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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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[-] aniki@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago

Pihole also can be your sole DNS provider and then you can pick your upstream server.

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

Thats what I have in my home network. Upstream is currently cloudflares 1.1.1.1

[-] myliltoehurts@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

Unless you configure pihole to connect to CF via DoH, the above is still entirely true. Pihole is not a privacy tool, it's a filtering tool.

I used to have this setup too until I realised spending a single hour per year on pihole "costs" me more than paying for a good DNS resolver which can also do the blocking, and I can easily use on my phone as well when I'm away. I'm very happy to have switched, personally.

[-] Artemis@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

Definitely true, but I think the problem is there's no DNS out there that blocks everything you want. I've never found a DNS resolver that blocks my TV's telemetry domains, for instance. A pi-hole on a RPi runs super cheap so the quick initial setup adding blocklists is super worth it for me at least.

[-] myliltoehurts@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago

The above is still true for the upstream regardless, pihole provides filtering - it doesn't replace the privacy provided by using a trusted upstream server and you should still configure pihole to use DoH to the upstream.