Before I say anything further, yes I know how much the recommended VPNs cost. I can read. Please do not interrogate me about it.
I’ve been wanting to get into torrenting for a while, particularly contributing to private trackers related to music (and to a lesser extent retro games, though I don’t have much original stuff to put there as it’s harder to find rare games than rare music). FMHY recommends RiseUp if I must get a free VPN while I’m working on my financial situation, though I’m not sure whether it’s been tested in court. What are my options, if any?
Use torrent over ipfs. Qbittorrent can do it.
Find a friend in a less shit place you can proxy through.
Its being a while for me but windscribe and seedr had totally usable free tiers
I use proton and our local laundry-mats; they have open WIFI…and you can get your laundry done while waiting for the torrent to finish
I don’t usually recommend this, but since you are in a situation where you really can’t afford a VPN or a seedbox and live in a country where torrenting is prosecuted then I think that grants a free pass to abuse the tor network a bit and torrent over tor.
There are some guides online on now to route the traffic, note that it’s very easy to leak traffic if you don’t know what you’re doing. Look for a good guide . I’m guessing the safest way to do it is by using Whonix.
If going that route avoid downloading big torrents if you can find smaller ones or try to search for direct downloads first.
And also, I don’t usually say this, but, avoid seeding. Yes leeching is bad, but saturating tor is probably worse I think.
Tribler or i2p.
Edit: there are also non-bittorrent p2p networks out there like Retroshare, but I haven’t used them, so don’t know how useful they are.
What are the adoption rates of those compared to a standard private tracker?
Dunno, I haven’t used private trackers in 10 years. You can add any magnet link to Tribler and it will go through exit nodes to hide your IP, kind of like Tor does for browsing clearnet. I haven’t used i2p in a while either; back then, I used the Postman tracker, and don’t know if that’s still what most people do or not. I personally just use a paid VPN, because there really isn’t a good way to set Tribbler up with an *arr stack.
I would suggest don’t.
For downloading, look at DDL sites.
For uploading, if you can’t do it safely, don’t. Stash it all, make backups, keep it until you can do it safely.
Doesn’t Proton have a free VPN tier? I think it doesn’t support port forwarding so your connections would be limited, but that might still work?
Otherwise, check the megathread and go with direct downloads. Those happen over https so completely encrypted.
What music DDL sites let you contribute FLACs?
Hmm I’m not sure about contributing. You’ve presented yourself as someone too broke to afford a VPN so I didn’t think you were buying CDs and ripping flacs. Sorry if I misunderstood your goals. I was more focused on the goal of obtaining files.
Edit: ps, not sure if you saw yet, but I pm’d you about another possible solution.
I do sometimes buy CDs, though many of my CDs are from before my financial situation was quite as bad as it is now. They’re all from thrift stores though, so none of them are more than $1.99.
I use Cloudflare Warp and make qbittorrent only able to torrent if it’s connected to Warp
Does that have port forwarding though? Because if not, seeding isn’t going to work.
I mean you can avoid all that. If you’re just interested in music and retro games then just use soulseek and use the rom megathread. both of which are going to be either peer to peer or direct downloads. no torrenting.
Rom megathread (web search it) has quite literally everything. no need to search, no need to torrent, it’s all right there. And soulseek with Nicotine+ just works like napster. sign up, be sure to share your music library, and then have at it.
I use slsk, I’m just trying to find more places to upload the rare music I have to so it’s less likely to become lost.
Its not a big thing with trackers anymore unless you get into one of the exclusive private trackers dedicated to music, but this requires previous history with other trackers, good upload speeds, etc. I would just stick with slsk for now.
What’s not a big thing with trackers?
Music
right so you just keep your music folder open so people can do just that. More audiophiles are going to be on soulseek than some random torrent tracker.
I don’t understand why you insist on torrenting when you can’t safely do so. You’re going to get way more traction sharing your rare stuff on soulseek than you will torrenting it I can guarantee that.
It’s not that I’m trying to switch away from slsk, it’s that I’m trying to do more in addition to slsk.
RiseUp is slow and intended for activists and the politically vulnerable. It’s not for poor people who cannot afford a $5 a month VPN. You will be fucking over people with much more legitimate use cases than yours if you start using it for torrenting.
I see… Not sure what I’m supposed to do then.
Borrowed WiFi is definitely your best bet. Find a place with a fast public WiFi network you can reach from your car.
I wouldn’t do this because the wifi will make sure you never do this again because of dmca strikes
If you use private trackers, a VPN is irrelevant. All you need to do is fully encrypt your traffic in your torrent client so your ISP can’t see what you’re doing. It’s been working just fine for me for 15 years, and I’ve never gotten a letter.
Surprised no one has mentioned using a remote seedbox. There are providers who allow public torrent use, even if some of them discourage it. You can download torrents via a remote server, and then connect to that server via ssh, syncthing or sftp, which are all encrypted, and has the added benefit of giving you a shot at getting into private trackers, if you ever snag an open invite, where having a seedbox is almost essential.
Is that less expensive than a VPN?
No.
I figured.
Are there free seedboxes? If they can’t afford a VPN, they probably can’t afford a seedbox.
I mean, I’m poor but can afford such things, I mean, $18 a month for a VPN+seedbox combo is well worth it for some digital freedom, and I could even go cheaper if I wanted less features. The seedbox alone is just $8 CAD a month, so I mean, it’s not crazy expensive.
If you don’t have the money for a proper VPN provider, you definitely don’t have the money for a legal defense if it came to that. Save your money and only begin once you can afford reasonable protections.
