9 ms·

How do you avoid your ISP from punishing you for using torrents? Do you use private trackers?

by pknopf 11y ago

ballsohardy 11y ago
vpn that doesn't keep logs, preferably paid for with bitcoin or visa gift cards bought with bitcoin
0xffff2 11y ago
It's never been an issue. I use PeerBlock most of the time, but I've only ever gotten one letter from my ISP, and that was probably almost a decade ago now.
yulaow 11y ago
You have an ISP that punish you just for using torrents? WTF, they really exist? I mean, what happens if you just download Ubuntu in its torrent version... they punish you just because it is a torrent?
- softawre 11y ago
  You know what they meant...
  - yulaow 11y ago
    I actually don't know why I got some downvotes... in my country I never had a single ISP who blocks torrents, I don't even think is legal for them to check what you are downloading (except if they have a police warrant).
    - soylentcola 11y ago
      It's not quite the same (although they will throttle torrents frequently). Basically some firm gets hired by a media conglomerate to look at a torrent swarm for one of their shows or movies, and log the IP addresses that are sharing the data. Then they look up the IPs, see that 123.456.78.90 was connected through a Comcast account. They send a big pile of requests to Comcast with all of the Comcast IPs and ask "hey, who had the IP 123.456.78.90 on January 14th, 2016 at 4:50pm?" Not sure how often they actually bother suing actual users these days but either way, the ISP got the complaint and turns around and sends you a letter saying "hey, stop downloading tv shows and movies over torrents or we will have to cut off your service." I'm sure the details of how this works change and are more complex but that's the essence. Even if you aren't sued, your ISP will cut you off if you keep torrenting stuff and generating complaints from rights holders.
      - yulaow 11y ago
        Thanks, that was the part I was missing. In my country ISPs cannot tell _anyone_ which user has a specific ip at a specific time, they need a order from a judge based on a police request.
        DarkLinkXXXX 11y ago
        Umm... mind telling me what country you're in?
        yulaow 11y ago
        I was specifically referring to Switzerland and Italy.
        charlesdm 11y ago
        Belgium as well
        nness 11y ago
        Australia too.
        Abraln 11y ago
        In the US it is not the ISPs "telling" the identity of the customer. They just forward the notices/warnings/thinly-veiled-threats to them. They don't let them know who the IP address is/was held by without a court order as far as I know.
    - hsod 11y ago
      They aren't talking about blocking the torrent protocol. A rights-holder watches a torrent swarm for one of their copyrighted works and records the IP of people who are sharing it. They then contact your ISP (just asking nicely) telling them what they saw. The ISP will usually send you a warning or two before cutting off your service. Alternatively the rights holder can get a judge to issue a subpoena obligating the ISP to give up your name. So, since no one is watching Ubuntu swarms and reporting the uploaders, that's not really a concern.
      - yulaow 11y ago
        Thanks, as I said to the other commenter in my country ISPs cannot tell _anyone_ which user has a specific ip at a specific time, they need a order from a judge based on a police request. And the police doesn't make those request so lightly... they would need to know you actually uploaded and shared a tons of movies/copyrighted material linking to them on some public accessible site to even think about asking a judge permission to investigate further.
    - ricksplat 11y ago
      This is actually my experience too. A "friend" downloads a movie lets say, and for about 12 hours afterwards their connection speed is throttled in an apparently retaliatory gesture. Not so far fetched if you consider that the ISP has been recently been acquired by a conglomerate with media interests ... Said isp has been "only show in town" for serious internet access for some time so thankfully that is starting to change so a move might be on the cards.
izacus 11y ago
ISPs punishing people for torrenting isn't a global thing. In several countries that's not an issue.
Nexxxeh 11y ago
You don't connect to the swarm using your ISP-supplied IP address. You can use a VPN service and tunnel all your traffic through that. You can use a seedbox, which is basically your torrent client running on a virtual machine or shared machine in a data centre. The P2P stuff doesn't come to or from your home IP. And it all happens at data centre speed. If you use a private tracker, a seedbox is the way to go because you can leave it constantly seeding 24/7 at high speed so you build an amazing ratio. You can pick up a seedbox with 700GB storage, 1Gb/s download, and 50Mb/s upload (both speed limited, but unlimited total) for less than a fancy coffee a week. Plex integration, OpenVPN connections included (so you can bypass any ISP-level filters), encrypted FTP etc.
- iyn 11y ago
  Can you recommend good seedbox providers?
  - Plugawy 11y ago
    http://Put.io http://Put.io is a one example of such service
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    I have also tried put.io and it seemed good.
  - Nexxxeh 11y ago
    I'm extremely happy with seedboxco.net, the SB-50 package more than meets my needs (of downloading Linux ISOs, obviously. Ahem). There are other higher end packages with stupidly fast upload, but SB-50 is vastly faster than my linespeed anyway. They do week trials for a couple of quid. There's a slight learning curve, but as you're on HN, I doubt you'll struggle with the basics. And you will pick up the cool extras. Do check out the VPN (iirc) tab, for creating OpenVPN accounts. The only app thingy I used was Plex, and it worked flawlessly. Ferral Hosting's seedbox hosting was fine, but it had a steeper learning curve and didn't give me anything compelling over SeedboxCo.
  - baddox 11y ago
gcb0 11y ago
forget the tin foil hat about vpn etc. 1. use a decent client (transmission. the windows version in confusing to find but works fine) 2. require encryption (default usually is prefer encryption) 3. don't be a retard and download cam from movies releasing today. it will suck and mpaa is probably the one seeing it. 4. if you limit to few torrents at a time and limit upload and download your isp will not bother sending your logs to the mafiaa
- rudolf0 11y ago
  This is incredibly awful and inaccurate advice. 1. The client you use doesn't matter a bit. 2. Encrypting the traffic helps if an ISP is actively looking for torrenting, but they rarely do this. In fact, I suspect residential ISPs (Time Warner, Verizon, Comcast) absolutely never do this; university and corporate network administrators might. In part because it's very time and effort consuming for them, but mostly because lots of people torrent perfectly legal things. People get caught because the MPAA, and other organizations, contract firms to write scripts and bots to crawl sites and hunt for as many trackers as possible, then monitor trackers and record all peers observed if they find a file that matches content they own. Encryption won't do anything there. You can't encrypt your IP address from a peer, obviously. 3. When you do it makes little difference. Your odds of getting caught may be a little higher in the first few days, but many people still get caught several years later. The cost of keeping these scripts on these trackers is merely the cost of a little bandwidth and electricity for them. They have no reason not to sit on a tracker forever. 4. You have it completely backwards. It's the "mafiaa" who send the logs of what they found to your ISP. Then your ISP notifies you of the report they received. They don't require any info from the ISP (unless they decide to later file a lawsuit and want the subscriber's personal information). The burden of proof is on them to give what they have to your ISP. I've dealt with many of these cases from the perspective of the ISP. None of these are secrets. Using a VPN to do something illegal is not remotely "tinfoil hat". Just use a VPN or a tracker you're reasonably sure their bots can't find. That's it. It's easy. When you torrent, your goal is to hide from other peers of the torrent, not to hide from your ISP.
  - kobayashi 11y ago
sergiotapia 11y ago
Private trackers.

How do you avoid your ISP from punishing you for using torrents? Do you use private trackers?

by pknopf 11y ago

How do you avoid your ISP from punishing you for using torrents? Do you use private trackers?

ballsohardy 11y ago

vpn that doesn't keep logs, preferably paid for with bitcoin or visa gift cards bought with bitcoin

0xffff2 11y ago

It's never been an issue. I use PeerBlock most of the time, but I've only ever gotten one letter from my ISP, and that was probably almost a decade ago now.

yulaow 11y ago

You have an ISP that punish you just for using torrents? WTF, they really exist? I mean, what happens if you just download Ubuntu in its torrent version... they punish you just because it is a torrent?

softawre 11y ago
You know what they meant...
- yulaow 11y ago
  I actually don't know why I got some downvotes... in my country I never had a single ISP who blocks torrents, I don't even think is legal for them to check what you are downloading (except if they have a police warrant).
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    It's not quite the same (although they will throttle torrents frequently). Basically some firm gets hired by a media conglomerate to look at a torrent swarm for one of their shows or movies, and log the IP addresses that are sharing the data. Then they look up the IPs, see that 123.456.78.90 was connected through a Comcast account. They send a big pile of requests to Comcast with all of the Comcast IPs and ask "hey, who had the IP 123.456.78.90 on January 14th, 2016 at 4:50pm?" Not sure how often they actually bother suing actual users these days but either way, the ISP got the complaint and turns around and sends you a letter saying "hey, stop downloading tv shows and movies over torrents or we will have to cut off your service." I'm sure the details of how this works change and are more complex but that's the essence. Even if you aren't sued, your ISP will cut you off if you keep torrenting stuff and generating complaints from rights holders.
    - yulaow 11y ago
      Thanks, that was the part I was missing. In my country ISPs cannot tell _anyone_ which user has a specific ip at a specific time, they need a order from a judge based on a police request.
      - DarkLinkXXXX 11y ago
        Umm... mind telling me what country you're in?
        yulaow 11y ago
        I was specifically referring to Switzerland and Italy.
        charlesdm 11y ago
        Belgium as well
        nness 11y ago
        Australia too.
      - Abraln 11y ago
        In the US it is not the ISPs "telling" the identity of the customer. They just forward the notices/warnings/thinly-veiled-threats to them. They don't let them know who the IP address is/was held by without a court order as far as I know.
  - hsod 11y ago
    They aren't talking about blocking the torrent protocol. A rights-holder watches a torrent swarm for one of their copyrighted works and records the IP of people who are sharing it. They then contact your ISP (just asking nicely) telling them what they saw. The ISP will usually send you a warning or two before cutting off your service. Alternatively the rights holder can get a judge to issue a subpoena obligating the ISP to give up your name. So, since no one is watching Ubuntu swarms and reporting the uploaders, that's not really a concern.
    - yulaow 11y ago
      Thanks, as I said to the other commenter in my country ISPs cannot tell _anyone_ which user has a specific ip at a specific time, they need a order from a judge based on a police request. And the police doesn't make those request so lightly... they would need to know you actually uploaded and shared a tons of movies/copyrighted material linking to them on some public accessible site to even think about asking a judge permission to investigate further.
  - ricksplat 11y ago
    This is actually my experience too. A "friend" downloads a movie lets say, and for about 12 hours afterwards their connection speed is throttled in an apparently retaliatory gesture. Not so far fetched if you consider that the ISP has been recently been acquired by a conglomerate with media interests ... Said isp has been "only show in town" for serious internet access for some time so thankfully that is starting to change so a move might be on the cards.

izacus 11y ago

ISPs punishing people for torrenting isn't a global thing. In several countries that's not an issue.

Nexxxeh 11y ago

You don't connect to the swarm using your ISP-supplied IP address. You can use a VPN service and tunnel all your traffic through that. You can use a seedbox, which is basically your torrent client running on a virtual machine or shared machine in a data centre. The P2P stuff doesn't come to or from your home IP. And it all happens at data centre speed. If you use a private tracker, a seedbox is the way to go because you can leave it constantly seeding 24/7 at high speed so you build an amazing ratio. You can pick up a seedbox with 700GB storage, 1Gb/s download, and 50Mb/s upload (both speed limited, but unlimited total) for less than a fancy coffee a week. Plex integration, OpenVPN connections included (so you can bypass any ISP-level filters), encrypted FTP etc.

iyn 11y ago
Can you recommend good seedbox providers?
- Plugawy 11y ago
  http://Put.io http://Put.io is a one example of such service
- StavrosK 11y ago
  I have also tried put.io and it seemed good.
- Nexxxeh 11y ago
  I'm extremely happy with seedboxco.net, the SB-50 package more than meets my needs (of downloading Linux ISOs, obviously. Ahem). There are other higher end packages with stupidly fast upload, but SB-50 is vastly faster than my linespeed anyway. They do week trials for a couple of quid. There's a slight learning curve, but as you're on HN, I doubt you'll struggle with the basics. And you will pick up the cool extras. Do check out the VPN (iirc) tab, for creating OpenVPN accounts. The only app thingy I used was Plex, and it worked flawlessly. Ferral Hosting's seedbox hosting was fine, but it had a steeper learning curve and didn't give me anything compelling over SeedboxCo.
- baddox 11y ago

gcb0 11y ago

forget the tin foil hat about vpn etc. 1. use a decent client (transmission. the windows version in confusing to find but works fine) 2. require encryption (default usually is prefer encryption) 3. don't be a retard and download cam from movies releasing today. it will suck and mpaa is probably the one seeing it. 4. if you limit to few torrents at a time and limit upload and download your isp will not bother sending your logs to the mafiaa

rudolf0 11y ago
This is incredibly awful and inaccurate advice. 1. The client you use doesn't matter a bit. 2. Encrypting the traffic helps if an ISP is actively looking for torrenting, but they rarely do this. In fact, I suspect residential ISPs (Time Warner, Verizon, Comcast) absolutely never do this; university and corporate network administrators might. In part because it's very time and effort consuming for them, but mostly because lots of people torrent perfectly legal things. People get caught because the MPAA, and other organizations, contract firms to write scripts and bots to crawl sites and hunt for as many trackers as possible, then monitor trackers and record all peers observed if they find a file that matches content they own. Encryption won't do anything there. You can't encrypt your IP address from a peer, obviously. 3. When you do it makes little difference. Your odds of getting caught may be a little higher in the first few days, but many people still get caught several years later. The cost of keeping these scripts on these trackers is merely the cost of a little bandwidth and electricity for them. They have no reason not to sit on a tracker forever. 4. You have it completely backwards. It's the "mafiaa" who send the logs of what they found to your ISP. Then your ISP notifies you of the report they received. They don't require any info from the ISP (unless they decide to later file a lawsuit and want the subscriber's personal information). The burden of proof is on them to give what they have to your ISP. I've dealt with many of these cases from the perspective of the ISP. None of these are secrets. Using a VPN to do something illegal is not remotely "tinfoil hat". Just use a VPN or a tracker you're reasonably sure their bots can't find. That's it. It's easy. When you torrent, your goal is to hide from other peers of the torrent, not to hide from your ISP.
- kobayashi 11y ago

sergiotapia 11y ago

Private trackers.