Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.
andscape.notion.site
A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It's the all-in-one workspace for you and your team

I wrote this post for a friend, I’m sharing it here for anybody it might help. I got asked multiple times how I download cracked music software so I figured it’d be easier to write it down once. It’s meant for people with very low technical skills who just want to start torrenting software without major risks, and it includes a bunch of safety tips that are already known in this community.

If you have feedback, let me know and I’ll update the post.

      •  andscape   ( @andscape@feddit.it ) OPEnglish
        8•1 year ago

        Thanks for the tip about the archived Reddit link, I’ve updated it!

        For the seed to leech ratio you’re right, but I feel like it might be a bit much to throw at somebody who’s just figuring all this stuff out. It’s not a guide on how to seed safely, I don’t want to encourage people to put themselves at risk who don’t yet have the skills to protect themselves.

        •  lobelia581   ( @lobelia581@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
          3•1 year ago

          fair enough, and you do already mention the importance of seeding in one of the last paragraphs. maybe you could add a sentence like “If you decide to seed, ideally the amount you upload should be equal to or greater than the amount you have downloaded to help keep the torrent alive.”

  •  Deletecat   ( @Deletecat@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) English
    23•1 year ago

    After a quick glance over your post, I have some thoughts;

    Free: ProtonVPN

    ProtonVPN is good for torrenting on the paid plan, not the free plan. Proton doesn’t allow torrenting on their free plan. They will block your connection if they detect that you are torrenting, or they will disconnect you from their VPN tunnel - exposing your real IP on the torrent.

    Paid: Mullvad

    Mullvad is a decent choice, though they no longer support port forwarding. You are still able to download, though you won’t be able to seed iirc

    VirusTotal

    The problem with a virustotal scan is that pirated software is often false flagged for malware. It’s difficult to tell what is safe from what you’ve downloaded. It’s best to download from a trusted uploader, though that doesn’t always guarantee safety as they can always go rogue (As an example, FTUApps were seen as safe until one of their uploads to 1337x contained malware).

    Older uploads tend to have less false positives in my experience, though it can be very easy to become complacent.

    edit; score out comment about mullvad seeding, others have pointed out that it still works fine! oops

    •  andscape   ( @andscape@feddit.it ) OPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Thanks for the report about ProtonVPN, I haven’t used it in a bit so I didn’t know. Do you know a better free VPN which does allow torrenting? I know a paid one would always be better, but this is for people who are just not willing to spend money. A shady free VPN is better than none.

      For VirusTotal I know about the false positives, that’s also why I included the reddit post on how to interpret the results. I still find a scan to be good practice to weed out the more obvious malware.

      •  Phrax   ( @Phrax@reddthat.com ) English
        2•1 year ago

        In that case, direct downloads (in conjunction with ProtonVPN free) would be a superior method. The article makes piracy sound synonymous with and exclusive to torrenting, but DDL and Usenet also exist. Many of the megathread categories have DDL links right at the top.

        Cs.rin.ru is mainly gaming focused but has an FAQ that covers general DDL concepts like source trustworthiness/scene names and workarounds for filehoster limits. You could probably paraphase/quote or screenshot with credit (ironically) to save a login. The same people not wanting to sign up for a VPN might also look askance at a .ru domain.

        •  andscape   ( @andscape@feddit.it ) OPEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          The article makes piracy sound synonymous with and exclusive to torrenting

          It was only meant to be a guide about torrenting pirated software specifically, not pirating software in general. I also started by linking to the megathread to link people to other resources.

          I don’t really want to add a whole other section about DDL just because I feel I couldn’t do it justice, and people have probably already done a better job at that.

      •  Deletecat   ( @Deletecat@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) English
        1•1 year ago

        Do you know a better free VPN which does allow torrenting?

        I don’t, sorry. There are free VPNs which have been recommended in the fmhy wiki, though I don’t know if they support torrenting and/or port forwarding.

        Edit; just remembered about windscribe, you can torrent on the free plan, but data is very limited so might not be a good option either

      •  Deletecat   ( @Deletecat@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) English
        2•1 year ago

        No such thing as a stupid question :p

        Yes, you can self-host a VPN! Though there are a few things to keep in mind if you are going to torrent using one:

        • A self-hosted VPN on your own network isn’t good for torrenting. Your own IP is still shown to other peers on the torrent, you might as well torrent without the VPN.
        • Depending on your server host, you may not be allowed to torrent on their network.
        • If you are allowed to torrent, you will have to watch your bandwidth limit*. I have a cheap VPS - for other things unrelated to VPNs/torrenting - and the limit is 20TB of traffic
        • Many hosts will respond to DMCA/Abuse complaints - very few are relaxed and ignore DMCA complaints, others may shut off your access to their services after a single complaint

        *some hosts do not have a limit though cheap servers usually do.

        From what I can tell, most server hosts don’t care about what you are doing with your server, unless your server is gathering abuse reports or using an excessive amount of resources constantly. I would go for a subscription to a VPN instead of self-hosting but that’s just me.

    •  andscape   ( @andscape@feddit.it ) OPEnglish
      7•1 year ago

      It’s there… Step 4 of the section “Download A Torrent Client”. I didn’t call it “binding an interface” because the intended target of this post would have no idea what that means.

    •  m0nka   ( @m0nka@discuss.tchncs.de ) English
      1•1 year ago

      sorry, to hear that happened to you! I have paid VPN and use it to isolate devices on my network that i don’t trust (not torrenting).

      I would never trust 100% a vpn running on the same machine as the app that needs the connection.

      Probably super paranoid, but always use one of those VPN boxes with separate ethernet sockets - for input and out connection. Quite cheap on Amazon. I assume they run Linux and when they loose the VPN just crap out instead of exposing my home network.

    •  DarkTides   ( @DarkTides@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) English
      2•1 year ago

      I dedicated an old laptop running Linux to pirating material. Can get all the programs I need right from the included software app that is in a lot of distros to get Qbittorent and Jdownloader. Linux is awesome.

    •  andscape   ( @andscape@feddit.it ) OPEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      Well it has embedded GIFs and videos, it’s not gonna work without JS…

      On a side note, people are way too paranoid about JavaScript for privacy. Browsers are much better at sandboxing and restricting webpages than they used to be. Sure, I guess only viewing static pages like it’s 1995 is better for privacy, but it’s a bit unreasonable of a tradeoff to make.