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.
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)
Most private trackers require seeding seedboxes.
I’m sure OP would find it hard to find an Invite without spending money.
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).
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 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.
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.
If you use only private trackers you can skip the VPN. If you use public ones, your ISP might take issue
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
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.
That’s essentially how I assumed they worked, and batching the complaints makes sense as to why they were accusing me of downloading random files.
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?
Definitely don’t use your real identity before tormenting others.
Haha
Bro, you can get a vpn for stupid cheap these days. Some reputable companies frequently offer deals for less than $5 per month.
r/whoosh
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.
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.
AFAIK Proton has a free tier.
I think their free tier prevents you from torrenting
I think you can bypass this by using the WireGuard profile instead of their official app, haven’t tried this for quite some time though
Just checked and you are right.
deleted by creator
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.
also I’m sure that DNS adblocking on my phone also stops the Google Rewards surveys. I haven’t gotten any for months now lol
You got me curious, because while I don’t have the app installed for the longest time I do have a female fam member who used to demolish me in rewards and still uses it.
But, only blocks adverts at (yay Adguard)home while on WiFi and pretty sure she doesn’t have PrivateDNS enabled.
Seems she’s only getting surveys whilst out and about shopping so I’ve asked her to enable her exit node at home next time shopping.
For science…
https://files.catbox.moe/o07l6r.jpg
cc: @bountygiver@lemmy.ml
edit: goddamn formatting via Boost is nuts 🙈
Interesting. I never gotten surveys where I can upload receipts. Could it be a region thing? I’m not in the Western World Countries (in South East Asia), and from what I remember, only gotten “Have you been to” surveys.
I’ll always remember my favourite survey
Made me giggle that one, totally apt for a lad from Bradford :D
I adblock all my phones and back when I tried to use it I have it installed and never got any surveys for months. So that probably does it.
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.
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:
- Cease and desist
- Remove the content I downloaded.
Since I setup a VPN, I do not get those notices.
Do I need to say more?
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.
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.
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.
Why wouldnt they be seeding? If they own the rights or are acting on behalf of the rightsholders they dont have to worry about the criminality of it, and they have the resources to be in the highest seeding ratio if they want. They could literally build up an account to be the most active seeder on the site and just be collecting logs the whole time until they decide to burn the account and act on all the data they’ve collected.
If they have the rights to distribute it and can seed it, than what is the crime? I would have to imagine that if a studio wants to limit the spread of pirated material, hiring a firm who will distribute and spread the content the studios are looking to limit is counterproductive. IANAL but i think that if a studio were to take someone to court for piracy and it was discovered that the studio (or a hired firm) was legally providing the content to the defendant, it would be a huge hole in the case, and be grounds for dismissal.
Im not suggesting they upload it, but they literally do seed torrents to get a list of all clients who connect to them and download, because the torrent is still an unauthorized distribution for everyone else. I think it totally should be considered illegal, but thats how theyve been doing it for years.
https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-helps-to-expose-copyright-troll-honeypot-130604/
but they literally do seed torrents to get a list of all clients who connect to them and download
Actually, if I recall correctly they tend to seed only partial files because what they actually want to hit people with is distribution. If I understand the legal situation around it correctly, the act of downloading is much harder to pursue in civil court as opposed to damages for distribution. Because they need to prove that you’re not just downloading it for yourself but distributing it to others, hence sitting in the swarm and logging IPs of anyone who sends data to them.
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.
Yeah i mostly just wanted to add onto your comment so anyone new didnt get the wrong impression. Private trackers are definitely better but don’t protect you from anyone logging your activity. Use a VPN in north america all the time is basically the best policy.
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™️
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?
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.
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.
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
