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?
I’ve been torrenting in the US for a decade and a half without a VPN, including as a kid on my parents network LOL, and only got warnings, maybe once every couple years. Tons of copyrighted materials. ATT then Charter, YMMV.
Alternatively if price is an issue (NEVER use a “free” VPN) you could torrent over I2P, which is free and very safe (at least as safe as tor, if not moreso).
Also the next release of qbittorrent is about to have built in I2P support (but also standard I2P comes with its own torrenting software).
In the UK, torrent sites are blocked by the ISPs, so you would need a VPN to access the sites.
I live in India and here nobody cares what you do or download. I only use a VPN to access blocked sites.
I’ve always seen this as a question of risk. What you’re asking is the digital equivalent to “Do I really need to wear my seatbelt when driving?”
You can drive around your car two hours a day, every day, without a seatbelt, and be fine for years. You can say you live in a calm neighborhood and say no one ever drives recklessly there. Everyone is still going to tell you to always wear your seatbelt.
You can be very careful about what you torrent. You could possibly torrent lots of things with no problems at all. All it takes is one person at one other endpoint grabbing your IP from one torrent and reporting, to cause a lot of problems.
It’s up to you if you want to take that risk, but when you’re asking for advice no one is ever going to tell you that you don’t need one, and if they are they’re probably giving bad advice. There are enough horror stories that many don’t think it’s worth the risk.
I’m on a bicycle and am wearing a helmet though
You should probably wear a condom too, just to be extra safe, then.
How else would I use them anyway xD
My country only sees an issue if I’m producing and sitributing pirated content and is really behind on digital laws, and mostly they dont give a fuck. In universities they encourage you to pirate books even show you how, especially with scientific papers and stuff, back when playstation games where only physical there where whole stores dedicated to selling pirated games. Latin america I guess. But on top of that VPNs are freaking expensive. Depends on your situation thou
I was brought up thinking I live in a central europe. The “heart of europe” they called it. Only once I realized that I torrent without a VPN without consequences, I accepted the fact that I’m eastern european AF.
shit, guess I am eastern European despite never having left North America. My ISP just doesn’t give a shit.
I think it depends on the country. In the US, ISPs tend to be fairly strict so using a VPN is necessary (at least with Comcast). After 6-7 DMCAs, I’ve heard of people getting their accounts and service terminated. Best to use one and not take the chance with them. With 3rd world countries, most ISPs don’t care about DMCAs so I can see there not being a need to use one in those situations.
For a private tracker no, for public trackers it depends on your country. Some countries the worst you might get is an email or letter in the mail, other countries you will be sued. I even use a VPN for private trackers, let alone public trackers.
I would recommend using a VPN.
Like many have said it really comes down to where you live and what your country / local ISP do about it. Where I am it’s not an issue. That being said I still got a subscription to Surfshark, they had a great discounted offer for 24 months I think it was like 50 something dollars for first 24 mos (2 yrs) a steal. So do as you see fit, better to be safe than sorry
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
What if i have self-hosted vpn? am i safe now? (wireguard)
Nope! The server provider will definitely be monitoring your activity and probably will report you for torrenting. VPNs shift trust, even self-hosted ones. Do you trust Amazon AWS or Google Cloud or whatever provider you’re using? I certainly hope not.
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. :-)
I live in 3rd world country where the government doesn’t care much about torrent/piracy too. So far there’s no problem.
I guess it depends more on the country you live. If nobody is using VPN, you will probably be fine.
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.
Mullvad stopped providing port forwards, so they’re not ideal for torrenting anymore. They were great before.
But barely anyone else provides it too. Proton has it kind of but the amount of servers are restricted so yeah great higher ping/slower speeds depending on where you are from
+1 for Mullvad! They were raided with a search warrant by Swedish Police who ended up leaving empty handed because the customer data they wanted simply does not exist
How’s the speed on Mullvad? I have gigabit currently and don’t really want to compromise the speed of my connection
Incredibly good. You will probably lose like 100mbps compared to without, at 1gbps.
