If you are a pirate VPN is an essential tool. I am trying to ascertain the popularity of various VPNs in piracy community. In this excerise, I will list several Popular VPNs in the comment if you use one of them just upvote that comment and reply the reason. If you don’t find your VPN listed add a comment with just their name. Reply the reason to it. This make it easier to understand the real life user cases.
P.S: I am only looking for paid VPNs please don’t mention “free vpn”.
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Mullavad
Proton VPN
PIA, just because I’m lazy and it’s been fine for like a decade. If there is something better, happy to hear about it.
PIA was sold to Kape Technologies a few years back and they have somewhat questionable history and that made me switch to Mullvad. Not because I thought it’s better VPN per-se, but because I wanted away from PIA and Mullvad seemed popular.
The issue is who he sold it to – the notorious creator of some pernicious data-huffing ad-ware, Crossrider. The UK-based company was cofounded by an ex-Israeli surveillance agent and a billionaire previously convicted of insider trading who was later named in the Panama Papers. It produced software which previously allowed third-party developers to hijack users’ browsers via malware injection, redirect traffic to advertisers and slurp up private data.
So… at the risk of humiliating myself,
I’ve never once used a VPN in my entire life.I pirated games, movies, shows, music, software… and the worst thing that happened to me was getting a letter from Telus once or twice saying “Hey. Don’t do that.”
That was 5 years ago
I know it’s bad practice. But is a VPN 100% necessary? Even a free one?
I find incredible that it’s absolutely illegal for anyone to read your letters and only the police can do that and only if a judge grant them the right to do that case by case, and a private telecommunications company can read absolutely all your digital communication with no judge involved and no one blinks an eye.
I’m gonna google “How to bomb Telus Headquarters and assassinate their board of directors” and see how fast they respond
The letters from your ISP have nothing to do with them monitoring your traffic. When you torrent, you’re connecting to a public network of seeders and leechers. Copyright holders pay people to monitor that public list of IP addresses, and they record your IP (because you connected publicly, in the open, and uploaded or downloaded). Then, they send your ISP a letter reporting that your did an illegal thing, and asking them to punish you. Finally, your ISP sends you a letter making some vague threats and asking you to stop. They might make you do a training course to educate you on why piracy is bad, and they might cut off your internet until you pass a quiz and promise not to pirate stuff again. They go through this charade not because it actually accomplishes anything, but because they don’t give a shit, and they’re just doing the bare minimum to keep lawyers off their back.
While people sometimes suggest ignoring it because they say that your ISP is only sending you those notices because the laws compel them to and you downloaded something that was tracked, you may want to evaluate your risk.
Nothing has happened so far. Could something happen in the future?
Your ISP has built an entire portfolio of the things you’ve done online and which content you pirated. Who know how long your ISP retains that data, or which companies or regulatory bodies it shares this data with?
Laws may change.
Up to you on what you want to do with this information.
ISP can’t track bittorrent content without downloading the same torrent as you. They only see domain names of trackers and ip addresses of peers. The content itself is either obfuscated or encrypted.
Fair point. There is temporary obfuscation, and certainly not end to end encryption when torrenting.
The creator of BitTorrent himself has this to say:
“The so-called ‘encryption’ of BitTorrent traffic isn’t really encryption, it’s obfuscation. It provides no anonymity whatsoever, and only temporarily evades traffic shaping. There are better approaches to obfuscation, and I’ve got a great team of engineers who are quite eager to fight that battle, but I’m hoping that everything can be resolved amicably without getting into a serious arms race.” Source: https://torrentfreak.com/interview-with-bram-cohen-the-inventor-of-bittorrent/
In my opinion using a trusted VPN not just for torrenting, but also for sourcing pirated software or other content is just a best practice.
No, you don’t need it if you have trustworthy private trackers. Most people on here just use Pirate Bay or some shitty public alternative that’s seeded with all the planted stuff that the RIAA looks for
Proton because I have their Unlimited plan.
Currently proton its decent though I’m thinking of moving to mullvad even though they’ve removed portforwarding.
I’ve used both and much prefer Proton for sailing the seas. Connecting through France (highest speed + p2p) with port forwarding is the best torrent speed I’ve had on a VPN. The only slight annoyance is it switching the forwarded port every time it reconnects, but I run it 24/7 anyway.
Just skip the “official” client and run it through gluetun. It’s a much better experience.
AirVPN, limited on details for signing up, can pay in crypto and easy port forwarding.
Good config generator as well
If you are a pirate VPN is an essential tool
Lol naw. Private trackers only + small fiber isp that doesn’t give af.
VPNs cost money. I’m a pirate.
You can always add this blocklist for extra protection: https://www.iblocklist.com/list?list=ydxerpxkpcfqjaybcssw
I love seeing these posts because I’ve been pirating for almost 20 years and never once have I paid for or used a VPN. I’ve never received a letter from my ISP about it. If you use a trustworthy private tracker you don’t fucking need it. Downvote me all you want but I’m not wrong.
Do you have any invites? I’m a good seeder.
I do have invites but 2/3 people I’ve invited were banned for HnR so generally I don’t invite people unless I know them. If I invite another user who doesn’t seed I’ll lose my invites completely so I’m understandably wary about handing them out
Makes sense.
Okay so appereantly you have exclusive sources trackers. I would also love to join one and seed but I never do, cause I thought the most illegal thing was the sharing/seeding part. What id you guys thoughts on that?
Someone has to seed. I am willing to risk it for the biscuit.
A true hero indeed.
I think you meant to reply to my post. Yes it’s the exclusive trackers that keep you safe from needing a VPN, seeding is always part of torrenting. You can earn your way into those bigger private trackers by joining an invite forum and contributing enough, once you show good ratios form other sites you’ll get invites to the big ones like TorrentLeech
Well I honestly replied to both of you guys cause I found it interesting how he asked for a invite for the private torrent club.
Thanks for explaining it! Do you perhaps know a forum where I can start, or at least one you can recommend? I want to get a paid VPN once I am not a student anymore.
I used a site called torrent-invites back in the day, now this was like 15 or 20 years ago so sadly I don’t know of a modern one, but I am sure you can find one if you look around. I wouldn’t worry about a VPN unless you are using ThePirateBay or some crap like that
Same but in Austria those letters aren’t a thing.
Proton VPN since it’s cheaper than ExpressVPN but apparently faster than other paid VPN options, while also having port forwarding to improve torrent connectivity.
You should add an option for Mullvad.
I use IVPN and I’m very happy with them. They allow you to make an account without giving out your Email address, you just get a random-generated Account ID (Mullvad does the same btw). They also allow you to pay with Monero, an anonymous crypto currency. I used Mullvad before, Proton VPN and AirVPN are great options as well.
IVPN Looks really good, does it have port forwarding so you can torrent with it?
They recently removed it, I recommend AirVPN if you need port forwarding.
AirVPN - privacy respecting (although their attitude towards audits is a bit off putting). They also had the best port forwarding offer at the time Mullvad announced it was ending its support.
Come on, don’t waste Tor resources for downloading pirated content. That’s what VPNs are for. Journalists and activists in countries like Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. rely on Tor in order to do their work, just use a VPN for downloading, it’s also much faster.
Tor is for privacy and to circumvent censorship. What OP is asking is privacy…You could help them running a relay or bridge, it is easy, I have a few running.
I run 2 nodes at my house, several nodes (including exit nodes) on different VPS providers and I use the Snowflake addon in all of my browsers. But Tor is meant for people who require anonymity and the ability to circumvent censorship, not for those who don’t want to pay for a VPN.
I was running in the past years 2 guard/middle relays, now I prefer only bridges and snowflake, to help users in a countries with censorship, like Iran or turkmenistan.
That’s great! All parts of the network are important.
PIA
