You don’t need to be so euphemistic. If you’re just downloading, piracy is not really investigated rigorously anywhere. Just using a VPN is sufficient. You can talk openly about it too.
yes its enough,with an antivirus(windows defender is great) and common sense. sticking to fmhy(dot)net megathread,plus you dont even need a vpn if you dont live in first world.
also you need to bind your vpn to torrent client(qbittorent) . as for direct downloads they dont need vpn even in first world .
also you need adblock to not get malware,use firefox + ublock origin. or brave browser with shields on aggressive. and bec ads are just bad,note these adblockers work for everything not just piracy. they also work for youtube.
also visit this community if you want to ask more questions https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy
Just seconding this FMHY is your best friend
If you are in the US, and the risk you’re concerned about is getting in trouble, yes it is enough, provided you use it correctly. The only real risk is that copyright trolls will scrape your IP while you are torrenting along with the rest of a big list and then automatically send complaints to your ISP, which may then send you a threatening email, or shut off your internet if it happens enough times. The fact that this is the only action they are taking against consumer level pirates means that if your home IP is not itself available to torrent peers, you are entirely immune from anything happening.
Just make sure to bind your torrent client to your VPN, this is the accepted way of safely ensuring your IP cannot leak due to your VPN losing connection.
A VPN won’t help you much. What you want is a boat, and a GPS.
any vpn is better than no vpn, and mullivad is well-reputed
Sweet, I’m doing something right, lol. I got my mom using Mullvad in Russia so she can get normal news and stuff, and I just top her account off with my American card cause she can’t. Such a great system.
I’m very sorry to hear that your mother is stuck in Russia, but at least she has access to the real world Internet.
Thank you. Yes, it sucks. She is 81, and chose not to come here (USA) because everything she knows and her friends are all in Russia. It was really tough for her to be anti-war and lose friends over it, but at least she has not fallen for any propaganda like my dad did. I’m really proud of her, she uses a VPN and knows how to do a lot on the internet for her age.
Now I’m curious. What is Russian news saying about the war?
I am not the best source for that because my mom avoids watching the government channels. But what I do know is they only report “positive” stuff about the war, like how Ukraine is being “liberated” and how Russia is valiantly fighting for its life and values. It’s sick. They never report on true casualties on either side and just say they only hit military targets.
When I lived back there in the 80s and 90s, we experienced a temporary reprieve from this kind of bullshit. For a short period of time, people felt free. The economy sucked, but it actually felt good to know you had a semblance of freedom of speech, comparatively speaking.
Now it’s back to fucking Stalin times. Like they say, all of Russian history can be summed up as “and then it got worse.”
If you want to learn more about Putin’s rise to power and how it was back then, I highly recommend The Man Without A Face by Masha Gessen. It was written in 2012, and it shows exactly who Putin is.
Russia is winning. All Ukrainians are Nazis. NATO made us do it. That should about cover it.
try searching for rtnews
Or browse .ml.
Theoretically doing something right, you mean.
*Cough… yes, of course.
Mullvad is fucking leg¹t.
Mullvad is good, but it’s not enough to make piracy safe.
An adblocker like ublock is essential, not just for blocking ads but for blocking malware.
Streaming piracy is about as safe as sketchy websites always are, which is pretty okay these days.
If you download anything, check the file type before opening and whether the type is safe. For example, .exe is extremely unsafe, .pdf is somewhat unsafe, and .mp3 is safe. Generally audio and video file formats are pretty safe because they’re very locked down in what they can do, while interactive formats are dangerous. Someone might call audio by a misleading name to troll, but it shouldn’t put your device at risk.
If you download .exe s, do not run them unless you are very confident the source is trustworthy. This means a trusted account posting on a trusted website claiming that a trusted person made the exe. I haven’t caught this guide in a lie yet, but when it comes to exes double- and triple-check everything.
The more tech savvy solution would be to run .exes (or all pirated files if you’re being paranoid) in a virtual machine so even if the virtual machine is pwned the rest of your computer wouldn’t be.
check browserleaks.com and their webrtc leak test (or something similar) to find out! (if u get leaks u might need to disable ipv6). Also make sure to have a killswitch enabled in case ur vpn drops connection u dont want to automatically connect without it and expose urself
Ooh, this is exactly the kind of stuff I need to learn how to check, thank you! I mean, theoretically…
You could start by using the connection test on the mullvad website that checks for 3 different leaks.
VPN use is not illegal (yet).
Your ISP can still match your internet traffic to the act of torrenting - however they can not know what you are torrenting and the act of torrenting itself is not illegal.
Theoretically - using torrents to download free use material like you are going to do is 100% legal and above board. So what if you are choosing to use a VPN while doing it?
Thank you! And let’s hope it’s never made illegal, so we can continue to do things legally while respecting our internet preferences…
Mullvad even has their own leak tests on their website. So once you’re connected, just go to the homepage and run a test before doing anything.
Awesome, thanks. I’m learning all kinds of theoretical things!
WebRTC (peer to peer media shit don’t worry about it) intrinsically leaks IP information. It needs to be turned off in browsers like Firefox as well if that’s whta you’re using.
Either through settings, it’s in there somewhere, or about:config and search for rtc amd disable.
I use a seedbox. I won’t link to the one I use, but if you add dot eye oh it’ll redirect you to their new site. They run the seedbox in a country that doesn’t force them to give up info to anyone asking, and you download stuff via SFTP which cannot be seen by the people looking at torrents, and to your ISP, it’s just a connection to a server somewhere. So it’s safe.
The seedbox I have even has emby, meaning I can click a magnet link in the browser that opens with rutorrent on the seedbox, add the torrent to one of the categories I also set up in emby, and once it’s downloaded to the seedbox, I can stream it on my phone or desktop. It’s painless.
One of the things I did was to run mulvad in a virtual machine and use a different web browser in the vm than I used normally. This makes tracking much harder because they rely on website fingerprinting to identify you independently of your ip address.
Keep in mind that each country has different piracy laws. Some don’t care much and fines won’t be pursued if you just ignore them, some poor countries don’t care at all, some don’t care about foreign content but take their own content and sports seriously, and some take all piracy seriously and hit you with tens of thousands of dollars of fines. I’d recommend looking into your local laws, and if you find out you’re in a danger zone, following the recommendations from your fellow countrypeople.
Even reputable no-logs VPNs aren’t foolproof, they can leak and the killswitch can fail. But Mullvad is currently the best, I heard their killswitch is better than Proton’s currently is.
Different methods carry different levels of risk. You’ll often hear that streaming from websites is safe since it’s not seeding (and exposing your IP address to the pool), but a lot of those sites do torrent from your browser these days (and can’t be bound to a VPN, I don’t think?). They’re also full of malware and malicious ads, so a good adblocker is necessary. The safest methods are private trackers (seeding but only to other private members) and debrid services (lowest risk but no seeding and they’re paid subscriptions. though there’s one that offers some seeding time at the highest subscription tiers). There’s also joining a trusted person’s private Jellyfin server (getting someone else to pirate for you).
Seeding is of course really important for preventing the entire system from collapsing and preventing niche or old media from being lost, so if you’re in a position to seed, you absolutely should. A good VPN bound to the torrent client (after enabling the killswitch and doing the leak tests) and the knowledge to ignore fines is enough for public trackers in many countries.
Note that even in countries where fines aren’t pursued if you just ignore them, (if they do somehow get sent due to a VPN accident or the government further eroding human rights) they’ll be sent out to your ISP and the person named on the internet bill. Your household may have their own thoughts about your viewing history, and some people are concerned about their government getting wind that they consume things like queer or non-English media.
Here’s the piracy community! You should do your research before getting started. https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy
pirates together stronk
Awesome, thank you for typing all of that out, that’s really helpful. And I subscribed to the community so I can learn more.
I use Usenet instead of VPN + torrent, myself. I pay $6/mo for Usenet access and use a bunch of free indexers, plus a $2/mo paid one.
What are some good free indexers? I’ve only heard of paid ones (nzbgeek personally) 🤔
Drunken slug, tabula rasa, square eyed, digital carnage
Curious if you are in the US?
Same. I share on soulseek and use usenet and torrents. I have torguard VPN, have downloaded and uploaded TRRABYTES of data over the last 8 years. I use a completely different computer that I RDP to and use a completely different browser, Tor when I need to.
I am
Currently, I’m using Mullvad and used Proton a few months ago. Surfshark did the job many years ago.
Just make sure you pair your torrent client and vpn so if the vpn goes offline, the torrent stops down/up loading.
Thank you - I believe that’s accomplished by setting Mullvad as the network interface in the client, which I did :D. But I will double check to make sure, theoretically speaking.
Yep, binding Mullvad as the network interface should do it!
Mullvad has a kill switch you can enable so it disables networking unless the VPN is up and running and traffic is routed through it.
No anonymity no internet. Very useful.
Mullvad has some advanced features like DAITA and 2 hop you can use for more security.
Thanks! I am learning a ton today. I’m googling every term I don’t know. Feeling very “galaxy brain” right now.
Edit: I should specify I’m using Duck Duck Go instead of Google cause you all taught me that. So thanks again.
For your mom a BRICS country to Japan, the EU, etc… Would probably be a good idea. Use jurisdiction against them
Yes, and Mullvad is the right choice.
Mulvad is great but if you need port forwarding you’ll have to look elsewhere as they no longer provide that feature.
