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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by GrumpyCat@leminal.space to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

I know this is a dumb question... But i cant really aford a vpn like at all, is it possible to torrent without using a vpn in the USA or will i get in some trouble and go to jail if i torrent without a vpn?

The reason i cant get a vpn is because im just broke and im young enough to live with family so i cant really get a job.

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[-] frenchfryenjoyer@lemmings.world 1 points 6 days ago

My friend uses a VPN and has been pirating for two decades. might just be a placebo but she didn't get even one warning from her ISP

[-] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 92 points 1 week ago

Don’t go tormenting without a VPN.

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[-] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 70 points 1 week ago

On behalf of whoever is paying for your internet connection, do not torment without a VPN.

If you ignore this advice, be aware that the aformentioned person will get a nastygram in the mail, complete with the exact title of the torment you downloaded. They have no qualms with outing your darkest perversions to the breadwinner(s) in your household.

[-] Chronographs@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 week ago

In my experience the nastygram accused me of downloading a ton of different things but I there was only maybe one thing I actually did? They’re very bad at figuring out what you’re torrenting only that you are

[-] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 14 points 1 week ago

Those letters originate from the rights holders, who have leechers in the swarm, verifying that you are actively uploading data to them. Your ISP doesnt care if you torrent, or who you torrent to. They wont originate a letter unless a rightsholder requires them to.

The rightsholder has your IP address, and the name of the file you sent them. Data for those files was sent to their leechers by your IP address, perhaps not by you, but by some machine operating on your network, or through it.

It is possible that the letter to your ISP included a list of both IP addresses belonging to several of their customers, and filenames sent from all of those customers. It is possible that the ISP sent out letters to each of the individual subscribers, and just attached the full list of files from the original complaint.

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[-] Rabbit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 53 points 1 week ago

Save your lunch money for however long it takes to be able to buy a year of VPN like Mullvad in your country.

You aren't paying for your internet so you'd be an asshole to put the account holder under scrutiny for torrenting without protection. Especially when they are also covering your rent, elecricity, gas, food, clothing, etc. Don't be a selfish asshole.

If you can't get VPN don't be entitled and go off torrenting because other people say it is fine. You aren't paying for internet so you don't get the privilege to decide if it is fine or not.

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 week ago

Mullvad stopped allowing port forwarding, sadly, which complicates torrenting. They had valid reasons for dropping support, but it makes it much harder to complete a solid connection via Mullvad.

[-] nfreak@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago

Still sad about this. Mullvad feels like the best privacy-centric choice and I've been using them for a year, but once I set up my media server I realized how vital port forwarding is. Ended up switching to Proton, who I'm still uncomfortable with due to their CEO's political comments earlier this year, but they're arguably the best choice right now.

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[-] Chronographs@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago

Yeah mullvad is great for certain use cases but torrenting is not one of them

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[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Private trackers.

In the USA when you are caught torrenting copyrighted material it is because a firm hired by copyright owners sits in the public swarm logging IPs. They then send a warning to your ISP, who in turn sends you a warning.

Private trackers are by their nature a club that tries their damnedest to prevent people working for those kind of companies from joining the site to begin with.

It is still smart to use a VPN but your ISP isn't generally targeting your data in transit itself. It's usually a third party company hired out who cannot see your data streams directly. Thus a private tracker reduces the need for such measures since you are less likely to run into a hired hand logging your IP from a private tracker swarm.

[-] tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 week ago

This guy torments.

Seriously though, if you are cautious and stick to actual communities instead of just public or private trackers run for glam, you will usually be fine. Communities clamp down really fast if there's a report of virus etc.

The quality of releases typically is far better, since uploading crap like virus or video covered in ads is a dick move™️

[-] emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago

It would be incredibly stupid to still not use a vpn in the states. If a kid who has never tormented before can get an invite to a private tracker, so can a consultant with an antipiracy group. And with a corporate fiber connection and limitless storage budget they could easily sit on thousands of torrents from private sites without having to worry about ratio. The site moderator would never know anything is up until all their users start getting piracy notices, and even then itd be hard to track down the one doing the logging.

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[-] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 week ago

If you are broke and cannot afford a VPN, I suggest you use I2P.

https://geti2p.net/en/

I2P is basically an internet protocol that treats all kinds of internet activity in the manner a torrent works.

Basically, you run a local node.

Traffic is routed around in a bunch of anonymized, encrypted chunks, from many different users, which are then bunched up together into packets and encrypted again.

As a client, you can only decrypt the parts of a packet that pertain to you...

But as a node, you help move packets along to every other person who is running a node, in a sort of meshnet like fashion.

The result is a free, but very slow, but also pretty well anonymized way of passing net traffic around...

...and it is also arguably more private/secure than a VPN, which can simply hand over its server logs if legally asked to...

...and it is also arguably more private/secure than TOR, which can have de-anonymization attacks run on it if enough onion nodes, or your entry/exit nodes, are either comprimised or just outright run as honey pots, which is a thing various law enforcement agencies do.

However, another downside to I2P is that it is... considerably more technically complex for most users to actually set up and use properly, than just a basic VPN for switching your geoip to watch Brazillian netflix or w/e.

But, it does allow torrenting and portforwarding, and is totally free.

Don't expect to be able to stream any media with it though, it is again very slow.

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[-] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 week ago

All I'm going to say is that my ISP used to send me notices from the MPAA about what I was downloading and that I should:

  1. Cease and desist
  2. Remove the content I downloaded.

Since I setup a VPN, I do not get those notices.

Do I need to say more?

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[-] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 week ago

I'm in a country where there's no legal precedent against torrenting, so it's somewhat safe, but it's still better to use one anyways. You never know when the laws might change, and it's best if there's no record of your IP/timestamp torrenting.

Either way, there's a risk-reward tradeoff of not using one, but the risk is much higher in the US, and if you're made an example of, it could be life ruining. You'll have to decide for yourself if it's worth paying to mitigate the risk.

[-] supervent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 week ago
[-] henfredemars@infosec.pub 8 points 1 week ago

Note that the official documentation says that it’s experimental and may leak your IP address.

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[-] ClathrateG@hexbear.net 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Nah, only the people you're tormenting will care, and what are they going to do about it? cry?

Edit: OP edited the title and ruined this joke soviet-pout

[-] TheFogan@programming.dev 10 points 1 week ago

Jail probably not... however you will probably get a sternly worded letter from your ISP saying "We know you were torrenting (name of one show or movie you torrented"), This is your first warning.

In short, you won't go to jail, but your ISPs will usually give a few warnings, and then cut off your internet.

[-] Mordikan@kbin.earth 10 points 1 week ago

Its not zero-effort, but you can safely torrent without a VPN using I2P. You'd have to have an I2P router running on the backend and use something like i2psnark to connect. Out of the box, I2P won't work, you have to adjust the config, but after that you could go VPN-less. Two things to consider though: 1. Torrents will run slower. 2. Only trackers inside the I2P network would be reachable.

[-] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

So here's the deal is you "really" can't afford $30 a YEAR:

I use a VPN called windscribe. You can buy this 1 year VPN for $30. You can buy it through the Google play store.

I also have the "Google Rewards" app that pays you in Google play store credit for taking short surveys or taking pictures of receipts.

I get $50 to $100 per year in play store credits to spend on Google play.

See where I'm going with this? I pay for my yearly subscription with my "free" play store credits I get.

=Free VPN. Like right now I've got almost $40 in play store credits (the free credits you earn have to be spent in a year. It spends the oldest credits first) and I have like 4 months left before I have to renew my VPN subscription. Since I never enjoyed any pay to win styles of games, at this point I practically run out of things I even want to buy with my credits before they start to expire. I've bought probably a thousand dollars worth of apps and games over the years and haven't ever spent a single cent of my own money on any of them. Nothing but the reward app credits. I buy the "pro" versions of apps I use to remove ads, even if the ads don't bother me or I don't use that particular app very much.

[-] ladfrombrad@lemdro.id 6 points 1 week ago

This, and something to note is never lie to Google Rewards as you'll then stop getting surveys altogether if they catch you out with their trap questions

Have you ever visited XYZ waterpark

If you haven't, even if it's a real place just say no and wait for the next survey because they'll trip you up trying.

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[-] truxnell@aussie.zone 9 points 1 week ago

Stick to private trackers, the risk of being caught is dramatically lower (harder to get it, smaller user base, companies target the big public ones)

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[-] Binette@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago

yes it's important. take it from someone who is also young, but learned their lesson quickly

[-] gravitywell@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago

If you use only private trackers you can skip the VPN. If you use public ones, your ISP might take issue

[-] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 6 points 1 week ago

OK, so what is a VPN?

A Virtual Private Network is a virtual network that lives on top of a physical network. In the case of the Internet, basically what happens is that your network traffic goes into the VPN on one side and comes out of the VPN provider's network somewhere else, rather than out of your ISP's network. All this really does is move any privacy concerns from your ISP to your VPN, which may or may not protect you from any legal inquiries.

For a more thorough explanation look here: https://www.howtogeek.com/133680/htg-explains-what-is-a-vpn/

Is it possible to use torrent without a VPN?

Certainly, however your torrent traffic will be visible to and inspectable by your ISP. If a copyright holder chooses to, they may sue your ISP for the personal information of the person whose IP address matches the illegal traffic that they found. After they have your personal information they can prosecute you directly. A VPN might shield against this by changing the apparent IP address associated with your torrent traffic, but then you are at the mercy of the VPN provider and the government of whichever country they operate in.

It should be noted that if you are not paying the bill for the Internet, and you use it for illegal activity, then the person you are putting at risk is the person who pays the bill. It's their name attached to the ISP records.

If you are caught, or if they just don't like torrent traffic on their network, the ISP may decide that you are simply too much trouble and it's not worth keeping you as a customer, and just cut off your service (for your whole house).

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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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