this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2022

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Privacy

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What are the best torrents for privacy and security, Looking for torrents to seed (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

It almost sounds like you are looking for torrents related to privacy and security that you want to seed? Same as the other user I don't fully understand your question.

If you are just looking for general safety and privacy advice for torrenting, this is a good reddit post that highlights some of the more essential things. @Kajika also hits on a lot of good stuff that is referenced in the reddit post.

Most importantly is just to do thorough research yourself and make sure you understand. Just following steps and crossing your fingers is likely not the best solution if you are actually concerned.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Don't torrents reveal your IP?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

There are many layers we could talk about when we say "privacy".

First about IP:

publicly broadcast your IP: this is done if you announce yourself to one or multiple trackers. Their jobs is to list the clients sharing specific torrents. They maintain a list of IPs and respective progress on the torrents so all clients can connect with each other depending or their needs. You can use this to bootstrap your client need and leave instantly if you don't want to be found (defeat the purpose of torrent...).
there is also the DHT protocol that will distribute the list of IPs amoungs clients so no one has the full list. I am not well versed into it yet. You can search for more info.
finally PEX is a peer exchange protocol to get new clients from the one you already have.

There's also traffic monitoring:

like https you probably want to encrypt your traffic if you don't want people to catch it. Most decent clients have the option but it's never set strictly so the choice of encryption is optional on default. ISP love to sniff your traffic, I usually don't care but whenever I need to download an other Linux distro image I need to use a VPN or be throttled. I'm not even doing it to hide anything, just to use my internet connection...

The op question makes no sense to me though. Torrents are just file you want to get/share, there's no privacy involved in that. Maybe they meant torrent clients.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

To add to what the other person said, if you are not using your own IP (as in a VPN), then that isn't much of a concern as long as the connection between you and your VPN server is properly secured and encrypted.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But then you need to trust your VPN.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you do solid research on it, it shouldn't be a huge concern. Considering all my charges for my VPN are processed through Gibraltar and they post third-party audits on data retention and clarify what is logged, then I'd trust mine.

This is a decent list from a trustworthy website, although the one I use isn't on there.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@simsymbiote @SrEstegosaurio

This is a terrible list top 3

Mullvad, IVPN, ProtonVPN

NordVPN shouldn’t even be listed what 🤡🤡🤡

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Care to share why those are terrible? Because from what I've seen Proton and Mullvad are pretty reputable.

I agree NordVPN isn't a good one, they have had a bad rep for breaches in the past and tbh that site used to be more credible a year or two ago before they reformatted and inserted all the ads in there.

Maybe share actual reputable VPNs then than talking down?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Proton busted some French environmental activists IIRC. Mullvad sketches me out because of where the servers are located lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

So it seems like it was ProtonMail that handed over the information and not their VPN service. Just for clarification.

Technically speaking, if the people really wanted to remain fully anonymous they could've used a VPN to login to their email and the information could've then pointed to a VPN service which would have to comply with the authorities. Not sure how much they have to comply with Swiss orders in those regards but it seems like this is unfortunate but not fully on Proton imo.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Probably something like tails

[+] [email protected] -6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

hi,

first, your isp sse everything even with vpn, i doenst matter. Rhe data stream is isp owned, with vpn you will just have different ip addrees of yours. You can rotate ip adress with vpn but that is same, they can associate otherwise, ypu device is leaking more than just ip address. not sure if vpn is even a solution cause moat of the servers providing vpns got lowered speeds fpr p2p, at least from my experience. I dont believe shit for the payed vpns, like nord vpn, you will just point on yourself, as,vpn is also,a,aimgle point of failure (your whole traffic is flowing cross one, monitored point, noone and i mean noone can,tell me othervise, all,servers got logs, all are monitored, its basic operarional stuff)

second, p2p connection is flowing cross specific ports on the net by default. (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/List-of-well-known-ports-used-by-various-peer-to-peer-P2P-protocols_tbl1_347789431)meaning isp doesnt need to do much effort to filter who is doing torrents. For example in Germany, isp is actively monitoring the ports and when u torrent, they will downgrade your up/down net speed for time beening and if you will continue with torrents they will cut you off from connection totally. in swizz ypu will be cut off immidiately and with fat fine to pay.

third, ypu didnt state why you like to hide your torrent activity? best to chcek a basic law, check local community with their experiemces and how law enforcement is doing their work, important is alao how friendly is a state with usa/hollywood > american lobby. If tou are locatwd in third world country dont bother, if you dont mind to be somewhere blacklisted, i mean your device, ip address and location address (ypu are saying u like to seed, if you are paet of some bigger thingy forget what i just wrote) isp has to have a proper system set up (operational costs) and with poor law enforcement they will not prosecute you.

forth, if you are looking for longterm solution and seed thousands, i would suggest to set a proxy farm in front of the machine and rotate ip addresses regularly, no windows no microsoft, host it on some server with no propietary software located is best in some 3rd world,country. Set the machinw thqt,it will be also flushing metadata,regularly and suppling fake data automaticaly. this is juat no easy task to do. From time to time change also,a phusical address, if you will be seeding alot, you will at some point be a target fpr someone, as i mwntioned american lobby, just check tprrentfreak how the raids are going, from time to time the will do a action cross the globe and then people going to jail.

ps- why,join marine when you can be.a pirate

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Sorry but this just isn't really correct and assumes the ISP puts in a lot of work to track people down.

They are not the ones enforcing DMCAs from illegal content. That is performed by cybersecurity companies that crawl through IPs in seed swarms and then report that automatically to the ISP if it registered within their IP range. This is a page from one of those companies advertising this service. You can see the report that Comcast gives out and it sites who reported the violation.

Also, yes a lot of VPNs do actually remove logs. Can't report to authorities what you do not have, although some areas do have retention logs which is why you should be using a VPN service that hosts a server in a country that doesn't care about that (I point mine to Canada depending on ping and that works for me). Lots of VPN services have third-party audits to confirm their privacy statements, and I utilize one that has no information on me besides the email I signed up with (and could use cash/crypto payments if I would like for extra anonymity).

Also, there are sites that check for IP leaks like this one which can confirm you are showing only the VPN IP address. As for the port issue, they also allow for port forwarding on a lot of VPN servers so you don't need to be utilizing any ports directly to your connection, only to the server and then gets forwarded to a WireGuard port to finalize the connection.

I have torrented absolutely astounding amounts of data with my VPN active and have had zero issues. Then, the moment I accidentally disable the VPN for one reason or another and keep my torrents active, I received a DMCA for two torrents I was running at nearly the exact time I disabled my VPN connection.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

thanks for link, maybe i will send them my cv 😃, isp is not the one who is doing investigation, they just coop.

Do VPNs remove logs? do you have access to the log folders on the machines, or how do you know? im not gonna argue with anyone, its my personal opinion, do what ever you want to, if you think they are not loggin pls do so.

so you receveid the dmca and what happend? you had to pay? or it was just no no no and thas it? ypu had zero issues couse of you hid yourself so good or cause you are not a big fish to hunt, or to give an effort to pit you down for such a small data?

im not saying that you did bad, im just sayimg that this got multiple options how to look on the matter, even if you will not care at all and seed alot, they dont need to put you down, or vice versa, one seed with best harfening amd they will make a big problem out of it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

You know they dump logs because like I said they employ third-party contractors to come in and perform security audits that validate their privacy policy, which if you do proper research should include dumping of logs, or only minimal data retention (like how mine only required an email address) along with dumping. So you can confirm it, I guess you can still be weary of that if you'd like but it is in their best interest to make sure you are actually safe, otherwise that is a hit on their reputation.

As for what happened after receiving a DMCA, they tell you that you have so many strikes on your account and that if you violate that a certain amount of times within a time period, then they will terminate your service. The ISP is not the person who would be pursuing you, their only liability is that you don't do illegal things on their network.

But again, all these steps beyond just a VPN are to ensure there is as little identifying information as possible so they can't track you down. Unless you are a literal Scene person who is doing the actual dumping and uploading of content, no one is out here watching you unless you leave easily identifiable information public while torrenting, at least this has been my experience after torrenting probably 100s of TBs of data both via seeding and leeching.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Your first and second points are incorrect.

First, no your ISP cannot see anything if you are using a VPN. They only see encrypted packages and might be able to determine that you are using a VPN but they absolutely cannot tell what data you are sending or receiving.

Second, I have never experienced that a ISP in Germany throttles torrenting, even without VPN. Torrenting per se is not illegal, you can download Linux ISOs via torrent. We still have net neutrality in the EU and in Germany. Throttling torrents would violate net neutrality and would be illegal AFAIK.