OK, so, I have a couple of questions:
- What’s the worst that can happen if I don’t use a VPN while pirating?
- Are free tier VPNs (like Proton VPN) good enough?
- I don’t want to pay much or anything for a VPN, is a way I can get a good free one, or set one myself somehow (I have experience with selfhosting) ?
- If not, which cheap one do you recommend?
EDIT: I pirate mostly movies, and rarely some TV series.
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This heavily depends on where you live and how your local jurisdiction deals with piracy.
What’s the worst that can happen if I don’t use a VPN while pirating?
For example, torrenting, especially seeding, has a good chance of getting you fined in Germany.
Are free tier VPNs (like Proton VPN) good enough?
Usually not or they are so limited that they are only viable for very small scale piracy.
I don’t want to pay much or anything for a VPN, is a way I can get a good free one, or set one myself somehow (I have experience with selfhosting) ?
If you run a server at home it’s still using your public IP, so a personal VPN (you connecting to your own server) really doesn’t help.
If not, which cheap one do you recommend?
Most VPNs are pretty cheap on monthly basis if you sign up for a couple of years. I’m currently using NordVPN (which is like $3 a month). But If I’d have to pick a new provider at this time I’d go with Mullvad.
What about port forwarding? Mullvad p***ied out to the IP holders and dropped it
Good point. I guess AirVPN would my my 2nd choice. But for my setup I don’t actually need it.
ProtonVPN
thats like, the biggest honeypot lmao. protonvpn:
- does not accept monero
- its onion site, once you click on the register pages takes you to the clearnet site.
Okay. They do have port forwarding though
Yeah, I still have like 2 more years left on my NordVPN, but the moment that dies, I’m moving to Mullvad (or something similar or better if available).
Torrents yes, always VPN. If you’re doing the debrid route, not required but personally I still do.
I am a big fan of mullvad VPN as they take no info from you to create an account. Can pay with crypto. No name, email or anything tied to their service. Used proton, nord and pia in the past.
Depends what country you’re in
I decided to not use a VPN, because I live in Greece and read online that, although piracy is illegal, no action is being taken for pirates.
In my country it is decriminalised unless you’re doing it at a very large scale and charging money, so I’m home free.
My ISP does block most torrent trackers – But changing DNS providers is enough to get around that.
Depends on how hard your country cracks down on individual piracy. If you’ve heard a friend of yours in the same country being served a copyright notice for pirating; you absolutely need a VPN. If you’ve never heard of this and the idea sounds impossible, you typically won’t need it.
If you will need a VPN; I would heavily recommend Proton VPN for convenience. If you want to selfhost you’re going to need a server in a different country which will still cost you money. Assuming you’ll pay for a typical sbc + gigabit internet + electricity costs + remote maintenance costs and you’ll be looking at a way bigger cost than just 60 euros a year. That’s how much ProtonVPN costs.
If you’re just watching movies and tv I highly recommend just grabbing one of the streaming sites from the masterlist. Use a good ad blocker and you’re golden.
- The worst that can happen is nintendo sues you for ten times what you have to make an example out of you. More likely is angry isp letters and eventually a fine.
- Generally no, but they’re better than nothing.
- Not that I know of. You can kind of set one up yourself on a vps, but that would probably cost more.
- I would recommend airvpn. They are fairly cheap, accept standard credit/debit cards, as well as crypto or even cash (like actual mailed cash, it’s kinda crazy).
“angry ISP letters” followed by termination of service and inability to get new service from that ISP for that physical address no matter who attempts to sign up for new service under a different name. if your address is only serviced by one local ISP, and there’s no good alternative, then you’re fucking hosed. every other concern is a distant second to that.
Depends highly on your country. Generally, for file sharing (peer 2 peer such as torrents), yes. For regular downloads & streaming sites, not so much, just a fully subscribed adblocker and a bit of brain juice. Although there had been some cases of peer 2 peer streaming in the past, but I think that was via flash players. I don’t know if that’s still a thing anywhere and if it is, I think it would not make it into the megathread (I hope).
The free plan on Proton doesn’t let you torrent.
If you are doing any downloads (especially torrents) you should be using a VPN.
- Your ISP will usually send a letter telling you to stop, in some cases they’ve been known to cut peoples service.
- Free vpns sell your data and usually have caps, but would probably prevent you from getting letters in the mail.
- What is cheaper? A vpn account or paying for 2-3 streaming services?
- I use a nordvpn account I bought from a reseller. Back when I got it nordvpn was still pretty good, but idk how people feel about it nowadays.
You could use i2p for torrent it is free and secure, but slow
- Are free tier VPNs (like Proton VPN) good enough?
Other people have already answered this but keep in mind a lot of them are browser based. Even if you are using a web UI for your torrent client that’s not going to protect you. I’ve seen a few people here make that mistake.
- I don’t want to pay much or anything for a VPN, is a way I can get a good free one, or set one myself somehow (I have experience with selfhosting) ?
Have you considered looking into direct downloads?
They are a bit more work but if you are motivated on going in without protection it’s a safer alternative.
If it helps you rationalise the cost of a VPN you can always think about how much money you save compare to paying for subscription services.
In Canada, I’ve never bothered with a VPN. Nobody in Canada has ever been successfully sued for torrent downloading of media, and BC courts have thrown out mass John Doe cases as a waste of the legal system’s time.
Even if it does go to court, there’s a principal in Canadian law that damages can be at most three times the value of the good (for punitive damages). For BluRay that’s, what, $50? They don’t want to go all the way to a judgement to set the legal precedent of a $150 judgement.
Even if courts go beyond treble damages, there’s a maximum fine of $5000 for non-commercial infringement. Even that isn’t with their legal costs to pursue.
So non-commercial piracy is de facto legal in Canada.
(IANAL, this is not legal advice.)
Look in a Debird service. And pay with crypto.Then you are completely anonymous. All torrenting is done far from you and sent back over https.
Cryptocurrency is not necessarily anonymous. Buying bitcoin from a broker leaves a record connecting your payment method to your wallet. Even if you mine them yourself, doesn’t your IP address show up on the public ledger? I guess if you somehow bought bitcoin in cash…
Is there a more private cryptocurrency I’m not considering?
Monero
I consider it more private than like a credit card at least your name’s not attached to it.
And if you really want to you can just use a credit card at an on-ramp exchange, then take that and swap it for a different crypto on a exchange that doesn’t require any registration. Then it becomes effectively completely anonymous.
Monero is the private one. But also if you transfer your broker gotten bitcoins to another bitcoin wallet there is no evidence that that belongs to you. You can have sent them to someone else.
IPs do not show in any ledgers
Internet without VPN is like sending all your things on postcards instead of in envelopes in the mail. Yea https and more mitigate a lot but still.
- they sue you for a portion of your future savings, because you single-handedly responsible for their imaginary loss of profits, judge agrees.
- free tier vpns are good enough. But the competition amongst “no log” vpns is pretty fierce. People say you can only trust 3 specific vpns who would rather shut down than spy for a government, but if you’re just downloading movies then you can expand your choices.
- the point of the vpn is to hide your ip address. Self hosting in your home defeats purpose. The best free option is using I2P for torrenting.
- Wait till December for all the Christmas discounts. An annual bundle works out to $2-4 a month.
Where do you live? If you are in the global South, nobody cares and you can pirate raw as much as you want. If you live in the anglosphere, you should probably get one. I’m the US your ISP might give you a warning or two but they will probably cut service. If you’re in Germany don’t let the VPN ever come down.
