Ive thought about torrents but they require a paid vpn from what i know? I dont really want to pay, which is why im thinking about piracy because im not made of money and cant afford a vpn. Im just not sure if its possible to be safe and sail the seven seas all for free?
What would you advise i do? what did you do when starting out?
Mooch off someone else’s paid VPN.
Search whatever you’re looking for with yandex.com - they don’t block pirate sites. Be sure to have uBlock Origin on your browser, you WILL need it. Direct Download (ddl) sites can often have 3+ redirects before the actual, real download link, so it’s good to save favorites when it’s only 1
For shows, animes and movies, you’re better off finding streaming sites, which you can find above.
Lastly, telegram. Yes, the app. You can find several channels/groups that share stuff. I follow a couple that share IT/Gaming/Animation related courses. You can find series, animes and other stuff, too.
It depends where you are in the world. Some countries care more about copyright laws. Sometimes you can get away with torrenting with little to no consequences.
Otherwise, stick to direct download and streaming websites. There are a lot of great sites for movies and tv shows. They tend to come and go. Just remember to install an ad blocker. For games, you’ll need to look at direct downloads. Some good links in other comments.
Anecdotal; but I spent 5ish years pirating via torrents from my home in Canada. Never once used a VPN and received an emailed copyright notice forwarded through my ISP about once every 3-5 days.
They never went further than that. The ISP isn’t permitted to give out my personal contact info short of a court order, and the copyright holder(s) can’t be bothered to pursue it further to get that info.
As long as you never reply to the notice; all they have is an IP, a time stamp, and a copy of the letter they sent to the ISP. They don’t know who I am to drag me to court; so first they’d have to sue the ISP for that info. Even then, tieing one specific individual to an entire IPs traffic is next to impossible. Was it the IPs subscriber? Another person in the household? A guest? Someone with unauthorised access? Too many variables/possibilities to prove ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ in a court of law.
Now a days however I use usenet. $12/year for an indexer, and ~$5/month for access to a usenet provider/server. Fast reliable downloads that always complete within 5min. No more waiting on slow or seedless torrents that potentially take days before giving up and trying another. This is all done though an ssl connection to a private server, so there’s nothing to snoop/get reported for.
This. I live in Brazil, I torrent often and have never received any letter from my ISP or anyone. Close to 20 years now surfing the p2p waves.
I’m in the UK and have been torrenting for about that long too. I have had exactly one threatening email from my ISP, over a Hogwarts book from memory. I ignored it and exactly nothing happened. Somehow JK managed to survive, imagine that.
I2p or opendirectories or direct downloads. Id personally opt for i2p as at least you give something back.
That being said a vpn is cheap.
Well first off, torrenting doesn’t “require” a VPN, you may want to look up your area etc… in most of the united states, basically if you torrent without a VPN, there’s a chance that your ISP will detect it and typically they will send you a letter saying “we know you downloaded _____ illegally, if we catch you again, we will cancel your service”.
which depending on what you are going for (like say new releases and big name targets are what they will be watching for the most)… that could take years to even happen.
Now as far as safe, and lower risk… you could always look up pirating on the IRC… it’s not the most user friendly route out there, but that’s kind of the point, it’s ancient technology and for the most part no one bothers to monitor it.
and then of course there’s just tons of bootleg streaming sites. bottom line anything that’s not peer 2 peer, is pretty much impossible for ISPs to identify what you are doing on… and thus are pretty safe.
ISP will detect it and typically they will send you a letter saying “we know you downloaded _____ illegally, if we catch you again, we will cancel your service”.
It’s actually the studios that own the content you are torrenting that will seed the torrent and then collect a list of all IP addresses that connect to them, then they ask your ISP to shut your internet off.
You ISP doesn’t actually care if you torrent, because if they cancel your internet they lose out on money.
True, I guess the process is the studios have deals/threats to sue the ISPs if they don’t do it.
Either way regardless of their reason or motives. The ISP is the one that’s in charge of sending the threat and dealing the punishment, and again the key point is (again region may vary, do research on your ISP), but typically they send a warning first. So in short, if you just want to get started quickly, you can just start torrenting with no VPN (you should probably seed things for as little time as possible), and hope you can afford a VPN before you get the threatening letter, if you do get the threatening letter… then stop all peer 2 peer based piracy until you can afford to do it safer.
Unless your ISP is a content owner, which several are now. Comcast/Xfinity is NBC for example. Plus Comcast makes a lot of profit on cable TV, so they have reason to ger people to stop. That being said, I dont know anyone who was simply downloading for personal use who got their service canceled. But it is a major risk in the IS since most ISPs have near monopolies at least over broadband speeds, so the majority have no other options.
There is also Usenet, access is cheap but not free.
Substantially more pricey than a vpn
Buy usenet around black friday, super cheap. I currently pay $18/yr for usenet, any useful VPN is way more expensive.
Seems like a lot of people replying need to work on their reading comprehension…
Use private trackers only. Public trackers are way easier to identify you on.
Disable DHT, PeX and Local Peer Discovery in your BitTorrent client. This will prevent you connecting to random public peers.
If you’re just interested in movies/TV I recommend streaming sites with an adblocker. Just so much easier and safe enough. Find sites on fmhy.netUse private trackers only. Public trackers are way easier to identify you on.
Source on that? This is the first I’ve heard of it
I2p
qBitTorrent in I2P only mode is free and safe.
It’s slow and limited selection, but there’s good stuff.
last i tried the trackers were dogwater. Waste of time unless you’re looking for 3yo items.
There’s plenty of new stuff on Postmaster, especially if it’s big-budget or sci-fi leaning. But you’re right, it can be difficult to find some media, especially if it’s niche. For free, there’s more being posted than can reasonably be watched or listened to.
Only use direct downloads. For example https://rentry.org/megathread-games#direct-downloads I don’t torrent, I don’t use a VPN, nor pay for anything in order to pirate. Sometimes you might have to wait for slower download speeds but often times there is a mirror that will cap out my speeds of 200mb/s
Hey, this could get you started. Its not the same but you can try “c/Archive” and/or “c/YouTube” but its not much yet :-) You can also try IRC Downloading its free no seeding needed and if you use SASL/SSL you don’t need vpn. There is also something like this “Only One Petabyte and 464,392 files” of shows/movies, should be enought for you for a while =) I mean who needs torrents if you can easily download direct LOL
You could use a free VPN like Proton if you’re worried about getting caught. You can also use DNS over https to hide what sites you’re visiting from being visible, and you might not even need a VPN depending on your area, as others have mentioned. I’ve pirated so much stuff for years and never gotten any angry letters.
You could use a free VPN like Proton if you’re worried about getting caught.
Proton’s free plan does not support P2P.
I thought it just doesn’t support port forwarding, and only one side of a torrent connection needs to have it
No, proton free blocks torrent use
How do they block it exactly? Do they block it the way most public Wifi does, or do they go an extra step and attempt to block trackers? If it’s the former it’s possible to bypass it, but it will limit how fast or good the torrenting experience will be.
In most country you don’t risk anything by just visiting the site. But just so you know, while DoH or DoT are very good things for privacy, it’s not enough to prevent your ISP form seeing the site you visit. They can still see the SNI unless the site has setup ECH but it’s very rare.
Unfortunately any unencrypted file sharing, or really any unencrypted internet usage at all, carries some risk of ISPs or governments snooping on what you are doing. BitTorrent is just particularly notable because of its history and that by the nature of the protocol, you are uploading (seeding) in addition to downloading.
A good VPN is a few bucks a month and provides a lot of other benefits. It’s worth considering.
fmhy has a beginners guide, there’s lots of options that don’t require torrenting
for torrenting specifically, I’ve been using cloudflare’s vpn (1.1.1.1) without issues, though it requires a bit of setup with wireguard
Find someone in your circle of friends who can give you an invite to a private tracker or use usenet. Also vpns arent necessarily “required”. It will depend on your area and your download setup.
usenet
Doesn’t that require a minimum of two paid services?
Depends on your location, your isp, and how patient you can be. There are free providers and indexers.
There are communities for gaining entry into these, I don’t know what they are off the top of my head but they exist and I’ve successfully used them
I2P
Check out Tribler. Its based on similar tech as the Tor network and allows for anonymous downloads and uploads. IRC is still a pretty decent option too, if a bit of work.
