this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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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?

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[–] LobsterDog@frig.social 2 points 1 year ago

worst that can happen is your ISP sends you a letter to stop, then get a VPN.

[–] idlenonsense@lemmy.fmhy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

VPNs are only really necessary if you use public trackers. Private trackers are generally viewed as small enough and not worth the bother by copyright holders to pursue. Like someone else said earlier, it’s a matter of risk. I tend to view private trackers, especially those seen as “elite” and difficult to enter as being very safe.

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[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 2 points 1 year ago

VPN that I use is about 50USD for a two year cycle, pretty cheap if you commit for a while. Even beyond torrents just not letting your ISP scoop up all your browsing data is worth the price.

[–] neverminder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

yes. sorry. it's cheaper then buying countless games and software, whatever you use it for. think of it as getting a massive discount on things you'd have been forced to buy otherwise. overtime, you'd spend thousands of dollars in games, etc. VPN monthly cost is a small price to pay comparibly

[–] ashlie@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I personally wouldn't take the chance. Mullvad is €5 a month, and is worth it to me. My ISP completely shut off my service before ever giving me a notification. I had to completely restart service after going full Karen and blaming it on "my kids." I would do a few searches and find posts or info relevant to your area or ISP.

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[–] dimspace@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personally I just have a Real-Debrid sub for like 3 euros a month and do any torrenting via them.

Also useful for streaming just about anything in Kodi, and for downloading from file hosts

[–] GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Can you use real debrid to automatically grab torrents from a private tracker (maybe through autobrr)?

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[–] pantsu_professor@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why not get a seedbox? Most come with Plex and Jellyfin so you can stream the content of the seedbox. Also they generally provide VPNs.

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[–] BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It (possibly) adds a layer of security. Of course you're just passing your traffic through them. Should they get summoned to court or ordered they could turn over your information and show you were trafficking through them. I'd say to read into how your nation persecutes copyright. How strict are they, how often have people been legally attacked cause of it, etc. If you're in Japan for example, I'd say 100% use a VPN. Copyright is extremely serious there.

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[–] trent@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

You're probably fine, but I recommend just getting a free VPN to keep your ISP at bay. I don't like Proton, but they do have a free VPN. Google around and you can find some others too, if that one is too slow

[–] Pulp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You could even use cloudflare warp. Works fine for torrenting.

[–] trent@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

true, forgot about them!

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[–] JasSmith@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Just an FYI: for the cost of a VPN, you can buy a Usenet subscription. Depending on your content, you'll get far better speeds, far more privacy, far more content, and far more availability.

[–] ramboteng@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are there quality x265 rips like QxR on usenet?

[–] JasSmith@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Yes but it's not quite as easy. For example, QxR generally releases everything on 1337. On Usenet you're going to get a mix of re-ups, remixes from various groups, new groups you haven't heard of, and they might be on various indexers. Generally speaking, I have no issues finding a good quality x265 rip, but I might have to try a couple if I haven't heard of the release team. For this reason I've configured preferences in Radarr and Sonarr which will preference QxR, for example. I also include public torrent trackers.

[–] Overzeetop@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I used to be all over usenet. Starting about 10-12 years ago most of the indexers turned to shit; either that or takedowns have eviscerated the back catalog of content from providers. I've yet to find a good tracker that can find anything (that's more than 12-24 hours old).

[–] xenos@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago
[–] Parallax@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I wish I had gotten into Usenet back in the day. I feel like I missed out on a big part of the early internet.

[–] JC@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use usenet, but I find that I have a lot of issues finding content in other language than English. Also, finding rarer content is harder too. So I also use torrents to complete what I can't find over usenet. To this day I would like to get content in French, but it's hard.
This means that I still need a torrenting setup with VPN.

[–] SmokytheBear@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah this is my setup. Sure it does mean you have to pay for a couple of things, but I find its the best way. Plug a Usenet provider and a couple of indexers into the aars, set it as highest priority, then some decent torrent trackers as lower prio.

Usenet will handle grabbing the majority of your requests without having to worry about seeding, ratio and such and the torrent trackers act as a fallback and for stuff like season packs which don't tend to get uploaded to Usenet and anything older or rarer that might not be available on usenet. So far though I've found it's not too much that doesn't get grabbed by usenet, but the torrent trackers are a nice backup.

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[–] BiggestBulb@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

There are a lot of self-hostable VPN services out there which are free. There is also Mullvad as previously mentioned and I myself use Nord (I don't necessarily recommend it for privacy, but it was convenient when I got it).

[–] Sterben@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Look, if you want peace of mind use it, but it is also true that you will most likely be fine with it.

I personally use NordVPN, and I have been always torrenting with pretty good speed. I am pretty sure there are cheaper alternatives.

Good luck to You. :⁠-⁠)

[–] Vitaly@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

What if i have self-hosted vpn? am i safe now? (wireguard)

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