Funds are limited at the moment and i’d rather not have a monthly subscription to worry about.
i’m not in the US, if that changes anything
third world? yes. Europe or US? no
Eastern Europe would be a yes. I know Germany is super anal about copyright but dunno about the rest of the EU.
It’s just Germany, the rest of Europe (EU and non-EU) doesn’t actively care about them unless it’s cp.
I use it in croatia, but its so funny here since no one really cares. people around me torrent on daily basis for 20ish years and nobody got ISP letter. Even friends are laughing because I spend money on that lol. Its only 5€ a month and I use it for other things as well. Just get it if you can or 🤞
There’s a lot of equations that go into this.
- Where are you located? A lot of countries don’t enforce laws - Switzerland, Poland, and Spain even permit torrenting for personal use. Third world countries are usually pretty safe.
- What internet are you using? If you’re on your own WiFi at home, a VPN is mandatory if you don’t want nasty letters. But if you’re doing it on, say, Macca’s WiFi, you’ll be fine. Bit of a dick move if a lot of other people are using the internet, though. It’s also worth noting that some internet providers not only prohibit it, but also detect any BitTorrent usage.
- What are you torrenting? More obscure torrents are less likely to have bots scanning for IPs.
- Are you seeding? Seeding and/or uploading torrents without a VPN is insanely risky, because not only does it expose your IP for longer, you’re also committing the crime of sharing copyrighted content (which is prosecuted far more often than merely downloading), so unless it’s a torrent that’s close to dying, your best bet would be to leech and run.
Probably not, no.
Depends on country. Depends on ISP. Look for how your ISP reponds to such things. Should be able to find info on that, I’d hope.
what keywords should i look out for? searching my ISP and “Piracy” makes is seem like they’re pretty active about this stuff
Probably gotta head into the terms of services and Privacist policy they have.
check if you can find customers who have reported receiving notices in the mail or actions taken on their customer accounts. try to find out what the penalties for violating their policy is.
if they are pretty active, you might be stuck resorting to encrypting all of your traffic, aka a vpn
with that vpn and some minor setup in your torrent client you can avoid all of this. for example in qbittorrent there is an option to “bind to interface” and you set it to bind to your vpn interface, so if the vpn goes down all your torrent traffic shuts down.
i use nord, haven’t had a single issue in years, and i have received notices at multiple addresses in the past. thus… had to get vpn if i wanted to continue safely 😞
Without VPN or Usenet subscription it’s going to be difficult and/or illegal.
difficult and/or illegal.
I don’t think using a VPN gets you out of the illegal part, lol.
Since most VPNs no longer have port mapping it’s a pure download which would make it technically legal e.g. in Germany.
You can seed without port forwarding
Gets you out of the consequences part though, which is good enough.
i mean its always illegal no? you just dont get caught as easily with a VPN
No port mapping, no upload, so technically legal where only sharing is penalized. IANAL.
I have a seedbox (ultra cc). The legally questionable part happens between the seeder and my seedbox IP. I download the files via SSH/SFTP with my blank IP. Since 7 years. No popo yet.
Look I2P. Don’t know for sure. But read somewhere that it can be used for privacy.
Slow, limited options, but great anonymity and free.
Sounds interesting, what are some good beginner guides to I2P?
A good start would be to check the website and go from there. I don’t know of a good, singular guide unfortunately—there are a couple different ways of going about torrenting on I2P.
I can confirm that torrenting on I2P works quite well! You may have to set aside a couple weeks per movie, though. Still, the torrent selection is decent, if not quite as good as what you would get on the clearnet. You’ll want to check the postman tracker (tracker2.postman.i2p) once you have everything set up.
Do you have any access to internet services without registering with your name?
Maybe at public transportation, in a mall… Please don’t bring trouble to any small businesses.
Be prepared to find usual ports blocked and research on how to randomize your MAC address.
I’ve never used a VPN, except I guess for work, and never heard boo out of anyone over where I chose to park my ship
Debrid services are usually cheaper (as low as $2.5/month), but you’re limited to public trackers with them.
That’s what I’ve been using for around 6 months, works great.
There are very few countries where torrenting is safe. Generally speaking: No. You can try file hosters or other platforms, or share a VPN with a friend or use services similar to a VPN. AFAIK there is not alternative that’s as fast and convenient as Torrent, though.
I2P has a built in torrent client.
But you need a computer running 24/7. With i2p, the longer your session runs, the better the connection.
Maybe I am dumb, but I can’t find anything on i2p. And all the sites load incredibly slowly…
Postman tracker is the main one on i2p.
And the longer your i2p runs, the faster its connection.
For grabbing a torrent anonymously, there is nothing better.
Tribbler has a similar idea, but as they state in their website nothing has actually been tested against a motivated hacker earning big bucks from Hollywood. And their default settings just expose your ip address.
Depends on the country. I once got some people in trouble when I passed through Germany because I didn’t know internet is heavily censored/surveilled there. Haven’t had trouble anywhere else though. Do some research on your country.
The biggest threats come from the movie industry. Just use streaming sites for movies and series, torrent the other stuff.
Look into Tribler, I2P and Utopia.
It really depends on your country and ISP.
I let me VPN lapse a day and my ISP reported 11 takedowns. They warned me (because they don’t want to lose a customer). Blocklists aren’t good enough anymore.
