What VPN do you use and why?

If you are a pirate VPN is an essential tool. I am trying to ascertain the popularity of various VPNs in piracy community. In this excerise, I will list several Popular VPNs in the comment if you use one of them just upvote that comment and reply the reason. If you don’t find your VPN listed add a comment with just their name. Reply the reason to it. This make it easier to understand the real life user cases.

P.S: I am only looking for paid VPNs please don’t mention “free vpn”.

Specal,

I hope my own because why pay for a VPN service when I already rent a VPS

m00b0mph,

How do you pay the VPS Provider? The Cops can simply go to the VPS Provider and ask what Bank account or paypal is linked to the Account who runs the Server with the IP address they tracked. And what if the VPS Provider is logging your traffic? They can Monitor anything that leaves your VPS (their network) because a VPS is just a Virtual Machine like KVM thats why its called VPS = VIRTUAL Private Server. OPSEC my friend… I think you are safer if you just use Mullvad and pay with XMR and only access the mullvad site from Tor. (I know i am paranoid xD)

Specal,

With my credit card, I’m not worried about the police coming after me. Pirating is a civil issue not a criminal issue.

But how do you think they are running their VPNs? As we have seen from the past, Paid VPNs can track what you do any way. Just make sure you’re using HTTPS and you have setup your OS to encrypt your data and you’re fine. No one’s going through the effort to catch youre suspected of doing something serious enough.

agame,

Surfshark

DAMunzy,

Got them because they’re cheap. Just need to hide the IP a little, arr.

olicvb,
@olicvb@lemmy.ca avatar

i see downvotes, can i know why not surfshark?

LunchEnjoyer, (edited )
@LunchEnjoyer@lemmy.world avatar

Owned by media marketing company, Ziff Davis.

kumu.io/sobeyharker/vpn-relationships#vpn-company…

mbp,
@mbp@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Goddammit, now I need to change my fkn VPN, too

agame,

Nord VPN

einfach_orangensaft,

i will never trust a company that had so much investor money on hand to run such a massivr ad campain like Nord did.

It was missleading, agressive and anoying.

The pressure behind that ad campaim kind made me feel like the whole thing was just the biggest honeypot we have ever seen.

Melina,
@Melina@hexbear.net avatar

Nord is the reason I’m under investigation. Wouldn’t recommend

FeelzGoodMan420, (edited )

Lol wtf is this comment? You’re under investigation because of NordVPN? Press X to doubt.

FMT99,

Apparently people don’t like Nord but a few years ago several privacy sites advocated for them. I wonder what changed.

sadreality,

their handling of a data breach if i remember correctly

notdeadyet,
@notdeadyet@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

They had a server breach and didn’t tell anyone until a few years after the fact.

netchami,

NordVPN pays people to advocate for them.

wildcardology,

Be n sailing the high seas for 15++ years, never once used a VPN.

walden,

AirVPN because of port forwarding.

killeronthecorner,
@killeronthecorner@lemmy.world avatar

What do you use it for?

walden,

The port forwarding? It makes torrenting work better.

killeronthecorner,
@killeronthecorner@lemmy.world avatar

Interesting, I haven’t experienced anything like this with regards to torrent failures. I don’t entirely follow what failure means in this context though. I have torrents that have never completed due to lack of seeds and peers. I don’t think I’ve had a torrent fail in thousands over the last few years (data based on my current NAS box, but was true prior to that too)

walden,

The link above explains it better than I can, but without port forwarding it’ll still work, but it works better with an open port.

killeronthecorner,
@killeronthecorner@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah but the reason to do it is stated as:

If you are OK with your downloads failing in 10% of cases then continue as usual.

Unless I’m missing something, there’s no point in me pursuing it as I don’t have the problem described, because my Torrents aren’t failing.

howrar,

I have torrents that have never completed due to lack of seeds and peers.

That’s what failing means here. You know how you sometimes see a torrent site list a non-zero number of seeders but when you try to download it, you don’t connect to any of them and it shows 0 seeders in your client? That’s what happens when neither you nor the seeders have port forwarding set up.

eya,
@eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I use Mullvad because I don’t need port forwarding. If you are using a VPN specifically for piracy I would use a seedbox, cheap ones aren’t that much more expensive.

Metal_Zealot,
@Metal_Zealot@lemmy.ml avatar

So… at the risk of humiliating myself,
I’ve never once used a VPN in my entire life.

I pirated games, movies, shows, music, software… and the worst thing that happened to me was getting a letter from Telus once or twice saying “Hey. Don’t do that.”

That was 5 years ago

I know it’s bad practice. But is a VPN 100% necessary? Even a free one?

Shadow,
@Shadow@lemmy.ca avatar

That’s because you’re in Canada. We don’t need to worry like Americans can. It’s not really necessary for us.

silencioso,

I find incredible that it’s absolutely illegal for anyone to read your letters and only the police can do that and only if a judge grant them the right to do that case by case, and a private telecommunications company can read absolutely all your digital communication with no judge involved and no one blinks an eye.

melmi,
@melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Generally CnD letters are not generated by the ISPs themselves. ISPs don’t care what you do unless legally obligated to. When you get a CnD letter, it’s usually because someone working for a copyright holder was on a torrent and snagged your IP, then sent an infringement notice to your ISP, who in turn sends a CnD to the current holder of the IP, i.e. you.

At no point does your ISP have to read your digital communications themselves. Any one of your peers on a torrent can tell what your public IP address is, it’s inherent to the BitTorrent protocol. Copyright holders take advantage of this to catch pirates.

Metal_Zealot,
@Metal_Zealot@lemmy.ml avatar

I’m gonna google “How to bomb Telus Headquarters and assassinate their board of directors” and see how fast they respond

PeachMan,
@PeachMan@lemmy.world avatar

The letters from your ISP have nothing to do with them monitoring your traffic. When you torrent, you’re connecting to a public network of seeders and leechers. Copyright holders pay people to monitor that public list of IP addresses, and they record your IP (because you connected publicly, in the open, and uploaded or downloaded). Then, they send your ISP a letter reporting that your did an illegal thing, and asking them to punish you. Finally, your ISP sends you a letter making some vague threats and asking you to stop. They might make you do a training course to educate you on why piracy is bad, and they might cut off your internet until you pass a quiz and promise not to pirate stuff again. They go through this charade not because it actually accomplishes anything, but because they don’t give a shit, and they’re just doing the bare minimum to keep lawyers off their back.

_dev_null,
@_dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyz avatar

and a private telecommunications company can read absolutely all your digital communication

Well maybe. It’s one of the reasons e2e encryption is so imperative to online privacy. For instance, turning on https everywhere, then your isp can only see which servers you’re connecting to, not what’s in your traffic to them.

And to point it out up front, yeah the distant end’s servers likely have some for of that traffic captured, but now law enforcement has to dig up every company that they’re trying to pull info from. Which is significantly more difficult than just relying on a one stop shop arrangement.

And for the best privacy, like security, a multi-layered approach is better. So throw in a VPN, throw in something like a mullvad browser, throw in pseudonymous accounts, throw in different usernames + passwords across accounts, throw in…

daq,

Same here. Started with IRC, then private trackers. Always force encryption. Zero issues. VPN is a waste of money for piracy.

thorbot,

No, you don’t need it if you have trustworthy private trackers. Most people on here just use Pirate Bay or some shitty public alternative that’s seeded with all the planted stuff that the RIAA looks for

JCPhoenix,
@JCPhoenix@beehaw.org avatar

I’ve only gotten two strikes in my life, 7-8yrs ago. And I feel like this was because my brother was downloading then recent, popular movies (which I almost never do). But before that, never did, without a VPN, and I used to pirate a lot more. Even further back, used to have a roommate who would go on movie and show torrenting sprees. We never got strikes. And that was when commercial VPNs weren’t really a thing yet, but copyright strikes were well known. I’ve known others who’ve never gotten strikes either.

So I’d say no, not 100% necessary at all. But it’s free or cheap enough to mitigate the risk. So that’s why I use one when I do pirate, which is rare these days.

UnhealthyPersona,

I think of it like having sex with or without a condom. If you don’t use a condom, there’s a chance to get an STD (or get “caught”). It’s not a guarantee to get caught, your IP address needs to end up in the pool of addresses they collect to send out DMCA notices so it won’t happen every time. But having a “condom” (VPN) reduces your chances by nearly 100%, assuming it’s properly setup which usually is a very simple process

CatZoomies, (edited )
@CatZoomies@lemmy.world avatar

While people sometimes suggest ignoring it because they say that your ISP is only sending you those notices because the laws compel them to and you downloaded something that was tracked, you may want to evaluate your risk.

Nothing has happened so far. Could something happen in the future?

Your ISP has built an entire portfolio of the things you’ve done online and which content you pirated. Who know how long your ISP retains that data, or which companies or regulatory bodies it shares this data with?

Laws may change.

Up to you on what you want to do with this information.

antlion,
@antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

ISP can’t track bittorrent content without downloading the same torrent as you. They only see domain names of trackers and ip addresses of peers. The content itself is either obfuscated or encrypted.

CatZoomies,
@CatZoomies@lemmy.world avatar

Fair point. There is temporary obfuscation, and certainly not end to end encryption when torrenting.

The creator of BitTorrent himself has this to say:

“The so-called ‘encryption’ of BitTorrent traffic isn’t really encryption, it’s obfuscation. It provides no anonymity whatsoever, and only temporarily evades traffic shaping. There are better approaches to obfuscation, and I’ve got a great team of engineers who are quite eager to fight that battle, but I’m hoping that everything can be resolved amicably without getting into a serious arms race.” Source: torrentfreak.com/interview-with-bram-cohen-the-in…

In my opinion using a trusted VPN not just for torrenting, but also for sourcing pirated software or other content is just a best practice.

Smokeydope,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

Mullvad VPN, its pretty good and is a flat fee per month. It works good with Linux Mint.

storm,

Torguard.net

Ibaudia,
@Ibaudia@lemmy.world avatar

Torguard is the best! $30 per year with my current plan and it’s reliable enough to play games.

storm,

Torguard has port forwarding which is essential if you belong to private trackers. Wireguard connection is very fast and stable. Plenty of 50% off coupons that are easy to find via Google. This summer, they had a 70% off coupon. I opened a ticket and they quickly applied the coupon to my existing account.

netchami,

I use IVPN and I’m very happy with them. They allow you to make an account without giving out your Email address, you just get a random-generated Account ID (Mullvad does the same btw). They also allow you to pay with Monero, an anonymous crypto currency. I used Mullvad before, Proton VPN and AirVPN are great options as well.

StickBugged,

IVPN Looks really good, does it have port forwarding so you can torrent with it?

netchami,

They recently removed it, I recommend AirVPN if you need port forwarding.

DrZoidbergYes,

NordVPN. I use it to access iPlayer and a couple of torrent sites my ISP blocks. It’s works fine. I chose Nord due to the brilliant adverts by the Internet Historian. The Internet Historian’s adverts are up there with John Green’s life assurance ads. Just brilliant!

kerrypacker,

Fastvpn by namecheap, it’s shit.

supervent,

I know you are asking for a VPN, but you could give a try i2p for bittorrent it is free and secure. And if you want just DDL, you have Tor.

netchami,

Come on, don’t waste Tor resources for downloading pirated content. That’s what VPNs are for. Journalists and activists in countries like Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. rely on Tor in order to do their work, just use a VPN for downloading, it’s also much faster.

supervent,

Tor is for privacy and to circumvent censorship. What OP is asking is privacy…You could help them running a relay or bridge, it is easy, I have a few running.

netchami,

I run 2 nodes at my house, several nodes (including exit nodes) on different VPS providers and I use the Snowflake addon in all of my browsers. But Tor is meant for people who require anonymity and the ability to circumvent censorship, not for those who don’t want to pay for a VPN.

supervent,

I was running in the past years 2 guard/middle relays, now I prefer only bridges and snowflake, to help users in a countries with censorship, like Iran or turkmenistan.

netchami,

That’s great! All parts of the network are important.

SirStumps,
@SirStumps@lemmy.world avatar

I use Nord VPN. Might switch to Proton when my sub is done.

chemicalwonka,
@chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Mulllvad VPN on my Hardened Void Linux and GrapheneOS mainly to hide my real IP address plus I use NextDNS paid version too.

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