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Beginner questions: VPN safe enough? How to use all these tools? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 9 months ago by lazarus@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Hi, I'd like to set the sails due to being frustrated with streaming services, but I have some questions beforehand. I hope, you can help me with that, since lurking and reading the Megathread/Wiki didn't really answer my questions. Thanks for your help.

Is just using a fitting VPN (I've read about Mullvad and ProtonVPN in this community) safe enough to not get caught? I'm located in germany, so sharing even as much as a few kB of pirated content can cost me thousands of euros. I want to be really sure, that I won't get letters from some lawyer soon. All, that I've read so far is basically: Setup VPN and your Torrent software, including kill switch and maybe get into private trackers. Thats it. Is this really enough? Can I do more to be safe? What exactly is the risk with public trackers (as they are often mentioned as the "low hanging fruit" for copyright lawyers)?
I've read the post The complete guide to building your personal self hosted server for streaming and ad-blocking, which mentions many tools to setup. I'm sure these help me find and view content. But are there good resources explaining the functionalities of this software? I'm familiar with Docker and I know about Jellyfin, but it is really unclear to me, what exactly all the other tools do.

Big thanks from a long time lurker!

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[-] Fisch@lemmy.ml 46 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

A VPN is enough for torrenting, as long as the VPN provider isn't logging. I personally use AirVPN because they have port-forwarding but I've used Mullvad before. I also live in Germany and I've never gotten in trouble.

The guide you linked seems a little outdated, Jackett has been replaced by Prowlarr, which is there to have a central location to manage your trackers. If you plan to use Jellyfin, you should also use Jellyseer instead if Overseer. The *arr services are the ones that actually search for the files to download by using the trackers you set up in Prowlarr. You don't need all the *arr services, I only have Sonarr and Radarr, which are for shows and movies respectively. I also have Bazarr for subtitles. AdguardHome is only for ad-blocking, might be useful to you but isn't needed. Idk why that's even in the guide. Flaresolverr is something I've never heard about and I don't use it, so I can't tell you anything about that. Heimdall is something I don't need because I use YunoHost, which has a dashboard already but it might be useful to you.

[-] DivisionResult@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 9 months ago

AirVPN isnt based on Italy? Watchout Italy is a place where Lawfull Interception is easy to implement. I understand the portfowarding thing, stick to ProtonVPN. You need a VPN where countries do the things right, I'm not saying Italy is not one of those. But Switzerland, seems like the best option to resolve any issue.

Maybe... You can use i2p.

BTW cryptostorm is a very old and very known for the paranoid owners. They are really tech savvy, you should give them a try. They do not have a nice, client for windows, and doesn't for Linux they use nm for connections. I think that's where you know they don't want to be more famous , like mullvad orprotono or the others.

[-] amaki@jlai.lu 5 points 9 months ago

I use i2p for torrenting and it works pretty well... except for the download speed (because i2p is a anonymization software, obviously, so it's gonna lots of tunnels..) I recommend tracker2.postman.i2p if you want a torrent site on i2p (everything on there is safe)

[-] lazarus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 months ago

Just read about i2p for the first time. How slow is the download speed in real life? I could live with slow speeds, as long as it doesn't get ridiculously slow.

[-] lazarus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 9 months ago

Hey fellow german :D

Yeah, trusting the VPN provider to not log is a decision I was hesitant to make. Do you take precautions when paying for the VPN service, like paying with crypto or similar? I guess easiest would be paying via paypal or similar, but is that OK for opsec?

I guess I have to do a bit more research about trackers, which and how to use them. Thats for sharing your setup.

[-] zaine00@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I might start sounding like a shill, but Mullvad has a great track record so far. They've been raided by police and they've walked away with nothing. They also fairly recently migrated fully to a diskless RAM only infrastructure also.

The previous poster kind of hinted on this, but Mullvad removed port forwarding from their services, so keep that in mind.

Also for payment, Mullvad will accept cash over mail so you can't be traced digitally by payment.

[-] lazarus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

XD cash over mail, ok. But I guess for only a couple of euros that is worth a try. They seem to be located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Might try that. Honestly their website is really based. Thats for the suggestion with cash over mail.

For what would I need port forwarding?

[-] hangonasecond@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Makes you connectable. If you don't forward ports for your torrent client you can only connect to peers who are port forwarding, meaning you will download and upload more slowly in most cases.

[-] Cinner@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

You'll need port forwarding for private torrent sites so people can download from you better.

[-] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 1 points 9 months ago

Mullvad is no longer good for torrenting as they removed port forwarding meaning you can't open a port for others to connect to for seeding. This might get you by on public trackers alone where it's common to just download a file and never seed it back, but you'll quickly get banned from any private trackers.

[-] myliltoehurts@lemm.ee 7 points 9 months ago

Your isp can most likely tell which VPN you're using (unless you also use tor, and even then there's the theories that a lot of it is ran by law enforcement.. depends on how paranoid you are), they will still see the quantity of traffic coming from your home to the VPN and vice versa. All they need to do is to check the IP and they'll likely find it's in use by ... VPN service.

As long as using a VPN is not illegal in your country you can pay for it however you want really (in some places paying with crypto may make it more suspicious than if you just paid for it through PayPal), if law enforcement really wanted to find out the VPN service you use they probably could, the payment would only make it a tiny bit easier.

The key point as mentioned multiple times is to use one you trust, there's no objectively best one, but you'll find a lot of objectively bad ones (for privacy) if you research them. As a start just never use any which are sponsoring YouTube videos or blog articles, pretty much all of those are crap.

[-] lazarus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 months ago

Crypto or cash VPNs being more suspicious for law enforcement is also a good point

[-] denhil@feddit.de 6 points 9 months ago

Mullvad also sells scratch-off voucher cards on Amazon. Amazon would know you are using mullvad but the voucher number is unknown, so the payment/Amazon account can't be connected to the mullvad account. They only offer 6 and 12 months vouchers, though.

[-] ANIMATEK@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

I’m also in Germany. I use PIA which has been proven in court to be no-log. The setup is not as smooth as others (Port Forwarding requieres some scripting) but it is also one of the cheapest.

You can pay with crypto.