I think some ISPs still track if you use torrent and send warning emails.
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.
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.
If you don’t want to store the media then yarrlist has a bunch of sketchy streaming sites that work well enough with an ad blocker.
You can use ipleak.net to see if your IP is visible through your web browser AND through downloading a test torrent.
Thank you!!!
Vpn is someone elses computer
Wrong. VPN is the encrypted tunnel between your computer and someone else’s computer.
You’re thinking of a VPS.
I can see an argument that the exit node is someone else’s computer. An an example of this risk, honeypot Tor exit nodes.
In this context, however, I would trust Mullvad’s exit nodes, I think. Well, do trust them, since I use them, just not for anything that would get me in hot water.
Website is someone else’s computer.
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.
I’ve been sailing for a good 20 years now. I run PIA VPN, which I know has concerns with their ownership, but that’s what I’ve always had and purchased before their sale, and have never had any issues. I have received 3 letters from ISPs in my life and all were when my VPN wasn’t running. No I have a kill switch in my workflow that will cut access with no VPN.
If you look into something like MEGA, all that data is http traffic. I’ve used that without a VPN a lot and have had no issues there, but that’s now my backup for when alternatives aren’t available.
VPN is almost for sure good enough, but there are other actions you can take if you want to take it further. Do a search for fmhy and follow some advice I there for detailed info.
And uBlock Origin, goes without saying
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.
mull is a very decent VPN and that will do OK to anonymize your traffic, but that’s all you’re doing … you’re far from safe from all threats.
There’s malicious downloads, torrent hijacks, honeypots, bandwidth issues, the Number one thing you need to stay safe is COMMON SENSE …
So educate yourself and learn about this world you’re getting into. The information is out there and freely available.
+1 with mullvad. Haven’t heard of any issues with them. Had nothing to turn over to investigators multiple times.
You can pay them in cash if you want, so they’d have no PII on you other than your IP.
This is true, I know for a fact. Cops showed up demanded they gave them everything, and they did: they got nothing. Nothing stored, nothing to give.
Bye pig.
That’s neat! As an animal lover, I also love the mole in their logo. Not that the logo has anything to do with the quality of the service… but it is cute.
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?
Russia is winning. All Ukrainians are Nazis. NATO made us do it. That should about cover it.
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.
try searching for rtnews
Or browse .ml.
Theoretically doing something right, you mean.
*Cough… yes, of course.
Mullvad is fucking leg¹t.
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.
Curious if you are in the US?
I am
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.
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.
