Let’s not turn this into what the Reddit subreddit of Piracy has turned into and that’s an endless sea of questions that are all the same - “Do I need a VPN?”.
And the loud and vocal answer to such a question is - yes. Yes you do need a VPN for pirating. Nobody gets a VPN for casual use and I’m under the impression that VPN services know a lot of people are going to be going to them for pirating and not just accessing content out of their country. And it’s for that reason, is why I’m skeptical on entrusting my activity with the bigger VPN names available.
I use ProtonVPN myself, by the way.
Pirating under your raw IP address, only will set you up to get pegged by your ISP whether it’s in a short time or a long time. I’ve only ever gotten one single ISP letter in my entire 26 years of pirating and it was simply because I downloaded without a VPN. Well I was also downloading off of someone else’s network to take the fall, but I was confronted about it either way.
And I’ve gotten away with so much pirating because of my careful cautiousness when it comes to pirating. That and this applies to the United States, but the statue of limitations is 3 years when it comes to copyright infringement. So, good fucking luck to any ISP or so that wishes to try and nail me for something I downloaded 10 years ago, but I digress.
But a large part of me avoiding so much does contribute to having a VPN. So, yes, VPN is required. Please don’t ask anybody in the pirating community 100 questions that are all just ways to ask whether or not you need a VPN. You do.
The providers are not going to shoot themselves in the foot by ratting on their users. So as long as you are not whistleblowing or criticizing Israel then you will be left alone. They dgaf about piracy.
I think you are giving an overly simplistic answer, to the point of being misleading.
Stating that you need a VPN for pirating is blatantly false. It’s perfectly possible to pirate without one. You can assume that people are asking if they should have one, but it is helpful to draw the distinction- including the why you believe they should use one. What does a VPN do, how is it helpful, what could happen if they don’t, etc.
Teach people, don’t just give them blind rules.
Yep. I am not a strong media consumer. For my purposes, something that I think is called scene release page with links to new episodes or movies that just came out posted on one click hoster pages, as well as streaming sites where I find ways to download the video instead of just streaming, is enough. For neither I use a VPN and probably never will.
Ahh, American ey?
Yeah, like: tell me you’re American without telling me you’re American
Whether you really need a VPN depends on where you live. When in doubt, use one
In France they don’t care unless you pirate French content
I’ve been using private trackers for the past 16 years. I’ve never gotten any notices from my ISP, or been involved in any legal related issues since a lot of those sites have now been raided or shut down. The only time I use a VPN is for anything public tracker related. Obviously a VPN is good practice but I haven’t seen the need for it since a lot of trackers require you to sign up with your home IP address anyways.
Edit: Forgot to mention that my downloads are about a 50/50 split between downloading locally and on my seedbox.
Buy an ad.
You don’t need a VPN if you use I2P!
Glad to see people promoting I2P, which should all move to I2P.
Summation of arguments below: if you know a lot, then you know if you know if you need a VPN or not.
If you don’t know if you need one, just get one.
I’m just lazy.
I can’t be bothered to wonder whether or not your specific flavor of piracy is tracking me or not, and I don’t really care to know.
VPN and just don’t worry about it.
If I hear my provider turned to shit, I move providers. Mullvad rn.
Mullvad isn’t good for torrenting anymore since they don’t have port forwarding but that probably doesn’t apply if you’re using Usenet, streaming, or some other form.
…I never used port forwarding with them and it just kinda works?
I pirate almost exclusively over Qbittorrent.
there’s just gotta be a leak somewhere, that ain’t normal…
If Mullvad is off, and I download a Pixar film, I will get a letter. I have.
If it isn’t, I won’t. I don’t.
shrug port forward or no port forward, the data still flows and my ISP can’t see it.
Without it, you won’t be able to connect to other peers unless they have port forwarding active. If enough people torrent without port forwarding, the whole system breaks down.
My props to the boys in Romania, then.
Mine works just fine with torrenting…
It does work without port forwarding but only because the person on the other end has port forwarding active. You can’t connect to anyone that doesn’t have it set up.
I think this comment should be pinned honestly.
I use a seedbox abroad and secure ssh to transfer stuff to my own server. Don’t see what additional security a vpn would give me.
What a bullshit post. The reality is that it depends on your circumstances. Most people in the United States do not need a VPN. Saying it’s required is horseshit.
My torrenting level is very casual and (sry) I only leech. Also my ISP is a small one in the UK. Our Government seems to only force the big ISP to tattle on its users and block pirating sites. At least that’s how it has been for the last 10 years.
I have qbittorrent and Plex on my server. It is tempting to setup a VPN just for qbittorrent just to be sure.
I hope everything you pirate gets stuck at 99% until the day you start seeding
That’s what I do. I’m in a place that really doesn’t give a shit about Piracy (the worst they’ll do is send a letter, one of my friends got one and called up his ISP to complain about it and they told him to stop seeding so much lol) but I still run a VPN 24/7 anyway just to be safe. It costs peanuts and doesn’t slow down the internet hugely so I figure why not.
I don’t need one, and you definetly dont need it for everything, maybe torrenting at the very minimum.
Do I need a VPN to read this post?
Stop stealing my content by reading it! /s
Not everyone lives in the so-called first world. Here the ISPs don’t care about pirating.
Hell, in Canada they don’t care at all either.
OP said not everyone lives in the first world…
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