Im very paranoid about getting into piracy and im not sure if i should or it or not but there are so many things i want that i cant afford.
is there a secure linux os that i can use without a vpn? im pretty use to windows 10 but i was told linux mint is good for this kind of stuff, is that true?
You can’t get around not having a VPN if you don’t want your ISP to know you are doing. Sounds like you might not have a complete idea of what exactly a VPN is doing and why you need one.
You can use usenet to not use a VPN but then you are paying for the indexers and servers so still not free
I remember when it was free. 👴
Free or just included with your internet service? I remember getting usenet as an ISP perk long ago. No idea if they indexed any binary newsgroups though.
Included with service. Then they stopped doing it citing cost, not unlike how they don’t give you an email address anymore. I’m not sure I believe either excuse tbh.
The amount of space required to maintain an NNTP spool was considerable before Usenet spam because the problem it is today. When I was in undergrad (late 90’s), the college I went to had an NNTP server for on-campus use. In 1998 it had something like 2TB of disk space (I don’t want to think about how much that cost back then). I can’t imagine that the spam has gotten better, or the amount of disk space needed for just the alt.* hierarchy has gone down since that time.
And back in 1998 we were paying the equivalent of $200 in today money per month for crappy slow internet access. They weren’t hurting.
Huh. And many of us are still paying $200 per month for crappy, slow net.access. :(
Usenet is king! All hail usenet!
Which service do you recommend?
I use NZBGeek as my indexer and Frugal as my newsserver. Have been happy so far.
So there’s a map somewhere online about which backbones there are, usually I try one server for a year and maybe get a block from another server depending if it’s on a different backbone and their black Friday deals.
I currently am using eweka as the service and for indexers I’m on drunkenslug and nzbgeek
Does your country care about Piracy?
If yes: you need a VPN, your operating system means nothing.
If no: just torrent lol.
The OS you use doesn’t really matter, what matters is what VPN server you use and to an extent what client you use. I’ve used AirVPN for about 3 maybe 4 years now with no issues and they allow port forwarding. qBitTorrent is a well regarded client and provides a setting to bind to a particular network interface (IE the virtual NIC provided by your VPN), this is much more reliable than a VPN client’s killswitch feature.
OS makes no difference.
All that matters is if you trust your VPN. You can torrent on Windows with a good VPN, and you won’t get caught. You don’t need linux to torrent safely.
If you’re worried about copyright notices, VPNs can help with that. If you’re worried about viruses, most viruses aim for Windows systems, but you can avoid them by keeping an eye out. There’s viruses for macOS and Linux, but due to the smaller scale of users, most people don’t bother hosting them online.
If you’re afraid your law enforcement is going to bust down your door, that isn’t going to happen even if you torrent hundreds of movies and shows a month. They mainly crack down on the people who host the content, your ISP would probably end your service before you went to court.
That said, if you want a more “secure” operating system, Linux can help beyond tormenting. Fedora, Linux Mint, Debian, are all solid choices for your first time use. Just know there’s going to be a learning curve, and if it gives you an error, read it carefully and search online, as others have had the issue before and are willing to help.
thank you for all this info.
The MOST secure? Qubes OS!
Everything runs inside of a VM. VMs have very limited connectivity between each other you have to explicitly set that up.
So for your privacy, and good hygiene, you would set up a VPN inside of one of the VMs Make that the mandatory networking VM for your torrent VM. Then no matter what, your torrent VM would never leak.
Here is a tutorial https://mullvad.net/en/help/qubes-os-4-and-mullvad-vpn/
It takes a little getting used to, but it’s pretty good as a daily driver. Because of the segmentation, even if there is local exploits, it’s unlikely that the exploit will expose your other VMs. So your networking VMs are the most at risk, then you’re browsing VMs, so you keep your data vaults in different VMs.
They have some great tutorials, it’ll runs Linux under Xen as the hypervisor. There’s a little gymnastics around copying and pasting between VMs, and moving files, but it’s pretty intuitive once you get used to it.
And this is still useful even if you’re not running a VPN, because you are segmenting your different programs, so you get data hygiene even if you don’t get a anonymity
You should use a vpn tho. I use mullvad, the client has a killswitch. Qbittorrent also has one as you can select that vpn connection in the settings. The distro you use does not matter however.
A killswitch in the client is handy, but you can also do this with firewall rules. Allow on the vpn tunnel, block on your network interface except the ip(s)/port to reach your vpn. Perhaps also allow on your local network.
I do it this way on a headless system.
If you’re not using a VPN your ip will be visible no matter which OS you are using.
As others have said, just use a trustworthy VPN. I use and recommend mullvad.
All you really need is to not be low hanging fruit. Plenty of people out there pirating without knowing how to obfuscate themselves that are easier targets.
Edit: Clarity.
Mullvad just killed port forwarding right? Proton still offers it on some servers.
Good call, yeah they did. Sharing is caring and a lack of port forwarding limits this. Worth mentioning.
My favorite setup was a headless Raspberry Pi Zero plugged in and hidden behind furniture in the common areas of a high-rise condo building where I rented a unit for a few months. They have gigabit Internet access. Remote into it, schedule a batch download, then retrieve it from the Zero later. It was cool, but inconvenient. Proof of concept only really.
Cool project but doesn’t really address OPs concerns.
For an anonymous, disposable seedbox? It seems like it does, though it’s way overkill.
It’s only partly anonymous as it’s still a location they were directly tied to. Not really something you want to be risking if having the law come after you is part of your threat model.
Still a cool project and definitely overkill for internet piracy 😅
Abandonable Tor nodes can also be built this way. Not cost effective, though.
Did anybody find it?
Nope. It was there for a year.
Huh. Mine disappeared inside of two weeks. Then Pi’s got impossible to find and I gave up on it.
I put mine in a black casing that basically makes it look like a power adapter. The uncovered board is too conspicuous.
So did I. I think somebody said, “Hey, free Raspberry Pi!” and that was that.
Honestly? Just get yourself a seedbox in a different country. There are plenty of providers out there. Have it do your torrenting for you, and FTP in later to download them to your machine.
No need to be that paranoid. If you want to be basically bulletproof, pay for a cheap seedbox hosted in a friendly country (ultraseedbox is a good choice), and do your torrenting there. Then use any free or cheap SFTP program to transfer it to your computer.
Plex or Jellyfin are good ways to view the content either directly from your seedbox or off of your local computer, and I know that Plex has encrypted connection options. Jellyfin probably does too.
As others have said, you OS is irrelevant. Windows would be no worse in this instance.
Instead, use a block list with your torrent software. Something like this: https://github.com/Naunter/BT_BlockLists/
And remember to keep it up to date.
I consider blocklists snake oil, anyone can still get your IP just asking the tracker for a full list. If they can connect to you or not is almost irrelevant at that point.
This right here is probably the easiest thing anyone can do, Jackett can be pretty useful too and is easier than it appears.
The distro/os is only part of the puzzle, your ISP is the other. Sites like https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/ can see what has been downloaded on your IP. So, if you have a static IP it could be an issue. My ISP has only ever reported me once… because a friend came over and decided to download a Massive Attack album over torrent and didn’t use a filter list I guess? I don’t know. I was able to prove that I had owned the album since its release in the 90’s so the problem went away.
You can pirate without a VPN, just don’t use torrents. All major file hosts (like MEGA, Google Drive, etc.) use HTTPS. Your ISP can see that you’re downloading from them, but they can’t tell what you’re downloading nor whether it’s pirated content. People get busted for torrents all the time, downloading from other places (NOT P2P!)? Practically unheard of.
Doesnt matter. Most Linux Distros use some bullshit DNS provider like Cloudflare or Google by default. Also, no Distro has a VPN preinstalled and you should not torrent over Tor.
So get a VPN that supports port forwarding, maybe host your own on an anonymous VPS. then use qbittorrent Flatpak, on any Linux Distro with automatic security updates and a firewall
Most distros use whatever DNS provider your router’s DHCP gives them. That’s not something the OS normally decides. Some browsers are taking upon themselves to use DNS over HTTPS, which often does use Cloudflare or Google, but that’s not the OS doing it.
True. And the second option in systemd-resolved would be to use some of the ones I mentioned.