It tried to research this as much as possible from this forum and other sources, but basically this is my situation:
I would only want protection from people (ISP, movie publishers, RIAA, etc) seeing the things i download via torrents. I don’t have much of a use for needing a different location or even hiding my browser data in the least.
My question: is having a proxy all I need or am I more at risk than if i had VPN?
I feel like (based on what I’ve read) a VPN would be unnecessary and slower than a proxy and wouldn’t offer me more protection based on the activity i want shielded.
Thanks for any help!
A proxy will hide your real IP address from movie publishers, RIAA etc, but your ISP can quite easily see what you are doing. However most ISPs don’t care about what you are doing as long as they don’t get notices about you.
Note: Some torrent-clients are NOT handling proxies well and will leak given the chance.
The other downside is that with a proxy you are “not connectable”. Which means that effectively you can’t get stuff from other clients that are also “not connectable”.
It’s one or the other. Pick one that works for you.
100% backing this post.
1 - you need port forwarding, or you can’t connect to MOST of the swarm, since most people are not correctly set up.
2 - go buy a raspberry pi and set it up to do your bidding. Put it on the VPN, and then firewall it so that it cannot even talk to the net except when the tunnel is up. PERIOD
3 - speed? Just about everyone here reports a 10mbit speed (at WORST) on all the various VPN providers. 10mbit for a 3GB file means 42mins to wait… if you are manually adding files to a downloader, then you are doing it wrong. Go get Sonarr/Radarr and do it correctly.
Thank you for responding!
Any idea which torrent-clients would be the “best” to avoid leaking? I’m still using utorrent.
As far as not being connectable, I still seem to be able to download/upload without issues. Is this just a possible problem depending on the proxy used?
Some torrent-clients are NOT handling proxies well and will leak given the chance.
But will it fix if i run firewall and create rules that allow only connections to proxy?
I’ve had a positive experience with SmartProxy, so I would suggest it if you’re looking for a reliable proxy provider.
Thank you for the advice! I think I’m a bit behind, as I haven’t really changed things in over a decade sans getting a proxy after annoying ISP alerts, heh.
What would sonarr/radarr do that Piratebay and utorrent wouldn’t? Am i completely in the stone age as far as modern torrenting/piracy?
qbittorrent and utorrent are the most leak-proof clients.
deluge is the WORST leaker.
You can download and upload while not being connectable. BUT, you won’t be able to communicate with others that are also not connectable. Those that ARE connectable however will work fine.
That is a possibility yes.
| is it unnecessary to use a VPN and a proxy at the same time?
Yes.
| do you even need a proxy if you have a vpn?
No.
You add your shows and movies there, it does all the leg work if finding your content. So if a show drops at 3am, it’ll be there when you wake up!!