Hi all.
I’ve pirated before, but on my own independent network. For reasons I won’t get into I’ve gone from living independently to living with roommates, and while I personally don’t have anything against piracy myself, my current concern is that because things are on a shared network, I don’t want them to get dinged by our ISP should I get caught in the act.
Beforehand, because it was my own network, my actions, my consequences to face in the rare circumstance that I do get caught (which hasn’t happened yet), everything was smooth sailing.However, even if the likelihood of this happening is low, I don’t want others facing consequences for my own actions.
What are some ways I can generally mitigate this issue? I mostly just pirate movies, and was curious if using streaming websites from FMHY or using SoulSeek would have the same risk as torrenting.
Edit: My region is Canada to help.
private trackers
I’m in camp seed box, or go the Real Debrid/Stremio route and don’t actually host any files on your network. Usenet, maybe with SoulSeek, is also a good route to go.
Otherwise, as others have said, get a VPN. Spend the money you’re not spending on streaming sites on a good one, like Mullvad.
if you use torrents without a VPN it can cause problems. For general streaming websites i dont think there would be any issue. soulseek also would not be an issue. The ISP reports usually come when you seed/leech a public torrent and there are bots that automatically send IP notice to the ISP of the IP they see (since its public). Therefore using private trackers is a bit more secure in this manner but for the best solution use a VPN.
Does this require port forwarding or is that different usecase entirely?
Port forwarding would be preferable, but it’s not required. If you don’t have an open port, you will only be able to connect to peers that do.
like others mentioned, using vpn is best.
unfortunately free ones don’t usually allow torrents because of the huge traffic burden. but there are cheap plans and sales.
also to prevent leakage of torrent traffic:
- bind the torrent client¹ to the vpn connection in the torrent client settings. there are detailed guides on the webs for each major torrent client. some even on the vpn provider website’s help section
- enable kill switch² in the vpn client (…unless maybe you have other apps that absolutely need to stay connected regardless of vpn status)
- check the news site torrentfreak³ from time to time
footnotes
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client is another word for an app that connected to something/someone else
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this cuts off all internet access to the device if vpn disconnects
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a site for news affecting piracy and torrents, including govt crackdowns on piracy and torrent site trust rankings
VPN is the tried and true.
If you want to have them even less involved than that use your mobile phone data plan as a hot spot.
These kinds of questions need to mention the region they are about.
Thanks, added I’m in Canada.
Canadian laws and/or enforcement is pretty weak in Canada. The worst thing you’ll get is a scary email or two but that’s it. That being said I pirate a lot so I just use a VPN.
