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”.

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.

Imprint9816,

AirVPN - privacy respecting (although their attitude towards audits is a bit off putting). They also had the best port forwarding offer at the time Mullvad announced it was ending its support.

Daaric,

PIA

ChrisLicht,

PIA, just because I’m lazy and it’s been fine for like a decade. If there is something better, happy to hear about it.

nicetriangle,
@nicetriangle@kbin.social avatar

Yeah it’s cheap as shit too

korewa,

I’m on pia too I have a seed box anyway so it’s just for https queries. The seed box transfers locally via ssh

Thorny_Insight,

PIA was sold to Kape Technologies a few years back and they have somewhat questionable history and that made me switch to Mullvad. Not because I thought it’s better VPN per-se, but because I wanted away from PIA and Mullvad seemed popular.

The issue is who he sold it to – the notorious creator of some pernicious data-huffing ad-ware, Crossrider. The UK-based company was cofounded by an ex-Israeli surveillance agent and a billionaire previously convicted of insider trading who was later named in the Panama Papers. It produced software which previously allowed third-party developers to hijack users’ browsers via malware injection, redirect traffic to advertisers and slurp up private data.

Source

Suoko,
@Suoko@feddit.it avatar

Is it just me that using a VPN on my android, everything becomes much faster ? Apps load faster, the internet is faster, etc. Is it because it cuts out some s****y connection ?

sadreality,

likely DNS filter that your VPN forces

SpaceNoodle,

You should add an option for Mullvad.

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.

weedwhacking,

deleted_by_author

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    wolfshadowheart,
    @wolfshadowheart@kbin.social avatar

    Basically what @Metal_Zealot and you have to worry about are if you've downloaded enough to make a profitable case going after you in a civil suit.

    As for using the VPN, any worthwhile VPN has split tunneling with inclusion and exclusion lists. I use Windscribe personally

    weedwhacking,

    Thanks for the info and suggestion :) I will check out windscribe!

    EmpiricalFlock,
    @EmpiricalFlock@beehaw.org avatar

    AirVPN

    EmpiricalFlock,
    @EmpiricalFlock@beehaw.org avatar

    Port forwarding, relatively cheap, runs a good Black Friday sale, and I think its log policy is decent from what I remember.

    000999,

    The airvpn client feels pretty outdated compared to something like mullvad. This might not be a big deal for everyone and there are ways around it but I always see airvpn recommended but noone ever mentions this

    coldbrew,

    The Wireguard client is good enough. I wouldn’t trust VPN providers’ custom apps to be as secure, privacy-focused or reliable as the official client ones.

    EmpiricalFlock,
    @EmpiricalFlock@beehaw.org avatar

    Ever since I switched to Linux I don’t really use Eddie as much, but I agree it could be more intuitive. Even on Windows I typically only spent 30 seconds or less with the client, though, so it didn’t bother me.

    018118055,

    I use the native wireguard client on Linux

    sillyhatsonly,

    I also just switched from Mullvad to OpenVPN and I’m very happy with it. I grabbed the 3-year Halloween promo.

    agame,

    Tunnelbear

    agame,

    Adguard VPN

    agame,

    Free tier VPN

    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,

    IVPN

    Nollij,

    This is what I’m currently using. It’s been great, but they just ended port forwarding. I will not be renewing.

    unmagical,

    Fully anonymous account, purchased with crypto, has a warrant canary, open source clients, regular server audits to verify no logs, relatively cheap, fast, works on all my devices, VPN bypass for things like steam, killswitch, and a choice of VPN protocols.

    It also has multihop, but that’s just a gimmick.

    agame,

    Cyberghost

    ColeSloth,

    Shoot. Does this mean I need to switch?

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