Couple of Questions about torrenting (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 year ago by blakeus12@hexbear.net to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Hello! I have some q's about torrenting as the title implies. First, I know that torrenting requires a VPN capable of P2P, but i cant afford a vpn with such capabilities. is there any free ones available?

Second, if i end up being able to do so, where should i torrent from? i've heard of the pirate bay but honestly that's it.

Third, what is the best torrent client to use for this?

any help would be appreciated, thank you and good day comrades comrade-doggo

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[-] viking@infosec.pub 17 points 1 year ago

If you can't afford a good VPN, you can't afford to torrent.

If you don't pay for something, you are the merchandise. And the last thing you want is a VPN that sells you out, when your primary use case is to do something illegal with it.

[-] adonkeystomple@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty new to torrenting as well. To answer your questions based on the personal research I've done.

You absolutely require a VPN. Definitely a paid one. The free ones are not of good quality and a lot of them are more than likely to be detrimental to your privacy. Also P2P is not a requirement for torrenting. All it does is it enables you to make more connections in the swarm and making the torrent download faster. Some good recommendations of VPN's with port forwarding I've seen thrown around are Proton VPN, Airvpn. Options without port forwarding are Mullvad, or IVPN.
I've been using 1337x for movies and TV shows and it's been great. I've also heard Torrent Galaxy is good as well. As always though be really careful with what you download no matter what. Always run a scan on files you download.
Qbittorrent is the best.

[-] blakeus12@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

ah, ok. thanks. i guess nothings truly free. thank you for your help!

[-] ElectricAirship@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago

P2p isn't a must, especially after mullvad fiasco.
Look into Sonarr, Radarr, and jackett. Seriously, after months of being too lazy to set it up, I caved and am never going back. If you just want to stream torrents download stremio with the torrentio plugin.
Qbittorrent.

[-] blakeus12@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

Thanks, would you mind explaining why P2P isn't nessecary anymore? and what was the mullvad fiasco?

[-] axzxc1236@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not who you replied to, but I can guess what they are trying to say:

If you only download new torrents, there is a high chance someone have opened their port, thus allow you to download without open a port.

If you want older / not popular torrent, it's different story.

[-] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I use FastVPN. Really cheap for the first year (1.7$ per month).

Or you can download torrents over i2p for free

[-] HumanPerson@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

I second i2p. It may not be fast but if you want a truly idiot proof way to torrent it is great.

[-] blakeus12@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

would my ISP in America get antsy about I2P?

[-] webuge@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

You can pay for Real-debrid instead of a VPN. In this case you will send the torrent to Real-debrid then download the torrent content from real-debrid. Also you can integrate real-debrid with Streamio + Torrentio which is a great way for streaming content.

[-] cucumberbob@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

I use debrid-link. Same thing but it seeds the torrents you download. Same price as well

[-] webuge@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

This is good. I will take a look. Thank you.

[-] Fleppensteijn@feddit.nl 2 points 1 year ago

It depends on your location whether you need a VPN. I'm good without it. If you want to pay, maybe you can pay for usenet instead.

[-] blakeus12@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

i did look at usenet briefly, but now i will do more research. unfortunately i live in the US, pretty much the center of 5-9-14 so im assuming VPN is definitely nessecary. thank you!

[-] TheOneCurly@lemmy.theonecurly.page 2 points 1 year ago

I've been a pretty heavy torrent user for years. I'm not sure when everyone came to the conclusion that VPNs were necessary. If you stick to slightly older media on public trackers and private for really new hype stuff you're very unlikely to get hit. Plus one letter from your isp isn't the end of the world and you can always kick on a VPN after your first one.

[-] spiderman@ani.social 2 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure when everyone came to the conclusion that VPNs were necessary.

Yeah, unless your port is blocked or you can't access the private trackers (which is very unlikely to happen) you don't really need a vpn. also private trackers don't allow their users to use free vpn.