a theif will levitate toward the least secure/most attractive house to rob. That said, country makes a huge difference - risk profile between a US citizen and say a Romanian is very different.
Most private trackers require seeding seedboxes.
I'm sure OP would find it hard to find an Invite without spending money.
Where are you getting these ideas from? I'm on multiple private trackers and none require a seedbox. They may require a seed ratio, but that's a totally different matter.
Also, some private trackers offer invites from time to time and some provide a way to be invited via an interview. I got into two of them by interviewing.
If you permanently seed all you've downloaded and you've been using a tracker for a while, bonus points + upload should usually cover all your downloading needs.
Starting out is difficult without a seedbox though. Especially of you don't use Cross-Seed to seed to multiple trackers. In that case it is considerably easier to pay for a seedbox.
Really can't say that's the case. A lot of PTs have bonuses points and other things for long term seeding, and you can then buy upload or reduce download, or regular site wide free-leech, or free-leech over xGB, or Perma freeleech while you seed 1tb. You can do perfectly fine on a home connection as long as you don't mind keeping some torrents seeding (like you ideally should be to share back) You can go from open reg PTs to mid or elite teir PTs off a home connection and no seedbox (if you out in some elbow grease).
Use the Windscribe 10gb per month free. It works well. And if you need more use RiseUpVPN. But note it is slow. And that its completely free and volunteer run. It’s the kind of thing that if you get an income you should probably donate to if you used a lot. It’s mainly used by activists in authoritarian countries.
Adding another free alternative; The free Cloudflare Warp for a semi-VPN. You can't choose your output node, but your traffic gets routed through their network.
It can run in proxy mode as well if you prefer only your torrent traffic being routed through it.
yes it's important. take it from someone who is also young, but learned their lesson quickly
If you use only private trackers you can skip the VPN. If you use public ones, your ISP might take issue
The reason i cant get a vpn is because im just broke and im young enough to live with family so i cant really get a job.
I don't know your situation (and age) but small jobs like delivering newspapers can usually be taken up at relatively you age. They should easily cover a VPN subscription.
E.g. I was delivering newspaper biweekly for a few hours at the age of 13. Even today, the monthly pay would've been enough to pay for a year of my current VPN. Your guardians will have to approve the job but legally it shouldn't be an issue.
If you torrent without a VPN the conversation about a warning by the internet provider on behalf of some rights holder will be way worse than asking about ideas for a small (summer) job.
does anyone still gets a newspaper?
I only use them to dry my shoes and to wrap bio waste, but there's still about 3 (bi-weekly) newspapers getting delivered to my door. They are ad supported and I don't know anyone reading them, except for a few people over the years which complained about not receiving theirs.
I almost forgot there's also the community sheet ("Gemeindeblatt"), which includes local events, trash collection dates, job postings: coincidentally they are currently in need of someone delivering this local paper for the next few weeks.
No idea what happens nowadays also probably depends on your location too, but a friend of mine downloaded fallout 4 when it released and his isp disabled their houses internet until he went to a web page and checked off a box saying "i have deleted the following file(s) from my machine" lol
It was a tame outcome relatively speaking, but it could have been worse.
I got one threatening letter (they are uncommon where I live in Czechia but they will write you after a while). I got a VPN and no more letters.
OK, so what is a VPN?
A Virtual Private Network is a virtual network that lives on top of a physical network. In the case of the Internet, basically what happens is that your network traffic goes into the VPN on one side and comes out of the VPN provider's network somewhere else, rather than out of your ISP's network. All this really does is move any privacy concerns from your ISP to your VPN, which may or may not protect you from any legal inquiries.
For a more thorough explanation look here: https://www.howtogeek.com/133680/htg-explains-what-is-a-vpn/
Is it possible to use torrent without a VPN?
Certainly, however your torrent traffic will be visible to and inspectable by your ISP. If a copyright holder chooses to, they may sue your ISP for the personal information of the person whose IP address matches the illegal traffic that they found. After they have your personal information they can prosecute you directly. A VPN might shield against this by changing the apparent IP address associated with your torrent traffic, but then you are at the mercy of the VPN provider and the government of whichever country they operate in.
It should be noted that if you are not paying the bill for the Internet, and you use it for illegal activity, then the person you are putting at risk is the person who pays the bill. It's their name attached to the ISP records.
If you are caught, or if they just don't like torrent traffic on their network, the ISP may decide that you are simply too much trouble and it's not worth keeping you as a customer, and just cut off your service (for your whole house).
I use Spectrum, I get warnings, so vpn it is. I'd also rather no one know than know and willingly ignore it, logging it anyway for some government goon to discover in 10 years.
im young enough to live with family
Tell your parents that they'll lose their internet if they don't give you $20 per year for VPN.
Yes, I ignored it for a while but then got walled off by charter until I acknowledged I’d fix the torrenting issue with my account. Got a von and never had a problem again
You can get a vps for $5/month or less. Installing vpn software with one of the automagical scripts takes 30 minutes at worst.
Umm, but then your VPN leads to a server rented from a web host which you are paying with (presumably) a credit card, and if they're reputable at all then you had to register with a government ID. The ones that don't check ID are the ones that host ransomware gangs and CSAM distributors.
A VPN provides no privacy at all if it's linked to an IP address or domain name and hardware that is registered to you.
I guess you're right partially, but if you're renting a VPS in a country that doesn't respect those copyright laws, your VPS provider can't be asked to bother you.
I think that depends very much on your jurisdiction and the type of content you download. In Germany when I did things without VPN I most of the time downloaded english content and not the latest blockbusters. Copyright enforcment companies, at least back then, were hired for specific newer movies. Now I have things more automated so I'd rather not risk tripping any wires.
I've never used a vpn while torrenting in the US. Unless utorrent has one built in. Been doing it for 25 years and never had a problem.
People probably won't like that answer, but whatever. It's true.
Same ... except I recently got my first strike from xfinity ... for downloading minecraft for a friend .... turns out my blacklists don't catch all the honeypots fast enough
Ever since I paid for a years worth of PIA and set up a media box to share with my friends and family cause .... FUCK EM! If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't theft.
Just use ProtonVPN. They have a free tier. No credit card required. Its slightly slower speeds, but it will keep you from getting in trouble while sailing the high seas 🏴☠️🏴☠️
Proton's free tier doesn't support P2P traffic anymore.
Interesting. I did not know that.
Like most things, it depends on your jurisdiction and the policies of your ISP. But as a general rule, yes, you should take steps to hide your IP.
Probably a good case example is to look at how many people in your area were sued for torrenting. For example, the rights holders to Dallas Buyer’s Club famously went nuclear on torrenters, so maybe start by searching that. Of course none of this is legal advice.
PIA is pretty reliable in my experience and their three year plan is quite affordable.
depending on what you you plan on downloading you can probably use direct downloads instead, and you won't need a VPN if I'm not mistaken. no idea if and how available things are, though
Ask people from your country, or look online to see if torrenting is prosecuted there. If people don't get letters from the ISP, you can just enable encryption in your torrent software and forget about it.
I've been torrenting without VPN for a decade (Spain), and never had any issues, not even traffic slowdowns.
Edit: You're probably gonna see a lot of advice to always use a VPN. Most of this advice is from US users, who are not used to torrenting without VPNs. The truth is, as with everything, it really depends. I'm not a fan of generalized answers to questions, and the same advice isn't as good for every situation. VPNs are a barrier of entry, and they also come with a slowdown. If you're starting to torrent and VPNs are not necessary in your country, don't be afraid to torrent without one. But of course, if you're from the US, you'll have to use one!
If you convert a magnet link to a .torrent file (there are many sites that can do that) and then upload the .torrent file to archive.org, they'll download the files to their servers as part of their archival process, then you can just download the files via standard https, you ISP will only know you downloaded from archive.org.
But archive.org isn't really meant to be used this way, so this is probably unethical. But I think section 230 protect them (for now), so its not like they'll get shutdown or anything (correct me if I'm wrong).
Ugh. Doesn't IA have enough legal issues already?
well with tormenting no but torrenting? yes
im young enough to live with family so i cant really get a job.
This doesn't really track, or it's just worded weird. You can start working part-time at age 14 in most states in the US. Now, you could be a student who's too busy with school/sports to get a job, but if you have time to pirate I doubt that's a liting factor.
Now, I don't personally care what your actual case is. I'm just pointing out that your claims don't add up.
This is a joke, right?
The US is currently economically collapsing, nearly every company/corp is firing and laying people off, an entry level job requires 3 to 5 years of experience, and something like 60% of companies freely admit to posting ghost jobs, fake online job listings that never actually result in a hire, or are just done to pretend an internal promotion is actually being competetively sourced to the whole job market.
It is extremely difficult for young people to find a job right now, one that ends up paying more than they'd lose in the costs of buying a car and gas and insurance to get to said job.
OP's argument for being broke is that they live with their parents and thus can't get a job. I'm pointing out that that doesn't hold up, because living with their parents doesn't exclude anyone from getting a job.
I never said that there weren't valid reasons to not have a job or be broke. I'm saying the specific reasons they gave don't make sense.
Now that we've established that, I'd appreciate you not putting words in my mouth
My friend uses a VPN and has been pirating for two decades. might just be a placebo but she didn't get even one warning from her ISP