Hi, I’d like to set the sails due to being frustrated with streaming services, but I have some questions beforehand. I hope, you can help me with that, since lurking and reading the Megathread/Wiki didn’t really answer my questions. Thanks for your help.
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Is just using a fitting VPN (I’ve read about Mullvad and ProtonVPN in this community) safe enough to not get caught? I’m located in germany, so sharing even as much as a few kB of pirated content can cost me thousands of euros. I want to be really sure, that I won’t get letters from some lawyer soon. All, that I’ve read so far is basically: Setup VPN and your Torrent software, including kill switch and maybe get into private trackers. Thats it. Is this really enough? Can I do more to be safe? What exactly is the risk with public trackers (as they are often mentioned as the “low hanging fruit” for copyright lawyers)?
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I’ve read the post The complete guide to building your personal self hosted server for streaming and ad-blocking, which mentions many tools to setup. I’m sure these help me find and view content. But are there good resources explaining the functionalities of this software? I’m familiar with Docker and I know about Jellyfin, but it is really unclear to me, what exactly all the other tools do.
Big thanks from a long time lurker!
A VPN is enough for torrenting, as long as the VPN provider isn’t logging. I personally use AirVPN because they have port-forwarding but I’ve used Mullvad before. I also live in Germany and I’ve never gotten in trouble.
The guide you linked seems a little outdated, Jackett has been replaced by Prowlarr, which is there to have a central location to manage your trackers. If you plan to use Jellyfin, you should also use Jellyseer instead if Overseer. The *arr services are the ones that actually search for the files to download by using the trackers you set up in Prowlarr. You don’t need all the *arr services, I only have Sonarr and Radarr, which are for shows and movies respectively. I also have Bazarr for subtitles. AdguardHome is only for ad-blocking, might be useful to you but isn’t needed. Idk why that’s even in the guide. Flaresolverr is something I’ve never heard about and I don’t use it, so I can’t tell you anything about that. Heimdall is something I don’t need because I use YunoHost, which has a dashboard already but it might be useful to you.
Hey fellow german :D
Yeah, trusting the VPN provider to not log is a decision I was hesitant to make. Do you take precautions when paying for the VPN service, like paying with crypto or similar? I guess easiest would be paying via paypal or similar, but is that OK for opsec?
I guess I have to do a bit more research about trackers, which and how to use them. Thats for sharing your setup.
I might start sounding like a shill, but Mullvad has a great track record so far. They’ve been raided by police and they’ve walked away with nothing. They also fairly recently migrated fully to a diskless RAM only infrastructure also.
The previous poster kind of hinted on this, but Mullvad removed port forwarding from their services, so keep that in mind.
Also for payment, Mullvad will accept cash over mail so you can’t be traced digitally by payment.
XD cash over mail, ok. But I guess for only a couple of euros that is worth a try. They seem to be located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Might try that. Honestly their website is really based. Thats for the suggestion with cash over mail.
For what would I need port forwarding?
Makes you connectable. If you don’t forward ports for your torrent client you can only connect to peers who are port forwarding, meaning you will download and upload more slowly in most cases.
You’ll need port forwarding for private torrent sites so people can download from you better.
I’m also in Germany. I use PIA which has been proven in court to be no-log. The setup is not as smooth as others (Port Forwarding requieres some scripting) but it is also one of the cheapest.
You can pay with crypto.
AirVPN isnt based on Italy? Watchout Italy is a place where Lawfull Interception is easy to implement. I understand the portfowarding thing, stick to ProtonVPN. You need a VPN where countries do the things right, I’m not saying Italy is not one of those. But Switzerland, seems like the best option to resolve any issue.
Maybe… You can use i2p.
BTW cryptostorm is a very old and very known for the paranoid owners. They are really tech savvy, you should give them a try. They do not have a nice, client for windows, and doesn’t for Linux they use nm for connections. I think that’s where you know they don’t want to be more famous , like mullvad orprotono or the others.
VPN, in addition to masking your real IP, will also encrypt all of your Internet traffic, even from your ISP.
What does that mean? Encryption is a means of making your data unreadable to everybody except those with permission to view it (you and the other person you’re talking to; servers in this case). Your ISP (otherwise known as your Internet Service Provider) is not your friend. They will turn your Internet traffic data over if asked.
This will include, at a minimum, any DNS lookups (more on that in a moment) and any unencrypted (http://) websites you have visited. A VPN can prevent this by obfuscating your Internet traffic. It is a special ISP (of sorts) that should not be logging anything you do on the Internet.
Back to DNS (Domain Name Service). Just like with phones, the Internet uses numbers to connect to other servers. And like a contacts list, DNS is a way to map those numbers to names. For example, one of the IPs used by www.google.com is 142.250.72.132. It would be near impossible to remember all the IPs used by every website, so we use DNS servers to translate them for us. It’s more complex than that of course, but good to understand the basics.
Back to the topic of VPNs. As long as you use a reputable VPN that doesn’t log your internet traffic, you should be safe from pesky lawyers knocking at your door. The beautiful thing about a VPN is that typically you set it up and forget it’s there.
Lastly, my best advice I can give you is to trust your instincts. If something feels too sketchy, then don’t do it. Some things are not worth the consequences. Happy sailing!
I’m having doubts about the VPN provider not logging. To trust them is a decision to be made. For simple things (like masking my internet usage when in a public wifi) I use my own OpenVPN server on my VPS. Though I cannot use this for piracy, since I’m the only user and it is directly liked to my name and address (through my VPS hoster).
About DNS: When I setup the VPN, the DNS queries should also go through there, right? Should I additionally look into DNS Sec? For my complete home network I already ditched the ISPs DNS server (currently using cloudflares 1.1.1.1). I probably would setup a VM in my NUC, that I got recently, for the services.
Thanks for your advice. I’m thinking about this for quite a while now. When I start sailing, I want to be prepared. Currently I’m collecting all the information. Then I will decide, if I want to try it.
VPN, in addition to masking your real IP, will also encrypt all of your Internet traffic, even from your ISP.
So does https. The only difference is that the ISP no longer can see which sites you are visiting. But now the VPN provider does.
What does that mean? Encryption is a means of making your data unreadable to everybody except those with permission to view it (you and the other person you’re talking to; servers in this case). Your ISP (otherwise known as your Internet Service Provider) is not your friend. They will turn your Internet traffic data over if asked.
Nope. Everyone who has the key can read the data. But usually only parties with permission do have it. Also no one is saving all the traffic data. Only metadata usually. And that is true for the VPN provider mostly too. They also have to turn over the data if they want to operate in the given country. The key is either using a VPN who claims (you as a user cannot verify it) to have zero logging or a very short log retention. Or to use a VPN provider outside your countries jurisdiction.
A VPN is a great start, but there’s a few things you can do to make yourself a bit safer.
I like Mullvad for it’s client that allows me be in a lockdown mode where access to the internet can only go through a VPN. It’s a killswitch and you’re going to want one no matter who provides your VPN. The reason you want a kill switch is because your computer may otherwise connect to your home or office network and leak your IP address.
If you torrent you’ll want a torrent client like qBitTorrent because under advanced settings in that program you can set it to only work on your VPN’s network interface. This adds a second wall of protection to make sure you don’t leak your IP address.
At this point your ISP isn’t going to know any much more than you’re using a VPN and torrenting, but that’s all. And you’re probably good right here, but there’s more you can do if you’re really worried.
By tweaking some wireguard settings in the Mullvad client you can even obscure your torrenting traffic altogether. At that point your ISP won’t have much more to report than that you’re using a VPN.
You’ll then want to test your VPN is working well with your torrent client by using Torrent Tracker IP Checker or something similar. Verify that your IP is what it should be.
And if you’re feeling extra motivated, doing all of this on a separate computer running linux would be ideal so that you can ensure no software running on your rig deanonymizes you, and can keep it locked when not in use.
Thanks, that are some good tips, I will make sure to follow. I’m planing to set up a VM in my homelab for this.
I’m in Germany as well and have been using premiumize me for over 10 years and haven’t had a problem. You basically have them download the torrent and then you can ddl it from them. It also works with stremio, so you don’t even have to bother downloading movies or TV shows(if you watch them in English). This setup has me covered for 95% of the stuff I need.
go through all the tests on this link: ipleak.net If you see your ip address anywhere then revise your setting
PS: don’t forget the torrent leak test, there is oneAh, thanks, that is a great tool
The complete guide to building your personal self hosted server for streaming and ad-blocking,
More like: the complete guide to the overbloated Docker world of *arr stuff that most people don’t need and other absurdities.
Look up I2P
