nice guide! i'd mention that it's good courtesy for your seed to leech ratio to be >=1 so you're giving back what you took. given that you're able to seed safely of course
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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i'd also recommend changing the reddit link to an archived version of the comment in case it gets deleted
Thanks for the tip about the archived Reddit link, I've updated it!
For the seed to leech ratio you're right, but I feel like it might be a bit much to throw at somebody who's just figuring all this stuff out. It's not a guide on how to seed safely, I don't want to encourage people to put themselves at risk who don't yet have the skills to protect themselves.
fair enough, and you do already mention the importance of seeding in one of the last paragraphs. maybe you could add a sentence like "If you decide to seed, ideally the amount you upload should be equal to or greater than the amount you have downloaded to help keep the torrent alive."
Deluge is set to 2 by default.
After a quick glance over your post, I have some thoughts;
Free: ProtonVPN
ProtonVPN is good for torrenting on the paid plan, not the free plan. Proton doesn't allow torrenting on their free plan. They will block your connection if they detect that you are torrenting, or they will disconnect you from their VPN tunnel - exposing your real IP on the torrent.
Paid: Mullvad
Mullvad is a decent choice, though they no longer support port forwarding. ~~You are still able to download, though you won't be able to seed iirc~~
VirusTotal
The problem with a virustotal scan is that pirated software is often false flagged for malware. It's difficult to tell what is safe from what you've downloaded. It's best to download from a trusted uploader, though that doesn't always guarantee safety as they can always go rogue (As an example, FTUApps were seen as safe until one of their uploads to 1337x contained malware).
Older uploads tend to have less false positives in my experience, though it can be very easy to become complacent.
edit; score out comment about mullvad seeding, others have pointed out that it still works fine! oops
@Deletecat @andscape mullvad works when seeding, false information.
I've scored out that part of the comment now.
I was under the impression that you couldn't seed without port forwarding, guess I was wrong :p
@Deletecat it's not necessary on a VPN level when your router has port forwarding configured properly. App tunnel splitting can be used to dox your IP but allows the DHT table and trackers to "find" you, then just disable it to hide your IP. Simple, but not recommended.
Thanks for the report about ProtonVPN, I haven't used it in a bit so I didn't know. Do you know a better free VPN which does allow torrenting? I know a paid one would always be better, but this is for people who are just not willing to spend money. A shady free VPN is better than none.
For VirusTotal I know about the false positives, that's also why I included the reddit post on how to interpret the results. I still find a scan to be good practice to weed out the more obvious malware.
In that case, direct downloads (in conjunction with ProtonVPN free) would be a superior method. The article makes piracy sound synonymous with and exclusive to torrenting, but DDL and Usenet also exist. Many of the megathread categories have DDL links right at the top.
Cs.rin.ru is mainly gaming focused but has an FAQ that covers general DDL concepts like source trustworthiness/scene names and workarounds for filehoster limits. You could probably paraphase/quote or screenshot with credit (ironically) to save a login. The same people not wanting to sign up for a VPN might also look askance at a .ru domain.
The article makes piracy sound synonymous with and exclusive to torrenting
It was only meant to be a guide about torrenting pirated software specifically, not pirating software in general. I also started by linking to the megathread to link people to other resources.
I don't really want to add a whole other section about DDL just because I feel I couldn't do it justice, and people have probably already done a better job at that.
Do you know a better free VPN which does allow torrenting?
I don't, sorry. There are free VPNs which have been recommended in the fmhy wiki, though I don't know if they support torrenting and/or port forwarding.
Edit; just remembered about windscribe, you can torrent on the free plan, but data is very limited so might not be a good option either
So how do you check for viruses without a bunch of false positives?
@ScratchySoft @Deletecat http://virusscan.jotti.org
Online file scanner
Are you sure that won't also get a bunch of false positives because it detects that a file is a keygen or crack?
This is going to be a total noob (and thus stupid) question, but is it possible to selfhost a vpn?
No such thing as a stupid question :p
Yes, you can self-host a VPN! Though there are a few things to keep in mind if you are going to torrent using one:
- A self-hosted VPN on your own network isn't good for torrenting. Your own IP is still shown to other peers on the torrent, you might as well torrent without the VPN.
- Depending on your server host, you may not be allowed to torrent on their network.
- If you are allowed to torrent, you will have to watch your bandwidth limit*. I have a cheap VPS - for other things unrelated to VPNs/torrenting - and the limit is 20TB of traffic
- Many hosts will respond to DMCA/Abuse complaints - very few are relaxed and ignore DMCA complaints, others may shut off your access to their services after a single complaint
*some hosts do not have a limit though cheap servers usually do.
From what I can tell, most server hosts don't care about what you are doing with your server, unless your server is gathering abuse reports or using an excessive amount of resources constantly. I would go for a subscription to a VPN instead of self-hosting but that's just me.
wait I'm still able to seed on Mullvad, was the change recent?
I highly encourage you to update the article to have a section for binding network interface to the VPN. I didn't do this and one day my vpn disconnected and it used me actual IP address and I got DMCA'd.
It's there... Step 4 of the section "Download A Torrent Client". I didn't call it "binding an interface" because the intended target of this post would have no idea what that means.
Ah ok. Yeah I thought that was just a section for installing it but with no configurations. Seems like a good article for newbies then.
sorry, to hear that happened to you! I have paid VPN and use it to isolate devices on my network that i don’t trust (not torrenting).
I would never trust 100% a vpn running on the same machine as the app that needs the connection.
Probably super paranoid, but always use one of those VPN boxes with separate ethernet sockets - for input and out connection. Quite cheap on Amazon. I assume they run Linux and when they loose the VPN just crap out instead of exposing my home network.
Me: uses linux and doesn't give a shit about my current OS
I dedicated an old laptop running Linux to pirating material. Can get all the programs I need right from the included software app that is in a lot of distros to get Qbittorent and Jdownloader. Linux is awesome.
I use a seedbox
Page does not work with JavaScript disabled. Pretty funny, for an article about how to keep your computer secure. One of the rules of keeping your computer secure is to disable JavaScript!
Well it has embedded GIFs and videos, it's not gonna work without JS...
On a side note, people are way too paranoid about JavaScript for privacy. Browsers are much better at sandboxing and restricting webpages than they used to be. Sure, I guess only viewing static pages like it's 1995 is better for privacy, but it's a bit unreasonable of a tradeoff to make.
Well it has embedded GIFs and videos, it’s not gonna work without JS…
Both of those things work perfectly without JS. JS didn't even exist when GIFs were first invented.
On a side note, people are way too paranoid about JavaScript for privacy.
Here's a list of security vulnerabilities fixed in Firefox 115. Almost all of them are only exploitable if JavaScript is enabled. Two of them, if successfully exploited, allow a malicious web page to completely take over your computer. And that's just the vulnerabilities that were fixed in one Firefox version!
JavaScript is an extreme security threat. Enabling it for all websites is nuts.
Gif and video do work with HTML only.
nice resource
@andscape mullvad works on seeding, don't spread misinformation please.
What?
No worries, integration between Mastodon and Lemmy is still confusing at this stage :)
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