Before I say anything further, yes I know how much the recommended VPNs cost. I can read. Please do not interrogate me about it.
I’ve been wanting to get into torrenting for a while, particularly contributing to private trackers related to music (and to a lesser extent retro games, though I don’t have much original stuff to put there as it’s harder to find rare games than rare music). FMHY recommends RiseUp if I must get a free VPN while I’m working on my financial situation, though I’m not sure whether it’s been tested in court. What are my options, if any?
Find a friend in a less shit place you can proxy through.
Use someone else’s wifi.
I used to park my car in a Home Depot parking lot when I went to work with a laptop torrenting until the battery died.
Hard to get a positive seed ratio this way, but definitely seems like best bet for someone that can’t afford airvpn
I used to do that at the Burger King that was next to my old house. I’d prop my laptop up by the window the faced the restaurant and start downloading.
Then at some point they added something to the WiFi that, after you’ve been connected for like 30 minutes, disconnects you. You wouldn’t be banned or anything, it would just cut the connection until you go back to the captive portal and click “I Agree” again.
I feel like a lot of public WiFis these days have data caps and throttling to circumvent downloading.
I lived above a Starbucks for a while, that was the best VPN I ever had!
Go to the small local library, they usually have free wifi, sometimes without registration and if you’re lucky they don’t filter any traffic.
There is also a map of open wifi hotspots online which work without registration also, but I’m too lazy to dig out the link.
Ask online for somebody to share their VPN. Many subscriptions explicitly allow inviting friends and family and allow multiple simultaneous connections.
Local library worker here. Can confirm we don’t track connections, we only tally how many use our wifi if we can figure it out. Basically the tally just includes whoever brings out their phone in the library.
Just be aware that the state can supply your library with free internet, and I’m not sure how that’s set up. I personally don’t like connecting to random open wifi, official or no.
In my younger years we hid an RPi with a large USB stick in our library. A seedbox of sorts, connected to wifi with semi-random schedule (public hours mostly) and random mac address to avoid detection. Worked like a charm!
You could also consider looking into a private tracker. It’s not 100% safe but much more safe than a public tracker. It’s also kind of fun getting into it, but hard to get invited.
You’re going to need to find VPNs you don’t need to pay for, such as https://spys.one/ stuff, although most of those will not work for torrenting. I leave the rest to you as being able to figure it out is the good kind of gatekeeping.
You can get into private trackers and trust them. Not recommended, but some do.
Generally speaking, the copyright trolls only target public trackers and DHT. There have been some instances of them making way into TL and others. Your ISP could also identify torrenting on private trackers if they wanted to, even with mitigations. In my experience and from what I hear, most ISPs do not go to these lengths.
So, there a risk doing the above. Whether or not it’s worth it until you can afford a decent VPN is up to you.
Aside: Please do not use a free VPN for torrenting (or tor, for that matter). They are either like RiseUp and run on donations for people who really, really need them, or Proton which is commercial and specifically try to block or slow down the traffic. Either way, if ruins it for everyone else.
Either way, if ruins it for everyone else.
How does it ruin it for everyone else? One slow peer does not ruin the network.
I meant in the context of the VPN. It slows down the network for everyone on one which is run by donation. For commercial companies, it incentivizes them to further lock down what users can do or what speeds they get.
free proton blocks p2p connections anyway
You can use torrent to direct link services like seedr.cc, however they have max size limit.
I mean you can avoid all that. If you’re just interested in music and retro games then just use soulseek and use the rom megathread. both of which are going to be either peer to peer or direct downloads. no torrenting.
Rom megathread (web search it) has quite literally everything. no need to search, no need to torrent, it’s all right there. And soulseek with Nicotine+ just works like napster. sign up, be sure to share your music library, and then have at it.
I use slsk, I’m just trying to find more places to upload the rare music I have to so it’s less likely to become lost.
right so you just keep your music folder open so people can do just that. More audiophiles are going to be on soulseek than some random torrent tracker.
I don’t understand why you insist on torrenting when you can’t safely do so. You’re going to get way more traction sharing your rare stuff on soulseek than you will torrenting it I can guarantee that.
Its not a big thing with trackers anymore unless you get into one of the exclusive private trackers dedicated to music, but this requires previous history with other trackers, good upload speeds, etc. I would just stick with slsk for now.
What’s not a big thing with trackers?
There’s a few free vpn providers out there. You could do a little homework and see if they are a good option. I tend to mistrust free services like that (if I’m not paying, who is, and what are they paying for?), but if you’re in a pinch it’s something to research.
Another option is to look for deals. Sometimes VPN providers will have a super sale a few times a year. I think once I got a NordVPN subscription for THREE YEARS for like $60. It’s more expensive than a single month of anything, yes, but if you can afford a onetime expense it’s nice not to have to worry about a recurring monthly cost.
Your other option is to not use torrents. Usenet is still the grand daddy of file sharing and is pretty much anonymous. Most Usenet hosts are paid, but back in the day even ISPs ran their own servers. It could be worth looking and seeing if there’s any free or low cost providers there.
I just do it “raw”, using an IP denylist built into my client KTorrent. No problems for a while. But, I mostly do different media than you. (I do TV.)
Use a free VPN.
this is like asking how to safely hook up with strangers at the bar if you can’t afford condoms to help protect you from STIs. if you can’t afford a VPN, you can’t afford to get disconnected by your ISP for three strikes, let alone afford a settlement because some copyright troll logged your IP as a downloader. just don’t do it until you can properly put some safeguards in place.
Why does this anti poor bullshit have so many upvotes? Public WiFi exists and it’s also pretty easy to get free condoms.
Pro tip: Never use public WiFi without wearing a condom.
Why does this anti poor bullshit have so many upvotes? Public WiFi exists and it’s also pretty easy to get free condoms.
hey hows about you go fuck yourself
No u
fair enough
Without passing any moral judgement on you whatsoever, if you posted this without a VPN, your post is permanently tied to your IP address and thus your home and is evidence of your intent to commit a crime, even if you said it’s “for research”. I wouldn’t do that again and now I’m worried for you in general if you weren’t worried to post this.
Generally nobody can afford to lose their privacy. It’s $1/device/month per person if you get 5 other people to share a Mullvad account and you shouldn’t do it because you’re trying to pirate. A VPN is not a tool for piracy. You should be conducting all internet activity in it unless you do not care about the government seeing it.
In the US, internet piracy is not a crime, but a civil infraction. And yes, our media overlords have been trying to make it a crime for decades.
I’m kind of in a bind financially in general. Job market is complete ass and I struggle as-is. Not sure what I’ll do there.
Focus on fixing the most obvious issue then. Don’t waste you time on watching some dumb content, pirated or otherwise. Unless of course you plan on pirating stuff that would actually help you sharpen your skillset, helping you land a better job. But to ease the pain by watching some dumb shit, just don’t.
Because I guess giving myself some off-time means I must be a lazy bum who isn’t putting in any work to get a job and work on my skills. Fuck off.
Did not put it that way but okay… But now thinking about it, if I were ever to get myself in a bind where I can’t afford something just a few bucks a month, I don’t think any off-time would be on my list at all.
Well, I’m glad you never get exhausted or anything I guess.
I2p is slow and lacks selection but could work.
What’s selection?
Ok so, I was gonna top level comment, but somebody already mentioned I2P, so:
I2P.
https://geti2p.net/en/docs/applications/bittorrent
Now, with normally configured I2P, you can only torrent or file share with other I2P users/nodes/sites.
But, you can also set up an ‘out-proxy’, to connect to the broader 'net, via I2P, essentially using it as a giant, dynamic maze of proxies, where all your traffic is arguably better encrypted than via Tor.
Or, you could actually use Tor as the out-proxy, for… ludicrous levels of encryption maze.
https://geti2p.net/en/about/browser-config
Its slow though. Much slower than all but the most dogshit free vpns.
But… that’s the tier you already appear to be at, lol.
Uh yeah, you can use I2P to access/browse and torrent from the clearnet, not just the I2P net, you just have to properly set up I2P with an out proxy.
I believe the youtuber Mental Outlaw has some videos that walk you through both how to do an I2P basic set up, and an out-proxy set up.
Also, general privacy/security tip:
configure your webbrowser to only do DNS over HTTPS, also known as DoH.
Use Ublock, Canvas Blocker, Privacy Badger, test your web fingerprint with EFF’s tool, make sure all your shit is actually configured right before torrenting anything, use sites that try to trace route you and find your real ip, make sure you don’t have any… emergency fallback to not using your VPN or I2P or normal HTTP.
I’ll be sure to take a look. Thank you.
An alternative that hasn’t been presented yet.
Why not use less well known foreign public trackers? Rutracker has a stupid amount of content, including a lot of niche music content.
If you are worried about Rutracker being too well known, you can try Mazepa Torrent. This is only relevant for movies and shows. Their collection isn’t as good as rutracker, but they have most new releases. While the default audio language is Ukrainian, English is always included (this would an issue for non-English language, but English subtitles are usually included).
