I was brought up thinking I live in a central europe. The "heart of europe" they called it. Only once I realized that I torrent without a VPN without consequences, I accepted the fact that I'm eastern european AF.

I've always seen this as a question of risk. What you're asking is the digital equivalent to "Do I really need to wear my seatbelt when driving?"

You can drive around your car two hours a day, every day, without a seatbelt, and be fine for years. You can say you live in a calm neighborhood and say no one ever drives recklessly there. Everyone is still going to tell you to always wear your seatbelt.

You can be very careful about what you torrent. You could possibly torrent lots of things with no problems at all. All it takes is one person at one other endpoint grabbing your IP from one torrent and reporting, to cause a lot of problems.

It's up to you if you want to take that risk, but when you're asking for advice no one is ever going to tell you that you don't need one, and if they are they're probably giving bad advice. There are enough horror stories that many don't think it's worth the risk.

I live in 3rd world country where the government doesn't care much about torrent/piracy too. So far there's no problem.

I guess it depends more on the country you live. If nobody is using VPN, you will probably be fine.

Alternatively if price is an issue (NEVER use a “free” VPN) you could torrent over I2P, which is free and very safe (at least as safe as tor, if not moreso).

Also the next release of qbittorrent is about to have built in I2P support (but also standard I2P comes with its own torrenting software).

Do you live in a country where the authorities are taking action against torrenting? Yes, you should absolutely be using a VPN, because otherwise you're presenting your identity on a silver platter.

Do you live in a country where the authorities don't give a fuck? Then no, a VPN won't be necessary.

@Alextheacceptable In Germany, there are lawyers specialised on torrents. They collect German IPs from the peers list and mass-sue them over distributing copyrighted material. They always ask for a settlement payment of more than 5000€. It can usually be escaped by taking it to court, but I recommend not going through that.

So, depends on your location. Over here, download one movie without a VPN and you have a shit ton of legal crap coming your way.

You don't technically need a VPN for torrenting, but unless you live in a country that is known to not care about piracy, then you should use one.

They don’t seem to care, but they collect data. So they don’t seem to care NOW. Always use a non-logging VPN.

That ultimately depends on what jurisdiction you're in and what laws apply. It varies wildly country to country.

I've been torrenting in the US for a decade and a half without a VPN, including as a kid on my parents network LOL, and only got warnings, maybe once every couple years. Tons of copyrighted materials. ATT then Charter, YMMV.

Yes, you need some way to hide your IP when torrenting in the US unless your ISP doesn't care about copyright letters. If you don't want to use a VPN, a debrid service or I2P are other options as well that can hide torrents from your isp. Another option is to not torrent and stick to ddl and streaming

I can only give my experience. I live in the US and thought my ISP didn’t care, but when I got nasty letters about me torrenting Rick and Morty, I started using a VPN.

If you live in third world country then you definitely don't need one.

use I2P

In France it is not very necessary, the hadopi will send you warnings. You need to stop at least 6 month after you receive a mail warning.

Then you are good to go.

I use stremio for ages without any problems.

Still i recommend vpn usage for torrents. You can share accounts with multiple persons to lower the price.

What I've learned overtime is high profile things like movie releases will see a nice email from your ISP. Anime relating thing that are under the radar won't have much trouble. A little risky, but that what I've learned on that side.

I live in India and here nobody cares what you do or download. I only use a VPN to access blocked sites.

A VPN is not necessary for torrent usage.

But if you live in a country that enforces copy right etc online, it's highly recommended, as a VPN will make it almost impossible to track you down.

A VPN is like a costume. You don't need to wear one to do something illegal, but wearing one will make it much harder for authorities to identify you.

In the UK, torrent sites are blocked by the ISPs, so you would need a VPN to access the sites.

I think it depends on the country. In the US, ISPs tend to be fairly strict so using a VPN is necessary (at least with Comcast). After 6-7 DMCAs, I've heard of people getting their accounts and service terminated. Best to use one and not take the chance with them. With 3rd world countries, most ISPs don't care about DMCAs so I can see there not being a need to use one in those situations.

If your ISP doesn't care then you are good.

I find that most VPNs are so heavily shilled that by that very nature, makes them suspect. Since the days of Napster, WinMX, Bearshare and the like, I've gotten exactly 2 "Hey, knock it off" letters from my ISP. And they were both from new-release, mouse-affiliated movie releases from a public tracker.

Get in with some of the private trackers and 99.9% of the worry disappears. Try not to upload terabytes of data, and the majority of ISPs (I mean, two of the 3 that seem to have the monopolies at least) wont even bother sending the notices.

My country only sees an issue if I'm producing and sitributing pirated content and is really behind on digital laws, and mostly they dont give a fuck. In universities they encourage you to pirate books even show you how, especially with scientific papers and stuff, back when playstation games where only physical there where whole stores dedicated to selling pirated games. Latin america I guess. But on top of that VPNs are freaking expensive. Depends on your situation thou

i live in ny and i have gotten letters from spectrum in the past. havent gotten one since i went vpn (referral?) and seedbox. im not torrenting, as i am logging into the seeedbox (referral?) via ftp and transferring the files over that way. so far so good.

Wow times have changed for sure. This thread convinced me to get a VPN of some kind at least

Pedantically, it's not required, but it's probably a good idea to make your life easier.

yes. sorry. it's cheaper then buying countless games and software, whatever you use it for. think of it as getting a massive discount on things you'd have been forced to buy otherwise. overtime, you'd spend thousands of dollars in games, etc. VPN monthly cost is a small price to pay comparibly

Yes, it is really that dangerous. People recommended VPNs for a reason. Whether you personally are realistically at risk is an unknown - relatively few people are actually the targets of anti-piracy action. As others have pointed out, copyright trolls generally operate in specific countries and regions.

Still, I would never recommended engaging in copyright infringement without some form of protection. I understand you are poor but it really is a silly risk to take. The way almost all pirates get caught, at least from what I've seen, is through stupidity or complacency (one could argue they are the same thing). This is why the megathread tries to recommended best practice wherever possible.

Last time i did this, i got a nice email from my isp giving me a warning that they may turn off my internet.

It depends very much on the copyright laws on where you live. You said you don't live in the US, which already makes you better off than a lot of people here -However, Europe also has very strict © laws. So it is always recommended.

VPNs are only really necessary if you use public trackers. Private trackers are generally viewed as small enough and not worth the bother by copyright holders to pursue. Like someone else said earlier, it’s a matter of risk. I tend to view private trackers, especially those seen as “elite” and difficult to enter as being very safe.