I don’t live in the US, so my ISP doesn’t really seem to care what I torrent, but the megathread vehemently recommends to always use one. Since VPNs aren’t cheap and I’m on a strict budget (wouldn’t pirate otherwise), is it really that dangerous to torrent without one?
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.
shit, guess I am eastern European despite never having left North America. My ISP just doesn’t give a shit.
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
You should probably wear a condom too, just to be extra safe, then.
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.
yay living in a 3rd world country has its benefits!
@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.
Makes me think… if you exclusively use IPv6 you might be fine because they can’t geolocate you that easily 🤔
Would that really matter, though? Afaik, they could still just… ask your ISP who that IP was assigned to, which is what they’re going to do with IPv4 anyways.
@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.
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).
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.
They don’t seem to care, but they collect data. So they don’t seem to care NOW. Always use a non-logging 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.
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.
Yes, you need some way to hide your IP when torrenting in the US unless your ISP doesn’t care about copyright letters. If you don’t want to use a VPN, a debrid service or I2P are other options as well that can hide torrents from your isp. Another option is to not torrent and stick to ddl and streaming
debrid service is the way, because they have so many other uses besides torrenting.
What else are they useful for?
That ultimately depends on what jurisdiction you’re in and what laws apply. It varies wildly country to country.
If you live in third world country then you definitely don’t need one.
I see. Switzerland is now a “third world 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.
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.
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
